Cat 5 vs Cat5e vs Cat6

[NuroMancer]

While this has probally been asked and answered before I could not find it in the search.


Cat5 is rated to 100Mbps at 350mhz?

Cat 5e is rated to 1000Mbps at 350mhz?

Cat 6 (proposed) is rated to 1000Mbps at up to 600Mhz?

My question is how much does the frequency affect transfer speeds?

It is going into either a SMC or DLINK 10/100/1000 switch and I am trying to maximize transfer speeds between 2 computers both with gigabite connections.

Thanks for the help!

 

[skyking]

5E will handle gigabit.
100MHZ for CAT5E
200MHZ for CAT6

The "350MHZ" that you see advertised is not relevant, the standards are as outlined nicely in this website.

 

[JackMDS]

Let me put your mind at rest.

If you have a Network that is consists of 100Mb/sec. devices there would not be any difference in "speed" whether you use CAT5 CAT5e or CAT6.

In other words if you put $10 in a bigger purse it does not become $15.

If your devices are rated Giga, CAT5e or CAT6 would yield the same.

When people install CAT6 in the walls it is installed with a look for the future so they would not have to re-wire years from now when Networks that exceed Giga.

:sun:

 

[NuroMancer]

Originally posted by: JackMDS
Let me put your mind at rest.

If you have a Network that is consists of 100Mb/sec. devices there would not be any difference in "speed" whether you use CAT5 CAT5e or CAT6.

In other words if you put $10 in a bigger purse it does not become $15.

If your devices are rated Giga, CAT5e or CAT6 would yield the same.

When people install CAT6 in the walls it is installed with a look for the future so they would not have to re-wire years from now when Networks that exceed Giga.

:sun:

As it says in my post, the 2 most important devices are rated to giga and so is the switch. I understand what your saying, I understood it before. My question was what effect does frequency have on speed. And thx for that Link skyking, that answered alot of questions. Including mine.

 

[JackMDS]

Can I make it simpler? Probably Not.

The answer is (as above) the frequency capacity of the CAT5e or CAT6 has on affect on the ?Speed?. Giga capable Devices would perform the same.

People use CAT6 in the walls for the reason mentioned above.

On the Other hand, the Giga would work faster if your devices are Jumbo Frames capable, and you would find a way to isolate the Giga so that you can configure the TCP/IP stack with MTU=9000 without losing Internet Speed.

Once you figure it out you would have a better Giga, and even then, it would not matter whether you use Cat5e or CAT6.

Or in other words you are ?Barking? at the wrong Tree.:shocked:

:sun:

 

[sswingle]

I think the answer you are looking for is "none"

 

[Emulex]

you got 64bit pci for that gig-e transfer speed? not many pc's can do much but pingflood at true gig-e full duplex line speed lol.

 

[Smilin]

The frequency is proportional to "bandwidth" (imagine that?!)

You are sending sine waves over the medium in an attempt to generate a block on/off pattern. A single frequency can't produce a "squared off" wave. You have to combine several other higher frequencies to get things closer and closer to a squared off wave. If you use a LOT of frequencies (lots of "bandwidth") and high end ones to produce the squared off wave you get a really precise signal at a really fast data rate.

It's been a long time since I had to know anything about this but that's it in a nutshell.

For more info, probably google: bandwidth, nrz encoding or something similar.


The big thing with Cat5 vs Cat6 is mostly in the number of twists per foot. More twists=more resistance to noise. Each strand of copper is an antenna. If you pass a pair next to a signal it will get picked up. It actually gets picked up more by the closer wire in the pair. If you twist the pairs the noise gets picked up on both and will cancel out.


sorry so sloppy/sparse, gotta run.


edit: here, good example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Synthesis_square.gif

 

[cmetz]

NuroMancer,

cat5 = 100MHz BW, other various electrical specs
cat5e = 100MHz BW, tightened NEXT specs, new FEXT/ELFEXT specs. Intended that most cat5 stuff would meet the spec, but complying the changed crosstalk specs is needed to make 1000BaseT theoretically work.
cat6 = 250MHz BW, much further tightened electrical specs

"enhanced" and "350" in any cable description is marketing. For example, cat6 is better cable than "350MHz cat5"

cat6 is a full EIA standard as far as I know, not just proposed.

1000BaseT is the fastest twisted-pair Ethernet you can get as product today. There's talk of being able to do 10 gigabit Ethernet over cat6 for some very short distance, like 10m. From what I've seen, I believe 10 gig over cat6 out to 100m is not likely to be viable (but I dare not say impossible because somebody'll build it and prove me wrong . But this does require you to have 10 gig equipment, which you probably don't and won't any time soon.

With 1000BaseT equipment, cat5e and 6 should perform identically. With 100BaseT equipment, cat5, 5e, and 6 should perform identically. It's just a matter of what's possible to do at all.

 

[skyking]

The theoretical distance of proposed 10 GB over copper is 55 meters on regular CAT6.
That is all still in the works, but does cover all of my recent CAT6 installations.