UTP Cable? Cat Cable? RJ45 Connector? Admin asks AI about IT terminology

How to Use AI to turn “Kind of Know” into “Truly Understand” for the IT terms you often see at work. This time, we’ll share a real example of how AI helped deepen understanding.

Introduction

As part of Office Manager or Admin work at an IT services firm like eSolia, we often see IT terms such as “UTP cable,” “CAT 6 cable,” or “RJ45 connector” in estimate details for LAN cabling constructions. Based on the job content, I had a vague impression that those terms were something used for network lines.

One of our internal knowledgebase articles from Nikkei Network - “What you surprisingly don’t know about LAN cables” (日経ネットワーク – 意外と知らないLANケーブル" - provides a broad interpretation of LAN cables, including some specialized knowledge, but I wanted an even simpler explanation to understand, so I asked AIs to try to get a better understanding of these terms. Let me share what I found out.

The First Question to AI

First, I asked a simple question to three different AI tools.

Question to AI: What is a UTP cable?

As summarized in the linked PDF, the search results from each AI seem to be similar. It looks like that it is a compilation of explanations of IT terms that appear in textbooks; it was easier to read through rather than reading textbooks, but I still need some simple clarification to grasp the ideas of these terms.

What is a UTP cable? - AI Answers

Changing the Way I Asked AI

So next, I tried asking a more detailed question, prompting the AI to take the knowledge level of the audience into consideration. This time, the AI responses showed some noticeable differences.

Question to AI: What are UTP cables, Cat cables, and RJ45 connectors? I’d like an easy-to-understand explanation for people without IT knowledge.

This time, there was a slight change in the answers from AIs.

ChatGPT (free version): Turned on the “inference” function and then asked the question. The answer was displayed in the form of a summary of the explanation in the table above.

It was interesting to be able to see the basis for the answer given by the AI based on the “inference” function. As for the content of the explanation, difficult terms are summarized in bullet points, which gives the impression that users can quickly check and understand the content rather than reading long explanations.

Copilot (free version): Provided a straightforward explanation for general users and IT beginners: UTP cables are like “electrical cords,” Cat cables are like “speed meters” that show UTP performance, and RJ45 connectors are “outlet plugs” for making connections.

DeepSeek (Japanese mobile app version): Asked the question with the “Deep Think (R1)” feature turned on.

First of all, like ChatGPT, DeepSeek was able to confirm the theory behind the explanatory text, and to see that it was trying to answer after exploring and considering the questioner’s true intention.

Then, in terms of the explanation, it gave an answer similar to Copilot’s, describing a UTP cable as “a cable like a normal telephone line,” a Cat cable as “a number that indicates the generation of the cable,” and an RJ45 connector as “a plug at the end of a LAN cable.”

In addition, the “illustrating the overall relationship” part should be the easiest to understand for users and IT beginners without IT knowledge. The explanation in the final overview diagram is simple to understand: “a type of cable called UTP cable with Cat6 performance and RJ45 connectors on both ends.”

Here’s how each AI might respond if we were to give them a bit of personality:

ChatGPT (free version): “A UTP cable is made with twisted pairs of wires… it’s a bit technical, but I’ve listed the key points for you!”

Copilot (free version): “Think of a UTP cable as an ‘electric cord’! And a Cat cable? It’s kind of like a ‘speedometer’ showing performance.”

DeepSeek (Japanese mobile app version): “Hmm, I see what you’re really asking… You want to understand the ‘generations’ of LAN cables, right? Okay, let me draw a diagram for you!”

Since I was able to get easy-to-understand answers, feel free to try using the above question yourself if you’d like to see the actual responses.

Summary

Here we listed results of asking three types of AI about UTP cables. Getting simplified answers rather than technical terms will give general users or IT beginners a basic understanding of UTP cables. It was interesting to be able to see some of the logic behind how AI tries to come up with answers, and this experience made me really felt that advanced AI technology is an extremely useful tool.

However, it is important to remember that the accuracy of the answers provided by AI and the credibility of the answer resources are not 100% guaranteed (after all, they are ingesting articles and text they found on the internet), so please be aware that the use of AI must be interpreted by the individual or in accordance with the policies of their company.

eSolia provides daily IT support as a reliable IT department for companies in Japan, and we can definitely answer your answers about cabling!

If you are considering outsourcing your IT department, or if you need help on any IT-related projects (office relocation or LAN cablign constructions, equipment installation, etc.), please feel free to contact us here.