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. |
Tips
- 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.
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.