Every category, no marketing fog.

Live data from the Bun backend (GET /api/cables). Filter by what you actually need: 10-gig reach is the column that matters.

CableFrequencyTop speed10G reachShieldCostPull it for

House rule: new walls get Cat 6 minimum, Cat 6A if you can. The cable is 10 percent of the job, labour is the rest. Pull two drops per location and a pull-string for later.

Why Ethernet still wins.

Radio is shared, half-duplex airtime that your neighbours, microwave and fish tank all fight over. A twisted pair is yours: full-duplex, deterministic, sub-millisecond, and it carries power too.

  • Latency

    About 0.1 to 0.3 ms switch-to-PC on copper against 3 to 20 ms on busy Wi-Fi. For gaming, calls and music production that gap is everything.

  • Throughput that sticks

    A “1 Gbps” Wi-Fi link delivers 300 to 500 Mbps real-world, shared. A Cat 6 run delivers 1,000 Mbps, all day, every device, simultaneously.

  • Power and data

    PoE++ pushes 90 W down the same pairs. Cameras, access points, lighting, door entry. Try that over thin air.

Run copper when

  • Desks, TVs, consoles, printers, servers
  • Anything that must not buffer, drop or lag
  • Backhauling mesh Wi-Fi nodes
  • PoE cameras, access points, smart lighting
  • You own the walls, so pull two drops

Use Wi-Fi when

  • Phones, tablets, guests, the garden
  • Renting or cannot drill
  • Small sensors sipping milliwatts
  • Fed by copper backhaul, obviously

A brief history of getting faster.

From a 2.94 Mbps memo to 40 gigabits over copper.

  • 1973

    Metcalfe sketches Ethernet. Xerox PARC memo. Coax, 2.94 Mbps, “Ether” as in luminiferous.

  • 1983

    IEEE 802.3, 10BASE5. Thick coax “vampire taps”. 10 Mbps, 500 m segments.

  • 1990

    10BASE-T arrives. Twisted pair plus star topology. The RJ45 era begins.

  • 1995

    Cat 5, 100BASE-TX. 100 MHz cable, 100 Mbps. The office gets wired.

  • 1999

    Gigabit, 1000BASE-T. All four pairs, both directions, echo cancellation. Black magic.

  • 2006

    10GBASE-T. 10 Gbps over copper. PAM-16, LDPC, 500 MHz Cat 6A.

  • 2016

    Cat 8, 25 and 40GBASE-T. 2 GHz, 30 m. Copper storms the datacenter top of rack.

  • Today

    Single-pair plus 10G to desk. 802.3da automotive 10 Mbps single-pair. Cat 6A to every desk as standard.

Hover or tap a layer.

Seven layers between you and raw physics.

Outer jacket

PVC for patch leads, LSZH for indoors, CMP plenum where air circulates, UV plus gel-filled outside. The jacket is a fire, sunlight and crush rating, not decoration.

  1. Jacketfire, sun and crush rating
  2. Braid shieldalien crosstalk armour
  3. Foil per pairwraps each pair
  4. Spline separatorplastic cross, pairs apart
  5. Four twisted pairsa twist rate each
  6. Copper conductors23 to 24 AWG

Noise hits both wires. The twist makes it cancel itself.

Each pair carries positive and negative voltage (differential signalling). Interference adds the same spike to both wires, the receiver subtracts them, and the spike vanishes. Twisting makes sure both wires sample the same field on average. Tighter twist rejects higher frequencies.

  • Different rates per pair stop pairs talking to each other (crosstalk).
  • Untwist past 13 mm at the plug destroys the effect. That is the number one DIY failure.
  • 10GBASE-T adds DSP echo cancellation on top, per pair, 800M baud.
cancels 92 percent of noise