After designing the connection line and getting the PSE & PD, you plan to buy some network cables, but there are many kinds of network cables on the market, cat4, cat5, cat6, which one cable can be used in PoE connection?

Before that, we should know that PoE switches and injectors are based on the rules defined by the IEEE 802.3 working group. As such, no special cabling is required. Keep in mind, though, that Ultra-PoE connections require 8-pin network cabling. Almost all networking cabling is 8-pin, but there is inexpensive cable out there that may only come with 4-pins. As those can only be used for Fast-Ethernet connections, they have become increasingly rare.

There are different grade cables on the market according to transmission speed and wire diameter, such as cat5, cat6, cat7, etc. Different PoE transmission rates require different grade network cables. Following sheet shows you their correspondence:

So when the transition speed is about 100Mbps, choose cat5 cable, when the transition speed is about 1000mpbs, choose cat5e cable. Generally, high-grade network cables can be compatible with low-grade cables.

In addition, there are many kinds of network cables made of different materials on the market, aluminum, steel, etc. Aluminum and steel are not as good as copper, they have a higher DC-resistance value than copper, so more power is lost and dissipated as heat (and it only gets worse the longer the cable connection is). Higher heat and the larger power loss on the cable are both major concerns in PoE applications, so we do not recommend using them with PoE injectors or switches.