The CAT8 cable standard has been developed for use in data centers. CAT8 cable offers the same 25 and 40 Gb / s data rates as CAT7, with the addition that equipment uses less power when sending data at these speeds. The cabling is available in 2 versions. Firstly CAT8.1, with at least a single shield around all wire pairs (U / FTP) and an RJ45 connector.
The second version, CAT8.2, has at least two shielding layers (S / FTP) and a GG45 connector. Each pair of wires is provided with its own shield and there is an additional shield around all pairs of wires.
Best CAT8 Cables:
When do you need a CAT8 cable?
Category 8 or CAT8 cable is a recent network cable standard. It is (partly) the successor to CAT6 and has a signal bandwidth of 2 gigahertz (GHz). This allows this cabling to transport data at a high data rate. CAT8 cable supports 25 and 40 Gb / s over a distance of 30 meters. This cabling is specially designed to transport data at a speed of 40 Gb / s over 30 meters. It is aimed at data center applications for connecting equipment that has 40GBase-T ports.
If you have equipment that is equipped with the fast category 8 data ports, a CAT8 cable is a must to achieve the maximum data transfer with this equipment. This network cable is standardized by the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA). Note: TIA has never released a standard for CAT7 cable and probably will not. So instead, the TIA has released Category 8.
Difference between CAT8 cable and CAT7 / CAT7a cable
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) have both adopted a CAT7 and CAT7a standard. The TIA has never done this and switches directly from category 6 and 6a to 8. The category 8 standard has been exclusively set by the TIA and has not been adopted by ISO or IEC. In the past, efforts have always been made to make cabling “backward compatible” with its predecessor.
This means that if a cable of a lower category is used, the maximum performance of this lower category can be achieved. Because TIA has never adopted CAT7, the situation arises that the CAT8 standard is less strict than CAT7 / 7a in certain respects.
CAT8 cable not fully compatible with category 7 and 7a ports
The CAT7 and 7a standard (standardized by ISO and IEC) and CAT8 (standardized by TIA) are two different standards and not Successors of each other. As it’s clear that a category 7 network cable is not backward compatible with category 8 equipment. Because 7 and 7a outperform 8 in certain aspects, this creates a special situation.
In the past, the backward compatibility of the different cable standards had led to the situation that it was always possible to use cabling of a higher category on a port that supported a lower category. The result was that a port could always reach its maximum speed on the cable of the same or a higher category. Unfortunately, this has come to an end with CAT8 cable. If you have equipment with category 7 or 7a ports, you cannot just use CAT8 cable. There is no guarantee that with version 8 cabling you will also achieve the maximum speed of the version 7 port in practice.
