Cat 8 Cable A High-Performance But Economical Solution To Data Center's Need For High Bandwidth

By IEEE

TIA performance standards committee chairman previews major parameters of forthcoming Category 8 cable.

While “Category 8,” the classification for the next-generation twisted-pair cabling specifications, is still in the development stage, the outlook looks quite positive that it will be specified to 2 GHz, four times today’s bandwidth of 500 MHz, promising a new copper speedway for data centers in the not-too-distant future.

“What Category 8 copper cabling will do for the data center is let them transport data four times faster on essentially the same type of cable they now use,” says Sterling Vaden, Chair of TIA 42.7, the TIA subcommittee on Copper Cabling Systems. “That makes great sense application-wise and economically, because the intended data rate being developed by IEEE is 40Gb, 4 times faster than 10GBase-T, using the same or less power per port, which has an unofficial target of less than 2 Watts.”

Vaden’s subcommittee is charged with writing the standards for the performance of copper twisted-pair cabling, TIA-568-C.2, or Balanced Twisted-Pair Telecommunications and Components Standards.

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