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Cat 5e v. Cat 6

roguerower

roguerower

Diamond Member
I am looking to get a long networking cable for my apt and it'll be between 25-35 ft to get from my computer to the router. Should I go w/ 5e or 6?
 
You won't see any difference with Gigabit networks. A fifty-foot CAT6 cable is about $6.00 and a CAT5e cable is $4.50 at Monoprice.com. I'd make the choice on whatever is easily available for a good price.

If you have the cash, I'd probably buy a spare in case it gets caught in a door jamb or the dog chews it in two. (I've had both happen).
 
cat6a because 10gbe will eventually come around.

cat6 (not cat6a) is the same price as cat5e now.

i use the 1mm thick flatwire its really easy to run along walls/under carpet. not that expensive.
 
I seriously wouldn't pay an extra 10 cents for CAT6 unless I was wiring a datacenter. CAT6 used to be more sensitive to sharp bends and kinks than CAT5e, though I don't know if this is still the case. 1000BASE-T (Gigabit) works fine over CAT5e, and it's going to be many years until 10Gb equipment intended for consumer use becomes widely available. Gigabit is still not predominant, and how do you even fill a Gigabit pipe in home use? At work, I push about 900mbps between two servers with RAID5 arrays. I have yet to push any other traffic past 280mbps. 1gbps holds over 100 compressed HD streams, for pete's sake! It's going to be eons until gigabit connections are available to even 5% of homes in America--why, most telcos and cable cos don't even allocate 1gbps for Internet traffic on their trunks into small and medium-sized towns, let alone individual subscribers!
 
no kidding i have 4 2.5" drives (10K sas) and they fully saturate gigabit during backups.


10gbe dual port adapters are down around $500 for band name (hp) right now.

 
but but but....6 is higher then 5...so it's gotta be better...right? i mean, monster cables are cat6 and those are AMAZING!!!!!






in all seriousness, thanks, i'll stick w/ cat5e for now
 
well if you have a modern intel nic card you can do some serious line testing from its advanced control panel or from a decent switch. information that can pinpoint a bad wire or other issues that you can't tell from a ping or xfer rate test.

keep in mind there are various types of cable as well. the type of shielding may be weak on cheap cat5e or cat6. the connectors could be sub-par for the situation.

monoprice stuff is pretty decent; their shielding isn't the best but if you aren't running it datacenter style or next to other cables you might find it is okay.

check out flatwire. pretty cool and not too expensive. 1mm for indoor; real easy to tuck under sideboards or carpet. they make all sorts of flatwire; stereo; coaxial; ethernet you name it. the rg6 is slick for going under a window when you don't feel like drilling a hole through your wall to go outside.

alot of options. But you are correct; cheap cat6 or cat6a may be worse than quality cat5e.

right now iirc 10gbe is limited to about 10-15meters using infiniband quality cable (stupid expensive).

4 velociraptors can easily wipe out a gig-e wire in raid-10; then there is ssd.

Unlike monster cables; cat5/5e/6/6a are all formalized standards of quality
 
Again...using this to connect my desktop to a router, not anything real important. There is no datacenter or raid whatsoever.
 
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