Unshielded Twisted Pair (UTP) Cable

Twisted pair cabling comes in two varieties: shielded and unshielded. Unshielded twisted pair (UTP) is the most popular and is generally the best option for school networks (See fig. 1).

Fig.1. Unshielded twisted pair

The quality of UTP may vary from telephone-grade wire to extremely high-speed cable. The cable has four pairs of wires inside the jacket. Each pair is twisted with a different number of twists per inch to help eliminate interference from adjacent pairs and other electrical devices. The tighter the twisting, the higher the supported transmission rate and the greater the cost per foot. The EIA/TIA (Electronic Industry Association/Telecommunication Industry Association) has established standards of UTP and rated six categories of wire (additional categories are emerging).

Category Speed Use 1 1 Mbps Voice Only (Telephone Wire) 2 4 Mbps LocalTalk & Telephone (Rarely used) 3 16 Mbps 10BaseT Ethernet 4 20 Mbps Token Ring (Rarely used) 5 100 Mbps (2 pair) 1000 Mbps (4 pair) 100BaseT Ethernet Gigabit Ethernet 5e 1,000 Mbps Gigabit Ethernet 6 10,000 Mbps Gigabit Ethernet