What Is Cat8 Cable?

If you’ve been in the Datacom and Networking business, you would be familiar with some of the Ethernet cables available such as Cat5E, Cat6, and Cat6A. Well, the latest network copper cable will be known as Cat8 Cable, no surprise there right? This article will cover the basic idea of what Cat8 cable is and the performance you can expect.

Twisted Pair CAT 8 Cable Standards

To keep it simple, the reason why copper cables are twisted as pairs, is because the twisting of two wires would help contain the electromagnetic field that would be created as a result of electrical signals passing through the wires. Frequency characteristics of the twisted wire can limit the actual speed of data passing through a twisted pair. When the cable has a higher frequency characteristic, it means that the wire is able to contain the electromagnetic fields at higher frequency rates allowing higher speeds.

One way to increase frequency characteristics is to have more twists, more twists provides higher frequency characteristics. Another way to increase frequency characteristics is by using individually shielded pairs.

As technology advances the demand for increased data speeds will continue to grow and manufacturers will continue to develop twisted pair cables that can support those higher speeds.

Here are the current Category standards for twisted pair cables:

Cat3 – 1 MHz, 10 Mbps

Cat5 & Cat5e – 100 MHz, 100 Mbps

Cat6 – 250 MHz, 1 Gbps

Cat7 – 600 MHz, 10 Gbps

Cat7A – 1000 MHz, 10 Gbps+

Cat8 – 2000MHz, 40Gbps

Category 8 Standard

As you can see by the Category standards above, you can expect CAT 8 to provide better frequency characteristics, therefore supporting higher speeds of data. Cat8 is capable of supporting bandwidths of up to 2 GHz (2000 MHz) for up to 30 meters of cabling. Cat8 can also support 25Gbps/ 40Gbs speeds up to a maximum channel lenght of 30 meteres. The physical appearance of Cat8 cable is similar to lower category cables and still terminated in RJ45 connections.

Where can you buy CAT 8? (UPDATED)

We are happy to announce that our CAT 8 cable is available now !

We are offering this cable in CMR (Riser) and CMP (Plenum) ratings. Our cat 8 cables are 1000 Feet in length on strong wooden spools. Perfect for long runs these cables are ready for high speed home, business or data center applications. Please check out our Cat8 ethernet cable collection for information about it performance, features and specs.

Our Cat8 cable has undergone extensive testing and obtaining all the certifications necessary to deem true Cat 8 cable quality. We are excited to provide the best Cat 8 the market has to offer.