Re: Cat 3 cabling

["Jason Lim" <maillist@jasonlim.com>]

> Cat 3 cable is the quality of 4-pair wiring used for voice connections
between PBXs and analog telephones.  Turns out, it is 'good enoug' for 10
M/s Ethernet (10BaseT) but not good enough for 100 M/s or GigEnet.
>
> Cat 5 cable is also 4-pairs, but the manufacturing process is more
precise (pitch of the twists, different for each pair;  wire gauge;
insulation thickness;  etc.).  As a result, the Cat 5 impedance is more
uniform and produces lower signal losses.  The better impedance matching
carries over into the connectors, which are newer designs (almost all IDC,
more precise punch-down blocks) than the Cat 3 (screw posts and relatively
sloppy "66" punch-downs.
>
> Bill


So in essense, since they are both 4-pairs, just looking at it won't let
you know which it is (without actually testing it)?

Any way to turn Cat 5 into Cat 3, and vice versa?

Thanks.