Cat 5 Cable Speeds. Cat 7 cable differs from preceding ethernet cable standards including cat 5 and cat 6 in several ways, however, one of the greatest advantages of cat 7 cable is the shielding of its twisted pairs, which significantly improve noise resistance. An enhanced version of cat 6, called cat 6a, supports up to 10 gbps speeds at greater distances.
Cat5e can support network operating speeds of 10 mbps, 100 mbps or 1000 mbps. When used for voice and data applications below max rate, category 5e has a cable length limitation of 100 metres. Category 6 cable (cat 6), is a standardized twisted pair cable for ethernet and other network physical layers that is backward compatible with the category 5/5e and category 3 cable standards.
The gigabit rates are the maximum speed for cat5e cable.
Such limitations brought on new kinds of ethernet cables that could provide faster speeds over longer distances. Cat 5 cable originally was designed to handle data transmission speeds of 10 megabits per second. [a] not at all.in order to understand the answer to this question, you must first understand the history of the cable itself. As an example, cat 5 and 5e are spec'd to be able to support both 10/100 mbit and 1 gig ethernet at a distance of 100 meters.