BASE2 (also known as cheapernet, thin ethernet, thinnet or thinwire) is a variant of Ethernet that uses thin coaxial cable (RG-58 or similar, as opposed to the thicker RG-8 cable used in 10 BASE5 networks), terminated with BNC connectors. For many years this was the dominant 10 Mbit/s Ethernet standard, but due to the immense demand for high speed networking, the low cost of Category 5 Ethernet cable, and the popularity of 802.11 wireless networks, both 10BASE2 and 10BASE5 have become obsolete.