Question Time to stop buying Cat6?

mikeford

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Jan 27, 2001
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Most of our very messy, cobbled together from found cables and onsale switches is 10 or so years old, some devices still 100bt or less, rest GBe, but chasing down some speed issues with NAS units recently added I found some old cables, FT2 was the only mark I could find on them, so I was about to buy a batch of new cables and I am wondering if CAT6 is too old and I need to shift to CAT7 given the shift to better than GBe on our next gen of PCs.
 

Harry_Wild

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Dec 14, 2012
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I buy Cat 8 for my connections between components just 1’ to 10’ length. It not that much more maybe 2X the price of Cat 5e! Love the extra wiring and the nice transparent adopter connector. I have only a 140 mps line too! :)

Cat8 uses an unprecedented 2 billion (2 GHz) signals per second. This means the cable density and quality of shielding necessary to make it work are on a whole different scale. That’s obvious when you consider that Cat8 is rated for data transfers 250 to 400 times faster than Cat5.
 

mikeford

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Jan 27, 2001
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Looks like CAT6 is fine for now, when I buy a faster switch I will need to pay attention to jack compatibility, and no real need for a new switch until I have a new motherboard or NIC on a PC supporting a faster than GBe speed.

Thanks.
 

SamirD

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I buy Cat 8 for my connections between components just 1’ to 10’ length. It not that much more maybe 2X the price of Cat 5e! Love the extra wiring and the nice transparent adopter connector. I have only a 140 mps line too! :)
Be careful where you're buying this cable from as there's a pretty good chance it's fake. Even good cat6a cable costs more than 5e.
 

Harry_Wild

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Dec 14, 2012
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Be careful where you're buying this cable from as there's a pretty good chance it's fake. Even good cat6a cable costs more than 5e.
Maybe, but it works fine my Cat8 and I even reviewed it and gave it 5 stars on Amazon. Love the flat cable styling and look too! Never go back to the rounded core wire style ever again. Flat black styling with gold tips looks luxurious. The fact that you can order the length you need is very important to me too. Look like a custom setup!
 

SamirD

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Maybe, but it works fine my Cat8 and I even reviewed it and gave it 5 stars on Amazon. Love the flat cable styling and look too! Never go back to the rounded core wire style ever again. Flat black styling with gold tips looks luxurious. The fact that you can order the length you need is very important to me too. Look like a custom setup!
Yep, testing fake cat8 cable at cat5e stresses (that's all gigabit is) will not reveal any of the fake stuff going on. And cables are functional--if there's bling on them they're to distract you from deficiencies. I'm almost 100% confident this cable would fail a real cat8 test. And it's unfortunate that people keep buying this fake stuff so the manufacturers keep peddling it.
 
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mindless1

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^ Heh, as long as you're happy... I too think it's fake, but I could see a scenario where it's plausible to get a CAT8 for only twice the price of 5e.

Suppose a $10, 5e cable was really a $4 cable with $6 shipping hidden in the total price, then a twice the price CAT8 cable being $20, could be a $14 cable with same $6 shipping built in.

However, IMO what looks like a custom setup is not seeing the wires at all, once installed. Depends on the room and furniture layout I suppose, vs where in the wall you can drop a cable run.
 

SamirD

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You know as well as I do how cheaply these cables are made--less than a dollar each, so the 'what the market will bear' markup is what we're paying...and the market bears more for higher cat numbers and 'shiny' stuff. Too bad that just floods the market with fakes because this didn't happen as much 5 years ago.
 

mxnerd

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Yep, testing fake cat8 cable at cat5e stresses (that's all gigabit is) will not reveal any of the fake stuff going on. And cables are functional--if there's bling on them they're to distract you from deficiencies. I'm almost 100% confident this cable would fail a real cat8 test. And it's unfortunate that people keep buying this fake stuff so the manufacturers keep peddling it.
Yep. My year 2000 cat5 cable can run 1Gbe if it's shorter than 30-50ft.

Customers don't even have the equipments to test 40Gbe, of course they will be happy.
 
