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CAT5e vs CAT6

S

suklee

Diamond Member
I'm renovating my future home and am running an ethernet cable between the living room and my work room. The distance will be approximately 30ft... the contractor has already run the wire (no end jacks yet), and I noticed the cables have "CAT5e" written on them... do I need CAT6 for a 1Gbps home network?

I'm planning on getting this gigabit router: WZR-HP-G300NH

Living room will have a PS3, Wii, and whatever else needed to stream HD video content from the file server (located in the work room). I'll also have a laptop in the work room hooked up via wired ethernet.
 
I've used Cat5e for gigabit at my house. It works. I don't know how long of a run I could use with 5e, but I've used 50 feet at gigabit speeds and it works fine.
 
RedSquirrel said:
If you're running wire you may as well go with cat6. While cat5e is rated for gigabit, cat6 is more guaranteed.
Click to expand...

Are the end jacks (or whatever you call them) the same for CAT5e and CAT6?

jack_recessed.jpg
 
Kai920 said:
Are the end jacks (or whatever you call them) the same for CAT5e and CAT6?

jack_recessed.jpg
Click to expand...

No. Different wire gauge = different wire guides on the punches. The RJ45 side is the same however. Also most cat6 keystones have better circuit boards shorter paths to the pins to reduce the straightness of the pairs at the couplers.

I would like to mention as a cable installer... CAT6 and CAT6E are infinitely more annoying to work with. Untwisting more than 1/4-1/2 inch to punch the cable will cause it to fail on the tester. The cables are physically larger and are 'channeled' so they are much harder to get in to small areas.

Properly installed, CAT5e handles gigabit without issue. So does CAT5 for that matter. Going CAT6 when you already have a Cat5e plant will not really benefit you. I doubt that you will see 10gig in the house for a few years.
 
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radioouman said:
I've used Cat5e for gigabit at my house. It works. I don't know how long of a run I could use with 5e, but I've used 50 feet at gigabit speeds and it works fine.
Click to expand...

If you go by spec, it's 100 meters. In practice, it can go much further.
 
imagoon said:
Properly installed, CAT5e handles gigabit without issue.
Click to expand...

OK, so my question is how do I make sure the CAT5e is 'properly installed'... buy that gigabit router and physically hook it up, and see what OS X / Windows tells me is the connection speed?

Second question, since it's CAT5e inside the walls, I should also use CAT5e to hook up my computers/switches/routers etc. to the ethernet jack right? ie. I wouldn't get any benefit from CAT6, and I also shouldn't use CAT5.

Thanks!
 
Kai920 said:
OK, so my question is how do I make sure the CAT5e is 'properly installed'... buy that gigabit router and physically hook it up, and see what OS X / Windows tells me is the connection speed?

Second question, since it's CAT5e inside the walls, I should also use CAT5e to hook up my computers/switches/routers etc. to the ethernet jack right? ie. I wouldn't get any benefit from CAT6, and I also shouldn't use CAT5.

Thanks!
Click to expand...

This might help:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2053136

Patch cables should be the same or better grade than the in wall cable for it to be in spec.
 
Thanks everyone, I feel comfortable with CAT5e cabling and gigabit ethernet. Will any of the other "markings" on the cable tell me more about its quality?

Since I only have one ethernet jack in the work room, and one ethernet jack in the living room, is it possible to have multiple devices hooked up in both rooms? Say for example, I have 2 computers in the work room, and another 2 in the living room. I'd have the gigabit router in the work room... would I need something else (a gigabit switch?) in the living room?
 
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I currently have the Buffalo WHR-HP-G54. Maybe I don't need a new gigabit router at all - is what I really need is just a giga switch?

While on the subject of gigabit routers... which will be better? As far as I can tell these are the main differences looking at the product pages:

WZR-HP-G300NH
  • has USB port for direct hard drive hookup
  • doesn't support 802.11a (won't affect me)

WZR-AGL300NH
  • gigabit ports support jumbo frames (assume this is a good thing for streaming video content?)
  • no USB port, would need to use a desktop or NAS as a file server/storage
  • Supports WMM - Wi-Fi Multimedia (unsure if any benefits)
  • supports 5GHz spectrum (useful?)
  • the data transfer rate on the wired LAN interface only says 10/100 Mbps - assume this is a misprint
 
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