6. Twisted pair

In order to gain enough bandwidth another form of copper cable is used. Namely twisted pair cable

There are 8 colour-coded wires with each related pair twisted around one another. Twisting it in this way reduces signal loss over any given length of cable.

Twisted pair cable is widely used in 100 Mbps and 1 Gbps networks. In order to guarantee the performance of the cable, standards have been created such as CAT 5e and CAT 6.

A 'Cat 5e' UTP cable is sufficient for bandwidths up to 1 Gbps for reasonable run lengths.

For networks needing to run up to 10 Gbps then a Cat 6 cable should be used. Of course, this is more expensive so cable selection should be based on what bandwidth is actually required.

Shielded Twisted Pair Cable

In order to improve performance even more, shielded twisted pair cable (STP) has copper shielding wrapped around each twisted pair and another shield wrapped around the whole cable.

This reduces electrical interference and so allows the bandwidth to be higher for any given length.