Coaxial (RG6 and RG59) cable – Used by televisions and surveilance cameras. RG6 is thicker than RG59 and is used to deliver CATV, internet and voice by the cable TV companies. The cable TV companies may require that your home wiring be RG6 to guarantee HDTV quality. Many older homes have two joined RG59 cables as CATV outlets. Data Cable - Cat 5e - Ethernet network cabling standards recommend limiting the total length of the cable, including patch cables at both ends to 100 meters (328 ft). Cat 5e cable provides performance of up to 350 MHz and is commonly used for both 100 Megabit and Gigabit Ethernet networks. TIA/EIA 568B punchdowns are more commonly used than TIA/EIA 568A. Problems can arise if one end of the cable uses 568A and the other end uses 568B. Data Cable – Cat 6 – Provides performance of up to 500MHz. Cable is thicker than Cat 5e with more twists. Data Cable – Cat 7 – Provides performance of up to 600 MHz. Fiber Optic Cable – A common optical fiber cable can carry a 500 MHz signal up to 1 km (3,280 ft.). Plenum Cable – Plenum cable has slow-burning, fire resistant casing that emits little smoke. Plenum cable, which is marked CMP on the casing, costs substantially more than riser cable, which is marked CMF. It is required by most building codes where the cable is run in enclosed spaces (plenum) that are not for human occupancy, such as above ceiling tiles. Speaker Cable – The thicker the wire, the lower the gauge. A 10 AWG cable is thicker than a 22 AWG cable.However, in most commercial applications 18 AWG wire works well. Voice Cable – Cat 3 – There are four cable pairs which can support up to four telephones or telephone lines. Cat 3 cable was used in Ethernet networks in the early 1990s and provides performance of up to 10 MHz.
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