Question

Describe the relationship between the frequency of copper UTP cables and potential data rate

Answer 1

Copper UTP cables: UTP means Unshielded Twisted Pair cable. It is a type of copper cable mainly used in Local Area Networking(LAN'S) and telephone wiring. There are few types of UTP cables and these are divided into some categories based on the bandwidth provided by them. Each performs different frequencies of bandwidth. There are other two cables which are similar to UTP cables and they are fiber optic cable and coaxial cable. Mostly we need to prefer UTP cable because it doesn't worth much cost and also installation is also very easy.

The UTP cable is made of 3-4 layered wires of twisted pair cables and it is well covered with a plastic coating which will protect the inner layers from outer climatic conditions and also reduce the electromagnetic deflections. The most common cable which is connected to the UTP Cable is RJ-45 in which male and also female are present (RJ-45 male and RJ-45 female).

   As we discussed they are a few types of UTP cables and each has its unique specifications. Nowadays we are mostly using CAT3 and is mostly used in telephones and mobile phones. It supports a data rate of 10 Mbps within a range of 100 Meters. The other one is CAT4 it is basically used in ring network topologies. Its data rate is a bit higher than the previous one i.e., 16 MBPS within 100 Meters. CAT5 cables are used in Ethernet-based LAN'S with 100MBPS within 100 Meters. CAT5e supports 1 GBPS within 100 Meters. The cables CAT6 supports for data center networks and also Ethernet-based LAN networks it supports 1GBPS per 100 Meters and 10GBPS per 50 Meters.

   The frequency of the UTP cable supports up to lesser than 30MHz only within a certain limit and also in some cases it also supports up to 50MHz but like this, there are very fewer cases.

Potential Data Rate: The speed at which the data is transferred within the system or other two peripheral devices. It is measured like bytes per second. The potential data rate means that the data speed remains constant within a unit of time. The file transfer is processed and the rate remains constant for some period.

   Frequency is the measurement of the number of cycles that are completed per unit of time and it is measured in KHz and MHz(Hz means Hertz). We already discussed about the data rate and also frequencies of UTP cables and different data rates in different categorized UTP cables.