Tag: cat 8

Cat8/Category 8

What is Cat 8?


As yet, there is no clear choice of connector – though there is a significant body of weight in favor of the RJ-45 footprint rather than the larger ‘square’ contender. This is partly in order to achieve high density patch panel and switch configurations and partly because RJ-45 is what almost everyone in the industry is used to and comfortable with.

It looks likely however, that even if a RJ-45 profile jack is used, to ensure the necessary crosstalk performance, its pin configuration will mean that it will not be backward compatible with 10GBASE-T and lower speed standards. Whilst this is unlikely to create a problem in the data centre, it might not be so acceptable if Cat 8 ever reaches the enterprise LAN.