Cat5e and Cat6 fiber optic cable, What's the difference between them?

What is Cat5e fiber cable?

Cat5e is a Category 5e cable that is widely used in home and small office networks.
It is typically 24AWG twisted pair and can support Gigabit Ethernet speeds up to 1000 Mbps over segment distances of up to 100 m.
Cat5e is enhanced and improved upon cat5 cable, making it a versatile and cost-effective option.

What is Cat6 fiber cable?

Cat6 is also a cable, but it has higher performance and can handle data transfer rates up to 10 Gbps.
Cat6 is designed for large networks and high-speed Internet connections.
Ultra-high insulation and tightly twisted pairs allow it to extremely reduce crosstalk and perfectly maintain signal integrity.
Cat6 is backward compatible with Cat5/5e cable standards, and it is available in a variety of specifications, such as 23/24/26/28/32AWG.

What's the difference between Cat5e and Cat6?
1.Data Transfer Speeds
The different data transfer speeds are one of their main differences.
Cat 5e cables support data transfer speeds up to 1 Gbps.
Cat 6 cable supports data transmission up to 10 Gbps.
2.Bandwidth
The different bandwidth is also one of their main differences.Bandwidth refers to the amount of data that can be transferred within a specific time frame.
Cat6 cables operate at up to 250 MHz, while Cat5e operates at 100 MHz, which means Cat6 cables can handle more data simultaneously.
3.Crosstalk
The difference in crosstalk is a secondary difference.
Crosstalk is the phenomenon in which signals in one pair of wires in a cable interfere with signals in other pairs. Both Cat5e and Cat6 use copper twisted pair cables (4 twisted pairs).
However, since Cat5 mainly uses techniques such as twist rate optimization to reduce crosstalk, its crosstalk suppression performance is relatively low, and some crosstalk may still occur at high frequencies.
Cat6 cable has stricter crosstalk and system noise specifications, which allows the system to have less noise, fewer errors, and higher data transmission rates.
Specifically, Cat6 can reduce interference or near-end crosstalk (NEXT) in transmission, and can also improve equal-level far-end crosstalk (ELFEXT), return loss (RL), and insertion loss (IL).
4.Thickness
Cat 6 cables are thicker and have more insulation and shielding than Cat 5e cables, which makes them more resistant to noise and interference, but also less flexible and harder to bend.