What's the difference

[p.petridis12345]

What's the difference between cat. 5e and cat.6 on Ethernet cables. Is there a difference that you can see in performance of the internet?

 

[Phillip Corcoran]

Suggested reading: https://www.firefold.com/blog/difference-between-cat5-vs-cat6-cables/

 

[volkgren]

Cat5e is capable of 1000Mbps, so unless your internet is faster than that there shoudnlt' be any difference in speed with your internet connection.

Cat6 is capable of 5000Mbps and has higher specifications to reduce crosstalk interference and system noise.

 

[Math Geek]

i added GB Fios to my house and found the Cat 5 was not good enough for it. probably a combo of age and quality of the cable but i was only seeing about 750-800 Mb/s with it. had to get a shiny new Cat 6 cable to get the full 980 Mb/s or so the connection could do.

never had an issue with it at slower speeds but once you start to near the full capacity of Cat 5, it may be worth a few bucks for some new Cat 6 cable. i did not spend much. think i paid $15 for 50 ft of it so it was not top quality stuff. but it's plenty good enough for the GB connection it is hooked to.

 

[bill001g]

The cable can only make your connection worse not better. The speed is controlled by the ports not the cable. It is not analog, it only runs at 2 speeds. 1gbit or zero. It always sends data at 1gbit. Now software may give you different numbers but they are averaging data over time. If you send 1 second at 1gbit and 1 second at zero you get 500mbit/sec AVERAGE speed. The ports only send at 1 fixed rate.

Cat5e is rated for 1gbit so it will run any ports you commonly find. Now cat6 cable can run 10gbit ports at short distances but if you have the money to have 10gbit ports you can afford the small difference for cat6a cable that is rated to 10gbit at 100 meters.

Pretty much cat6 cable is a marketing scam. You see people say "less crosstalk", "less interference". But in common installs with cat5e you already have zero cross talk and zero interference so how can you have less. It is like the sales guy who tells you how well the more expensive tires will handle in cold weather and snow...neglecting the fact that you live in south florida where it never snows.

The cable vendors like to confuse people with lots of stats ignoring that cat5e already runs at 1gbit with no errors. Cat6 cable was invented years ago when it was being considered to run 1gbit over 2 pair of wires rather than 4 pairs. That standard was never accepted and cat6 cable has been pretty much dead since.

Anyone who runs 10gbit ports uses cat6a or cat7

 

[Math Geek]

how exactly does the "scam" work when the price of either cable is pretty much the same? check out newegg for 25 ft cat5/6 cable and the price is pretty much identical for either one. so they are scamming people how? the statement does not make sense to me considering the cost is the same. and i'm not even talking just Cat 6 but 6a as well. so no nit picking there.

true in theory the technical specs you are talking of are right. however in practice it is not as advertised. i do this for a living and not only my house but a good number of others i upgraded to be able to handle the GB connection tell the story i spoke of above. i'm sure there is a quality, age and other issues involved but a lot of houses i worked on saw an immediate improvement simply switching to cat 6 over cat 5 with everything else the same.

there were other pieces to upgrade as well for many users (wifi adapters were the biggest area for upgrade as old school N600 ones just were not up to the task) but those who were hard wired to the router got full advertised speed once the cable was switched over when otherwise it would not.

i know the technical specs but often in the real world those specs go right out the window once reality comes into play.

 

[bill001g]

how exactly does the "scam" work when the price of either cable is pretty much the same? check out newegg for 25 ft cat5/6 cable and the price is pretty much identical for either one. so they are scamming people how? the statement does not make sense to me considering the cost is the same. and i'm not even talking just Cat 6 but 6a as well. so no nit picking there.

true in theory the technical specs you are talking of are right. however in practice it is not as advertised. i do this for a living and not only my house but a good number of others i upgraded to be able to handle the GB connection tell the story i spoke of above. i'm sure there is a quality, age and other issues involved but a lot of houses i worked on saw an immediate improvement simply switching to cat 6 over cat 5 with everything else the same.

there were other pieces to upgrade as well for many users (wifi adapters were the biggest area for upgrade as old school N600 ones just were not up to the task) but those who were hard wired to the router got full advertised speed once the cable was switched over when otherwise it would not.

i know the technical specs but often in the real world those specs go right out the window once reality comes into play.

If you can get cat6a for about the same price as cat5e then there really is no reason not to since it is certified to run 10g....at least if it is correctly installed. If you pay any extra for cat6 cable it is a waste of money.

I can say nothing about your experience replacing defective cable. I suspect you did not properly test if you think it run FASTER. You obviously have not used professional fluke meters to test cable or you would know how cable works. Cable either passes ethernet frames at 1gbit or it fails. The signal does not travel over the cable at say 500mbps. If it somehow runs faster that is purely anecdotal in nature unless you know WHY it was defective. It was most likely a jack was defective or the connection damaged and data was getting errors and being discarded.

They do not let me install cable any more...I get paid to much..but I get sign off on all the reports for the installs. I have reports for well over 50,000 jack installs in office buildings that show certification tests run on every cable run. None of them show any crosstalk or interference that is even close to any level that would require special cable. The vast majority of installs is still cat5e but they do use cat6 if it is the same price or cheaper.

The scam is that cat6 cable has been a dead cable standard since it was invented. The cable vendors decided on one standard and the chip producers went with another. This is the main difference between 1000-T and 1000-TX. I only have seen 1 interface card from cisco that supported 1000-T and it was a pain because it also supported 1000-TX.

Now the price is about the same but for all those years the cable vendors kept trying to say their cat6 cable was better and you should pay more.

Even now the cable manufacture try to confuse uneducated consumers into buying cat7 patch cables when they only have 1gbit ports.