CAT 6 vs. CAT 6A Cabling: What Businesses Need to Know | BizTech Magazine

Joel Keller spent more than a decade in IT before becoming a full-time journalist. He has written for The New York Times, Parade and others.

Lily is a Senior Editor at BizTech Magazine. She follows tech trends and the IT leaders who shape them — reporting on entrepreneurial business, security and thought leadership.

A robust network is a critical component of business success, and employees need reliable Wi-Fi. On any given day, customers, stakeholders and third-party vendors enter an intricate web of wireless connections to place orders, reach customer service and boost revenue. All of this demands high speeds and rock-solid uptime.

That’s why many businesses have upgraded their access points to either Wi-Fi 6 or 6E: It brings greater performance, agility and speed.

“From a client device perspective, Wi-Fi 6E now is in all major mobile and laptop platforms. This motivates enterprises because that 6GHz radio in their access point isn’t going to be waiting in anticipation of traffic. They can reliably assume that there is a full Wi-Fi 6E ecosystem,” Christopher Szymanski, director of product marketing for Broadcom’s Wireless Communications and Connectivity Division, tells RCR Wireless News.

The shift to Wi-Fi 6E is also forcing businesses to consider their cabling infrastructure and, in many cases, update their buildings that are wired with CAT 5 and 5E to CAT 6 and 6A.

Click the banner below to learn how to upgrade to Wi-Fi 6E and future-proof your networks.

Upgrading to CAT 6 and 6A cables with Wi-Fi 6 and 6E can be challenging for IT leaders. Ultimately, however, the advantages make it worthwhile.

Wi-Fi 6 has a theoretical maximum speed of 9.6 gigabits per second. CAT 6/6A, with its ability to handle network speeds of up to 10Gbps, is a way for organizations to ensure that cabling infrastructure is ready for increased bandwidth demand. CAT 5E can theoretically handle up to 1Gbps, which is more than most applications need now, but there is more potential for crosstalk than with CAT 6/6A.

“If you think about the requirements of Wi-Fi 6, the two high-level design factors are really around Power over Ethernet and performance,” says William Choe, vice president of product management for HPE Aruba, who works with corporations and universities to plan and deploy infrastructure upgrades.

“As enterprises go to Wi-Fi 6E, the real breaking point is around 5Gbps,” he says. “Although CAT 5E is supposed to work, the distance and the temperature and even the cable gauge have an impact on reliability, often what we call the signal-to-noise ratio. There are all of these environmental factors that impact the quality of the signal and ultimately the ability to reliably provide that 5Gbps of performance.”

RELATED: Are CAT 5 or CAT 6 Ethernet cables better for your business?

Distance is an important factor, especially when it comes to the deployment of CAT 6A. While CAT 6 can maintain 10Gbps speeds for up to 55 meters, CAT 6A can maintain 10Gbps speeds for up to 100 meters, along with less crosstalk and signal loss due to thicker insulation and more tightly wound wires. It’s a bit stiffer than CAT 5E or CAT 6, making it a bit harder to deploy, especially through the already jam-packed conduits some infrastructures have.

Power over Ethernet is a big reason that enterprises upgrade from CAT 5 or 5E to CAT 6 or 6A, even if the older cabling can still handle speed requirements. “What’s happening is that you have these IP cameras that have pan, tilt and zoom capabilities; you have smart lighting capabilities; you have various Internet of Things devices that are pushing the envelope around Power over Ethernet greater than 60 watts,” he says.

In fact, IDC Research predicts that Wi-Fi IoT device shipments “are predicted to exceed 40% by 2027.” Wi-Fi 6E features such as improved power efficiency, higher data rates, longer range and better handling of multiple devices make it “more suitable for a wider range of IoT applications.”

DIG DEEPER: Learn why experts say Wi-Fi 6E is the future of networking.

Due to the cost of deploying CAT 6A, enterprises must consider where they should install this new cabling. Experts say deploying CAT 6A cables in new buildings may be a good starting place, along with large expo halls and sports stadiums.

At the Walton Arts Center, which operates a 1,200-seat indoor proscenium theater and a 250-seat black box theater in Fayetteville, Ark., fast connectivity only works on a high-powered network.

Jon DowneyIT Director, Walton Arts Center

When popular artists perform at the Walmart Arkansas Music Pavilion, “the throughput and the number of connections on our Wi-Fi just skyrocket,” Jon Downey, IT director for the Walton Arts Center, told BizTech.

To keep connections seamless, IT leaders must work through the biggest hurdle: integrating CAT 6A cables with older networks that have aging CAT 5E cables. One workaround is to connect CAT 6A cables through patch panels, but even those can limit power or short out on occasion.

“As an IT team, you want to be an enabler for the business, not a roadblock,” Downey told BizTech. “Legacy infrastructure that can’t support high-quality connectivity to a large number of users will impact your business’s ability to take advantage of new use cases.”

Some IT leaders find that “one interface to configure, monitor and troubleshoot the entire network infrastructure, including the Wi-Fi access points,” does the trick, according to Scott Vandonkelaar, CTO of Zero Latency VR, a virtual reality gaming company with two dozen locations in the U.S. and 60 more around the world.

“The best part is, the technology now just works. Customers can play for longer, they’re more comfortable and they have a seamless experience from the moment they suit up until the game is complete,” he told BizTech.

When it comes to cabling, IT leaders must also decide whether to risk hitting technical limits or do a total upgrade and risk underutilization. While some may think CAT 5 or 5E is adequate for most enterprises’ needs right now, a wait-and-see deployment plan can have unintended consequences.

“It becomes operationally challenging to have disparate or differentiated capabilities in a given location,” says Andrew Palms, executive director of IT infrastructure at the University of Michigan. “You want to have that uniform, because if you start to have applications that work well in one building versus another, you can start to create a bit of angst right within your customer community,” he says.

DIG DEEPER: Consider these factors for a successful transition to Wi-Fi 6E.

To help, Aruba has offered a trade up infrastructure program to assist businesses in accelerating their their networking upgrades.

For now, enterprises are doing cable upgrades on an as-needed basis, prioritizing buildings that require faster networking the most, but there will come a time when a wholesale upgrade is necessary.

“If you have the enterprise, and your constituents are looking to future-proof and they have bigger data or speed requirements or bigger power requirements, that’s where CAT 6A really does make sense,” Palms says.