Re: Cat 3 cabling

[Filippo Basso]

Hi Jason,     I'm not 100% sure, but the connection pin-to-pin is the same, I think, just it's a straight connection, not done in a proper way so to ensure the Cat5 quality of signal... so, it's not a test of connection, more a test of quality... I cannot see why to downgrade the quality from Cat5 to Cat3, maybe if you remove the wire gauge and wrap the cable around your mobile phone! ;-) Viceversa, the Cat3 cable give strange results on connections, and on my Laptop I cannot link to my hub if not with a Cat5 cable (with Cat4 don't link). .02$ fi 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.