ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area Cat. 3 vs. Cat. 5

I thought the FCC dubbed "quad-wire" obsolete?

That's the same as CAT3, right?



Read it somewhere, I swear!

The old 4 color quad was not a twisted pair cable. Cat-3 is twisted pair.
Don

"Quad wire" is the old style, non-twisted pair cable.

sparky66: yes to question 1; no to question 2, quad wire is 4 wires, red, green, yellow, & black, most likely CAT-1, standard CAT-3 is 4 "twisted pairs", b/bw, o/ow, g/gw, br/brw, you can get 1pr, 2pr, 3pr, 6pr, etc. also, but it is not common.

[This message has been edited by Mike_Riverside (edited 12-27-2002).]

I call the quad wire thermostat wire .. Its the old time Cat1 first phone wire that you find in most older homes.. Cat2 is your flat satin line cords found in most homes that connect phones to the wall jack..

Quad wire will live for a long time. We use loads of it for Alarm systems wiring. The fact that quad wire is not twisted pair is not an issue in alarm systems.

Thanks for all the input, everybody.
I bought a box of Cat 5 today.

Redsy,
Just a small point, the guy to ask about this, must surely be PaulUK, if he cannot explain it, it does not exist in the world of Telecommunications.
Personally for anything more than standard voice comms, I would not hesitate to install Cat-5e, especially where Internet use is envisaged.
Save that, I look forward to the day when we are all provided with Fibre-Optic.

[This message has been edited by Trumpy (edited 12-28-2002).]

Cat 3:

I recently wired my house for voice and data. I used CAT3 from the D-marc to the punchdown block and to all my locations I ran bundled CAT5e, four CAT5e's wraped in plastic. From the quad CAT5e's I punched them down to a 110 block and now I can cross connect voice and data lines as needed. At work I found a sample of some home automation cable which is two RG-6U, two CAT6 and two multimode fibers, it looks a bit big to pull but is future proof, at least for about the next year or so....