Acronym for Unshielded Twisted Pair.

A type of data cable that has four pairs of wires that are each twisted together (so that any interference to one cable is registered on both, and the difference between the two will be your original data), with no central shielding (ground).

This cable comes in many categories, the most common of which is Category 5 cable, which is commonly used in 10BaseT and 100BaseT networking.

| Category | Wires | Rating | 1 | Two | Voice, no data (telephone cable) | 2 | Four | Data up to 4Mbps | 3 | Four | Data up to 10Mbps | 4 | Four | Data up to 16Mbps | 5 | Four | Data up to 100Mbps | 5e | Four | Data up to 1000Mbps

Category 6 is shielded. (Someone in the know please confirm this)

CategoryNetworking