What’s different in CAT6 and CAT5e Plenum Cables?

CAT6 and CAT5e Plenum are one of the top two’s of networking cables. In this article we will discuss how these two differ from each other and what’s new and hot in the successor; but before we do that, we need to understand what Plenum cables are.

What are the Plenum Cables?

Plenum is the jacket type of an Ethernet networking cable and it is very important to understand the concept of plenum cables because of its mere capabilities. The name plenum comes from the plenum space concept which is basically the air vents in the building where the hot and cold air flows.

Now if we use these cables in these plenum spaces, this jacket type will act as a protective shield for the cable against the fire and hence it won’t produce visible smoke and toxic gasses caused by burning. The reason behind this is that it has fire strict properties and it is more protective against such situations rather than the other jacket types aka. non-plenum cables.

What is CAT5e Plenum?

Category 5e Plenum is the fifth generation of twisted pair networking and was introduced in 1999 with a major focus on the high specifications at an amazing price. These specifications included the data transfer speed of a gigabyte over the course of 100 meters and a performance of up to 250 MHz.

With these specifications, it was surely an amazing networking cable at that price and a gigabyte of speed is still an ideal data transfer speed. This is the reason Category 5 enhanced is not only regarded as the top-selling cable in the market but it is also the most common type of networking cable in the world today.

What is CAT6 Plenum?

Category 6 Plenum was introduced back in 2002 and is the sixth generation of twisted pair cabling and it instantly became known as the future of networking cables. The reason behind this futuristic catchphrase was its wide range of speed i.e. 10 gigabytes, which can travel over the course of 100 meters, and a performance of up to 550 MHz.

These specifications led the way for this networking cable to be known as the future of networking cable especially with its speed being 10 times that of the previous category. Even today, that speed is regarded as a large amount hence the word ‘futuristic’.

So what is the difference between the two networking cables?

Both these networking cables differ from each other on the basis of their relative year of introduction, speed, performance, and price.

Specification wise, CAT6 Plenum provides a much better speed of 10 gigabytes over the course of 100 meters as compared to 1 gigabyte of Category 5 enhanced Plenum and as such it also provides better performance of 550 MHz compared to the 250 MHz.

Price wise, and seeing the specifications in such price, Category 5 enhanced does take the cake home by being a budget-friendly networking cable with high specifications!