LAN Cable Standards (Cat5e to Cat8 Comparison)
Compare Cat5e, Cat6, Cat6a, Cat7, and Cat8 LAN cable standards by max speed, frequency, transmission distance, and shielding. A free reference that answers "what's the difference between cable categories?" with a search filter.
| Category | Max Speed | Frequency | Max Distance | Shielding | Typical Use |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cat5e | 1 Gbps | 100 MHz | 100 m | Mostly UTP (unshielded) — the cheapest and easiest to handle. | Common gigabit LAN wiring for homes and small offices — the most widely deployed standard on existing infrastructure. |
| Cat6 | 10 Gbps | 250 MHz | 55 m | Available as either UTP or STP, chosen based on the environment. | Common gigabit LAN wiring for offices, also often chosen with future 10 Gbps upgrades in mind. |
| Cat6a | 10 Gbps | 500 MHz | 100 m | STP (shielded) is recommended to reliably carry 10 Gbps over the full 100 m. | Horizontal cabling for offices and data centers that need 10GbE. |
| Cat7 | 10 Gbps | 600 MHz | 100 m | S/FTP (fully shielded) is standard and very noise-resistant, but it requires proprietary GG45 or TERA connectors and is not directly compatible with RJ45. | Aimed at industrial uses requiring high noise resistance, but rarely adopted in general offices due to the proprietary connector requirement. |
| Cat8 | 25/40 Gbps | 2000 MHz | 30 m | S/FTP is standard, aimed at short-distance, high-load environments such as switch-to-switch links in data centers. | Short-distance links needing 25/40GbE, such as between servers and switches in a data center. |
What LAN cable categories mean
Ethernet cables look almost identical from the outside, but the category they are built to determines how fast and how far they can carry a signal. This table lays Cat5e, Cat6, Cat6a, Cat7 and Cat8 side by side across five columns: maximum speed, supported frequency, maximum distance, shielding construction and typical use. Type a category name, a speed or a use case into the filter box to narrow the rows.
One thing to watch when reading it: **the maximum speed and the maximum distance do not necessarily hold at the same time.** Cat6 can carry 10 Gbps, but only over 55 metres; run it the full 100 metres and 1 Gbps is the ceiling. If you need 10 Gbps across 100 metres, Cat6a is the minimum. Choosing on speed alone, or distance alone, is how installations come up short — always read the pair together.
How to choose a cable category
- Decide the speed you need For a home or small office, 1 Gbps is plenty. Once ten-gigabit switches or a NAS enter the picture, 10 Gbps becomes the assumption.
- Measure the run Horizontal cabling within a floor is designed around a 100 metre limit. Rack-to-rack runs in a data centre usually stay under 30 metres, which widens your options considerably.
- Pick the lowest category that satisfies both Choose the lowest category in the table that meets your speed and your distance. Higher categories are thicker and stiffer with a larger bend radius, which makes them harder to install.
- Check the shielding and the connector Shielded cable only earns its keep if the shield is properly grounded. Note too that Cat7 uses its own connector types and will not mate directly with RJ45.
Tips for getting more out of it
- Cat6 and later cables use the same RJ45 connector but have thicker conductors that bend less easily, so avoid sharp bends and route them gently.
- Actual throughput depends not only on the cable but also on the standards supported by your router, switch, and LAN port, so check the equipment specs too.
- If you are considering 10 Gbps at home, Cat6a is plenty for a typical house or apartment as long as the run stays under 100 m.
- The category name is usually printed on the cable jacket, so check the cable itself if you forget which one you installed.
- When using shielded cable (STP/F-UTP, etc.), the shielding will not suppress noise properly unless both ends are correctly grounded.
When this comparison helps
Upgrading a home network
Moving a line from 1 Gbps to 10 Gbps achieves nothing if the cable already inside the walls is Cat5e. This tells you in advance whether a rewire is unavoidable.
Specifying horizontal cabling for an office
If 10GbE has to travel 100 metres, Cat6a is the floor. Installing Cat6 on the assumption it will do runs straight into the 55 metre limit later.
Cabling between racks in a data centre
When the run stays within 30 metres, Cat8 opens up 25 and 40 GbE. It is a category you can only use precisely because the distance is short.
Judging whether existing cable can be reused
The category is printed along the cable jacket. Read it off, check it against the table, and you know whether what is already installed can reach your target speed.
LAN cable terms explained
- Category (Cat)
- The performance grade of a twisted-pair cable. A higher number means the cable is certified to a higher frequency, which in turn allows faster transmission schemes.
- Supported frequency (MHz)
- The upper frequency at which the cable's performance is guaranteed. It is not the speed itself, but the higher it goes the faster the signalling it can carry.
- 10GBASE-T
- The standard for carrying 10 Gbps over twisted pair. It reaches 55 metres on Cat6 and the full 100 metres on Cat6a and above.
- UTP / STP / S/FTP
- Shielding constructions. UTP is unshielded, cheap and easy to handle; STP shields each pair; S/FTP shields each pair and wraps the bundle as well. Noise immunity rises in that order, and so do thickness and price.
- Horizontal cabling
- The run from the floor distributor to the outlet at each desk. International standards cap it at 100 metres, which is why that number anchors every category decision.
- Alien crosstalk
- Interference picked up from a separate cable running alongside. It becomes a real problem at 10GBASE-T, and Cat6a is built to suppress it — which is why its outer diameter is noticeably larger.
Frequently Asked Questions
Side Note — Why You Rarely See Cat7 in Offices
"Cat" in LAN cable naming stands for Category, marking generations of a standard set by the US Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA/EIA). Since Cat5 debuted in 1995, new generations — Cat5e, Cat6, Cat6a, Cat7, Cat8 — have appeared every few years as bandwidth demand grew.
Cat7 was introduced supporting a very high frequency of 600 MHz for its time, yet it never really caught on in offices. The reason is that Cat7's international standard (ISO/IEC 11801) assumes proprietary GG45 or TERA connectors; using ordinary RJ45 connectors fails to deliver the standard's rated performance.
That connector incompatibility was widely avoided, so in practice Cat6a — which keeps RJ45 compatibility while accepting a lower frequency ceiling — became the mainstream choice for 10 Gbps deployments. It is a textbook example of how compatibility with existing infrastructure can matter more than raw spec numbers.
Cat8, by contrast, was designed from the start for short-distance, high-density use cases like server-to-switch links in data centers, and despite handling the same high frequency band as Cat7, it has seen real-world adoption. Narrowing the target use case turned out to be the key to adoption.