Question CAT5e or CAT6
- Thread starter Coin1234
- Start date
More or less that article is valid but whoever wrote it is not likely old enough to have been working in networking when cat5e and cat6 where invented.
Cat6 cable has been pretty much a dead cable since it was invented. It was designed to allow you to carry gigabit traffic over 2 pair of wires rather than 4 pair of wire like cat5e was. The older 100mbps standard runs on just 2 pair of wires.
The makers of the equipment decided on using the cat5e 4 pair standard so at that point cat6 cable had no real purpose. Of course the cable manufacture who had spent all the money to design the cable still wanted to sell their dead product so they went into marketing hype mode.
Cat6 cable when you look at 1gbit connections has no advantage over cat5e.
Now we look many years later and ports are faster. 10gbit has been around for while now but Cat6 cable is not actually good enough to run it. So the newer standard called cat6a was invented. So cat6 cable was still a dead standard except some people found out you could run 10gbit on cat6 at shorter ie 55meter distances. This is not though actually part of any standard, the standard still only talks about 100meters which required cat6a.
So now we move forward to say the last 5 years or so and we have 2.5g and 5g ports. These are mostly sold to home consumers because business still uses mostly 10gbit ports because the 10gbit hardware has gotten very close in price to 2.5 and 5g. Cat6 cable actually is part of the standard for 2.5g and 5g connections at 100 meters. So cat6 cable final has a actual purpose.
BUT there is a new problem. Copper metal has gotten extremely expensive and this was even before the latest world wide inflation issue. The main difference between cat6a and cat6 cable was the more expensive process to manufacture it. Now days the extra cost is only a tiny fraction of the cost of copper metal in cables and there is about the same amount of metal in both. So cat6 cable is again going to be a dead cable because you might as well use cat6a if you can get it for the same price and it can run 10gbit at the full 100 meters.
The larger concern for a home consumer is the words "CAT5e" and "CAT6" do not actually mean anything. The real ethernet standards are long lists of number and letter that have things like EIA/TIA etc. There is a massive amount of fake cable being sold because of this, again mostly because of the cost of copper metal. The actual standards require pure copper wire with wire size 22-24. What you find are those flat cables that have very tiny wires or cable made out of copper clad aluminum. Neither of these meets the actual ethernet standards. They work at shorter distance "mostly" so the vendors get away with selling them but none of that cable is actual ethernet certified cables.
In the end you only need cat5e cable being sure to check that it actually meets the certification standards. Valid cable vendors know about all the fake cable and make it a point to tell you the detailed specs on their cable. If you can not actually find the wire size and metal type do not buy the cable it is likely a fake. Pricing is all over the place especially lately where the shipping costs and metal prices are more important than the tech cost to make the cables. So I have seen bulk cat6a cable for almost the same price as cat5e.
Cat6 cable has been pretty much a dead cable since it was invented. It was designed to allow you to carry gigabit traffic over 2 pair of wires rather than 4 pair of wire like cat5e was. The older 100mbps standard runs on just 2 pair of wires.
The makers of the equipment decided on using the cat5e 4 pair standard so at that point cat6 cable had no real purpose. Of course the cable manufacture who had spent all the money to design the cable still wanted to sell their dead product so they went into marketing hype mode.
Cat6 cable when you look at 1gbit connections has no advantage over cat5e.
Now we look many years later and ports are faster. 10gbit has been around for while now but Cat6 cable is not actually good enough to run it. So the newer standard called cat6a was invented. So cat6 cable was still a dead standard except some people found out you could run 10gbit on cat6 at shorter ie 55meter distances. This is not though actually part of any standard, the standard still only talks about 100meters which required cat6a.
So now we move forward to say the last 5 years or so and we have 2.5g and 5g ports. These are mostly sold to home consumers because business still uses mostly 10gbit ports because the 10gbit hardware has gotten very close in price to 2.5 and 5g. Cat6 cable actually is part of the standard for 2.5g and 5g connections at 100 meters. So cat6 cable final has a actual purpose.
BUT there is a new problem. Copper metal has gotten extremely expensive and this was even before the latest world wide inflation issue. The main difference between cat6a and cat6 cable was the more expensive process to manufacture it. Now days the extra cost is only a tiny fraction of the cost of copper metal in cables and there is about the same amount of metal in both. So cat6 cable is again going to be a dead cable because you might as well use cat6a if you can get it for the same price and it can run 10gbit at the full 100 meters.
The larger concern for a home consumer is the words "CAT5e" and "CAT6" do not actually mean anything. The real ethernet standards are long lists of number and letter that have things like EIA/TIA etc. There is a massive amount of fake cable being sold because of this, again mostly because of the cost of copper metal. The actual standards require pure copper wire with wire size 22-24. What you find are those flat cables that have very tiny wires or cable made out of copper clad aluminum. Neither of these meets the actual ethernet standards. They work at shorter distance "mostly" so the vendors get away with selling them but none of that cable is actual ethernet certified cables.
In the end you only need cat5e cable being sure to check that it actually meets the certification standards. Valid cable vendors know about all the fake cable and make it a point to tell you the detailed specs on their cable. If you can not actually find the wire size and metal type do not buy the cable it is likely a fake. Pricing is all over the place especially lately where the shipping costs and metal prices are more important than the tech cost to make the cables. So I have seen bulk cat6a cable for almost the same price as cat5e.
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