Cabling
Cat6 vs Cat6A
Also called: Category 6, Category 6A
Two copper cabling grades: Cat6 supports 10 Gbps to about 55 m, while Cat6A supports 10 Gbps to the full 100 m and resists alien crosstalk in dense bundles.
For a small office where runs are short, Cat6 is often sufficient. For anything intended to last — a floor of a tower, dense camera counts, PoE++ devices, long horizontal runs — Cat6A is the safer specification, both for the 10G distance and for its better heat behaviour when carrying high PoE current in large bundles.
Cat6A is thicker and stiffer, so it changes pathway design: larger conduit and tray fill, wider bend radius, and more careful bundling. Deciding late, after pathways are sized for Cat6, is the expensive way to arrive at Cat6A.
Related terms
- Structured Cabling
- A standards-based cabling system built as an organised hierarchy — entrance facility, backbone, telecom rooms, horizontal runs, work area outlets — rather than point-to-point runs added as needed.
- PoE
- Delivery of DC power and data over the same Ethernet cable, so cameras, access points, phones, and displays need no local outlet.
- Conduit Fill
- The code limit on how much of a conduit's cross-section may be occupied by cable, set so cables can be pulled without damage and can dissipate heat.
- Cable Certification
- Testing every installed cable run with a certification-grade tester against the TIA performance standard, producing a per-link pass/fail record of length, insertion loss, crosstalk, and return loss.
More Cabling terms
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