CAT 7 Network Cable

CAT 7 Network Cable

This page has been written to simply explain what the Cat 7 Network Cable is and the different ways you can use it.

There are a number of different categories of ethernet cables, one of which is the Cat 7 cable.

Category 7 cables, commonly known as Cat 7, is a cable standard for Ethernet and other interconnect technologies and are still backward compatible with previous categories of networking (Cat 5, Cat 5e, Cat 6).

These cables are designed to function at 10 Gigabit, over 100m of copper cabling.

Specifications of the Cat 7 Ethernet Cable

Cat-7 cabling supports frequencies of up to 600 Mhz and speeds of up to 10,000 Mbit/s. This is a big improvement on previous network cabling speeds (CAT 3: 10 Mhz, CAT 5: 100Mhz, CAT 6: 250 Mhz). Cat 7a cables can perform up to frequencies of 1000 Mhz and 40 Gbit/s.

CAT7 cables feature even more strict specifications for crosstalk and system noise then CAT 6. This is achieved through shielding on the individual wire pairs and the cable as a whole. Category 7 is recognized for all the country organizations members of ISO.

For more specific information on the Cat7 Cable go to Wikipedia.

Uses for Cat 7 Cables

Cat-7 network cables can be used for 1000Base-TX, 100Base-T & 10Base-T networking and Cat-7a cables can go up to 10Gbase-T (10-Gigabit Ethernet). It is important to remember that your network will not perform at Gigabit speeds, unless all of the components are validated at Gigabit speeds. So you will need not only need gigabit cables, but you will need a gigabit switch, router or hub and also gigabit network cards.

There are two types of Cat7 cables. One of them is a cross-over cable that is used to connect two devices directly to eachother, eg. a PC directly to another PC or a Hub to another Hub.

However, the majority of Cat7 cables are straight through cables, and these are used to connect computers to hubs and switches. You can read more about this on the computer network cable page.

CAT7 Cables Summary

• CAT7 Cables can either be crossover or straight through cables
• CAT7 cables are fairly new and becoming more popular
• CAT7 Network Cables support frequencies of up to 250Mhz (CAT 7a up to 500Mhz) and speeds of up to 1000 Mbit/s (CAT 7a up to 10Gbit/s)

Conclusion

Well I hope that through this article you have managed to understand what the Cat 7 Network Cable is and how you might use it in your home or office network.

If you have any questions about computer ethernet cables or Cat 7 network Cables, be sure to let me know or leave your opinion in the form below.