I bought some cheap cat5 cable off Trade Me to run a wired link from my desktop to my gateway. The trader claimed it was better quality (than the competition) but I chose it because it was cheap.

 

 

I opened the cable to extract a couple unused wires for a telephone connection and hooked everything up. It all seems to be working fine (100 Mbps, no discernable cross-talk) and I have no complaints, but I do have a question. When I opened the cable I noticed that it wasn’t shielded and I don’t think the wire pairs were even twisted, though now I am not so certain. Then I bought some ‘telephone’ cable that turned out to contain six pairs that are twisted. As far as I can see there is little or no difference between the cables, except the colour (cat5 is blue).

 

 

I am no expert so my question is, what is the difference? What makes one cable cat5 Ethernet and the other only telephone if both contain six cores, maybe or maybe not are twisted, and have no shielding? Is my blue cat5 cable not so superior after all, but I just got lucky that it works without interference?