TIA approves Cat 6 for publication

At its meeting the week of June 3, TR-42 of The Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA--www.tiaonline.org) approved the Category 6 standard for telecommunications cabling. The specifications will be the first addendum to the TIA/EIA-568B.2 standard, and will be officially recognized as TIA/EIA-568B.2-1.

Making good on a two commitments it made early in the standardization process, the TIA specified Category 6 components to be backward-compatible with previous-generation (Category 3, 5, and 5e) twisted-pair cabling, and also interoperable with one another.

"Category 6 facilitates data throughput previously unachievable over balanced twisted-pair cabling," said Bob Jensen, TR-42 Committee chair. "TIA and ATM have already published Gigabit application standards to operate over Category 6 cabling. We anticipate applications groups to begin development of protocols supporting even higher throughput over Category 6 cabling."

The Category 6 standard specifies requirements for 100-ohm balanced twisted-pair cables, connecting hardware, patch cords, channels, and permanent links. It provides test procedures for laboratory and field performance verification over a frequency range of 1 to 250 MHz. Supporting a power-sum attenuation-to-crosstalk ratio (PS-ACR) up to 200 MHz, Category 6 provides double the bandwidth of Category 5e cabling. The standard also includes cable and connecting hardware balance recommendations, aimed at ensuring good electromagnetic compatibility performance.