A Category 6 cable (Cat6) is used in everyday standard Gigabit Ethernet and other types of networking.The cable itself contains four twisted pair copper wires, much like how the earlier standards were. These cables offer a more stringent approach to the specifications involved with that regarding crosstalk. These higher standards help the cable to help reduce noise with both NXT (Near End Crosstalk) and PSNEXT (Power Sum Near End Cross Talk). Becuase of this, this type of cable is generally better than that of the Cat5 cables or even the Cate cables.

The Cat6 cable can operate at frequencies of 250 MHz and can be used with 10BASE-T, 100-BASE-T, and even 1000BASE-T and 1000BASE-TX, which is the Gigabit Ethernet standard. It is also predicted to suit the the 10 Gigabit Ethernet standard. Cat5 cables, while still popular in use, will most likely become a thing of the past. They are only capable of 100 MBits when used for Ethernet data transmission.

Each plug of the Cat6 cable has 8 pins on it, and each corresponds to a particular wire color and wire set. The color chart can be found below:

8P8C Wiring (T568A)

Pin 1: Pair 3, Wire 1 - White/green wire
Pin 2: Pair 3, Wire 2 - Green wire
Pin 3: Pair 2, Wire 1 - White/Orange wire
Pin 4: Pair 1, Wire 2 - Blue wire
Pin 5: Pair 1, Wire 1 - White/blue wire
Pin 6: Pair 2, Wire 2 - Orange wire
Pin 7: Pair 4, Wire 1 - White/brown wire
Pin 8: Pair 4, Wire 2 - Brown wire

8P8C Wiring (T568B)

Pin 1: Pair 2, Wire 1 - White/orange wire
Pin 2: Pair 2, Wire 2 - Orange wire
Pin 3: Pair 3, Wire 1 - White/green wire
Pin 4: Pair 1, Wire 2 - Blue wire
Pin 5: Pair 1, Wire 1 - White/blue wire
Pin 6: Pair 3, Wire 2 - Green wire
Pin 7: Pair 4, Wire 1 - White/brown wire
Pin 8: Pair 4, Wire 2 - Brown wire

What is crosstalk?

Crosstalk, sometimes abbreviated (XT), is when a signal being transmitted through one circuit causes problems (interference) for another signal on a different circuit. This is due to the electromagnetic interference that is produced by the traveling signals.

Category 6a

Also known as Augmented Catergory 6, Cat6a is the newest version of the Category 6 cable.This type of cable is capable of operating at frequencies of up to 500 MHz. That is nearly double of what Cat6 cable are capable of! This cable can support 10 Gbits, but like the Cat5 cables, has a limit of 100 m, even though is is capable of having a longer reach because of reduced crosstalk and other interference. Cat6a cables also have improved performance when it comes to dealing with AXT (Alien Crosstalk) as well.

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