Patch Cables

Patch Cables

Although wireless internet connections and wireless networks have become more popular, there are many situations when wired connections are better. Ethernet connections are still, for instance, considered better due to the security, reliability, and speed of data transmission they offer.

Are you looking to buy new or replacement ethernet patch cables for your business or home computer network setup? At PMC Telecom, we have a wide selection of both CAT 5e and Cat 6 cables available.

With more than 30 years of operating in the industry as a supplier and retailer of telecommunications products and accessories, we are committed to providing the best quality products and level of service to our customers. Although you may know you need ethernet patch cables – since we stock both CAT 5e and CAT 6 cables, you may be a little confused as to which you should invest in. We’ve put together the following guide to help

What is a CAT 5e Cable?

A CAT 5e cable, also known as Category 5 Enhanced or Category 5e is a network cable standard that was established in 1999. It was introduced and became the standard because it offered considerable performance improvements compared to the older CAT 5 cables, offering as much as 10 times faster speeds and more reliability over greater distances.

What is a CAT 6 Cable?

A CAT 6, or Category 6 cable is the next along, offering some benefits over the standard while being backwards compatible with both CAT 5 and CAT 5e and CAT 3 cable standards.

What’s the Difference?

Bandwidth and Speed

CAT 6 and CAT 5e cables can both handle speeds of as fast as 1000Mbps, which is good enough for modern internet connections. The difference comes in the bandwidth each cable can support when it comes to data transfer. CAT6 cables are designed to operate at frequencies as high as 250MHz, while CAT 5e operate at frequencies of 100MHz.

So although they can transfer data at the same speed, CAT6 can transfer more data at the same speed as a CAT 5e.

Crosstalk

Both cable standards are twisted pair cables and use copper wiring with 4 twisted pairs per cable. Although in the past, the 250MHz speed achieved by CAT 6 cables was done so by using a special nylon spline in the copper wiring, as it isolated the four twisted pairs, it also made the cable more rigid and inflexible.

Modern CAT 6 cables offer greater flexibility nowadays, as other methods are utilised to reduce the amount of noise and interference with performance speed.

It doesn’t matter really, though, whether a spline is incorporated into the design or not, as CAT 6 still offers stricter specification with regards to system noise and crosstalk. As well as providing considerably lower Near-End Crosstalk or interference in the transmission, it also improves the Insertion Loss, Return Loss and Equal-Level Far-End Crosstalk when compared to CAT 5e cables.

Our Commitment to Quality

Now you understand a bit better some of the differences between CAT 5e and CAT 6 patch cables, you may wonder why you should buy them from PMC Telecom. As noted, we have been operating in the industry for more than 30 years. During that time, we have put considerable time and effort into maintaining a high level of quality.

We want you, our customers, to feel that your money is being well spent by investing in the products we feature in our store. That is why we only seek out the best quality products from the business, like Nortel.

PMC Telecom Branded Cables

In addition to offerings from Nortel, however, we have also invested in our own branded patch cables, to help you keep your prices down.

Rather than expecting the price bigger brands and manufacturers would expect for their ethernet cables, our range is available for extremely reasonable prices.

It doesn’t matter what your budget is, as we stock ethernet cables at various price points between £1.30 and £65.

Variety of Cable Lengths Available

Just as we appreciate, here at PMC Telecom, that different customers have different budgets to work with, we also appreciate that different customers have different network setups and because of this, may have different cable length requirements. We currently stock, therefore, a variety of different cable lengths, including:

• 0.3 metre
• 0.5 metre
• 1 metre
• 1.5 metre
• 2 metre
• 3 metre
• 5 metre
• 10 metre
• 20 metre

Unsure What You Need? Speak to Our Team

Although they are not the most expensive accessories, you would likely prefer to make the right decision, first time, as to which is the best cable for your computer network. If you are feeling a bit overwhelmed by the variety on offer, why not speak to one of our team?

We have a friendly and knowledgeable team of customer service agents who will be more than happy to help you out. Contacting them is easy via email at info@pmctelecom.co.uk, telephone at 0161 737 9898 or using the online contact form found on the Contacting PMC Telecom page.