Ethernet Cabling – Technikal Mind

Sometimes the naming scheme for Ethernet cabling standards can be a little confusing. The BASE in ####BASE-AA stands for baseband. The numbers and letters are explained thusly:

The first letter tells us which kind of wire we are talking about:
“T” means twisted-pair cable (e.g. the common Cat5 in use today)
“K” means a copper backplane
“C” means balanced copper cable
“F” means optical cable
“B” uses two wavelengths over a single optical cable
“S” means short-range multi-mode optical cable (less than 100 m)
“L” means long-range single- or multi-mode optical cable (100 m to 10 km)
“E” means extended-range optical cable (10 km to 40 km)
“Z” means long-range single-mode cable at a higher wavelength

Next is the coding scheme for data on the wire
“X” means 4B/5B block coding for Fast Ethernet or 8B/10B block coding for Gigabit Ethernet
“R” means 64B/66B block coding

Finally, we have a number representing the number of parallel “lanes” for data
“1” would mean serial (non-parallel) but is omitted instead
“4” or “10” are available for copper wire
Just about any other number could be used for optical lanes or wavelengths

Source

Here’s a chart of Ethernet cabling standards:

Ethernet Standard	Media Type	Bandwidth Capacity	Distance Limitation
10BASE5	Coax (thicknet)	10 Mbps	500 m
10BASE2	Coax (thinnet)	10 Mbps	185 m
10BASE-T	Cat 3 (or higher) UTP	10 Mbps	100 m
100BASE-TX	Cat 5 (or higher) UTP	100 Mbps	100 m
100BASE-FX	MMF	100 Mbps	2 km
1000BASE-T	Cat 5e (or higher) UTP	1 Gbps	100 m
1000BASE-TX	Cat 6 (or higher) UTP	1 Gbps	100 m
1000BASE-LX	MMF/SMF	1 Gbps/1 Gbps	5 km
1000BASE-LH	SMF	1 Gbps	10 km
1000BASE-ZX	SMF	1 Gbps	70 km
10GBASE-SR	MMF	10 Gbps	26–82 m
10GBASE-LR	SMF	10 Gbps	25 km
10GBASE-ER	SMF	10 Gbps	40 km
10GBASE-SW	MMF	10 Gbps	300 m
10GBASE-LW	SMF	10 Gbps	10 km
10GBASE-EW	SMF	10 Gbps	40 km
10GBASE-T	Cat 6a (or higher) UTP	10 Gbps	100 m
100GBASE-SR10	MMF	100 Gbps	125 m
100GBASE-LR4	SMF	100 Gbps	10 km
100GBASE-ER4	SMF	100 Gbps	40 km