Perhaps the most common type of network cable in use currently, twisted pair cables are, in my experience, possibly the cables that are mislabeled the most. When showing people a twisted pair cable, I've often heard it being called a Cat 5 cable or an RJ-45 cable. As you will see in this section, the Cat 5 cable is a variant of twisted pair cabling, while RJ-45 refers to the type of connector that's used with a twisted pair cable.
I would like to start off by talking about the characteristics that all twisted pair cables have in common. Firstly, each cable is made of eight inner copper wires that carry a voltage. These eight wires are broken down into four pairs, and the wires in each pair are twisted around their siblings. Each wire in a pair carries an electrical signal that is opposite to other. By twisting the wires...