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SamirD

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Yep. My year 2000 cat5 cable can run 1Gbe if it's shorter than 30-50ft.

Customers don't even have the equipments to test 40Gbe, of course they will be happy.
Yep, I think the wire in the walls at my parents place was only certified as cat 5, but was certified to 400Mhz (I think the 5e standard was still a proposal back then), and it runs gigabit no problem, iperf testing 800-900Mbps where it was terminated properly (installers back then, like today, didn't know how to terminate ethernet--I should have terminated all of them myself but the tools weren't readily available like they are today).
 

SamirD

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Easy for fakes to stay hidden in the internet age.
Fixed it for you. :D

Fakes were harder (and still are) when you have a retail presence because customers can come to face-to-face and cause problems. Can't do that with online retailers so they can peddle without consequences--especially when all you can do is put a bad review on their site that they can delete--problem solved! Keep peddling it! :rolleyes:

It's why the fake problem is predominantly online--you won't find this happening at local stores that don't go under or stop carrying the fakes.
 

Hans Gruber

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Dec 23, 2006
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I have some 2ft Cat7 cables that connect my modem to my router and switches. I only got them because they were cheap, but they do look fancy. I would stay away from Cat5e unless you already have it. If you are doing any kind of new run, Cat6 is all you need. I use Cat6A as well but only because I got it cheap 10ft or less. I regularly upgrade my cables for quality control. The Cat7 doesn't need upgrading. I consider long runs of Cat6A to be a waste of money over standard Cat6 but if you want to spend the $$$$, more power to you.
 

SamirD

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I regularly upgrade my cables for quality control. The Cat7 doesn't need upgrading. I consider long runs of Cat6A to be a waste of money over standard Cat6 but if you want to spend the $$$$, more power to you.
I see this regularly in data centers, but personally have some patch cables that are better than 20 years old that work fine. In fact, I think I've only had 2x patch cables ever go bad and I have hundreds of them.

And cables are cables, cat7 doesn't make them less susceptible to wear and tear, so the same replacement policy should be used for them as well.

Cat6a is required for 10Gb. So if you're running 10Gb, 6a isn't a waste, it's the spec you need to run 6a reliably.
 
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mindless1

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Somebody with the right equipment to test it, will, and will report on it. Hard for fakes to stay hidden in the internet age.

Eventually, sure, but right now, anyone paying top dollar for data center needs at >10Gb is not going to piddle around with these bargain basement questionable cables. It's quite possible they are capable of 10GB, especially on short runs without much interference, and if not at a great cost disparity, even a good value, but I hate when the Chinese bottom feeders make up things and laugh at consumers for accepting it as truth.

Deja Vu, I feel like I've been here before. It costs very little to make a cable black and flat, cheaper than doing real cat8 for sure, and connectors??? You can't just throw an RJ45 on cat8 and pretend it's capable of a gazillion TB. On the other hand, and this is what stinks about chinese faux specs, we accept it if it gets the job done, but at the cost of truth, honesty, what specs were meant to represent in a scientific way.

I'm more in favor of destroying any companies that pervert the truth like this. It may suit your needs but in the long run it creates a jungle of chaos, as evidenced by other markets like 18650 batteries, flashlights, audio amps, etc. where it's not even enough to have severely fraudulent specs, but add onto that the issue that it requires regulating sellers too big to fail like ebay or amazon, so they get away with it. [/rant]
 

SamirD

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Eventually, sure, but right now, anyone paying top dollar for data center needs at >10Gb is not going to piddle around with these bargain basement questionable cables. It's quite possible they are capable of 10GB, especially on short runs without much interference, and if not at a great cost disparity, even a good value, but I hate when the Chinese bottom feeders make up things and laugh at consumers for accepting it as truth.

Deja Vu, I feel like I've been here before. It costs very little to make a cable black and flat, cheaper than doing real cat8 for sure, and connectors??? You can't just throw an RJ45 on cat8 and pretend it's capable of a gazillion TB. On the other hand, and this is what stinks about chinese faux specs, we accept it if it gets the job done, but at the cost of truth, honesty, what specs were meant to represent in a scientific way.

I'm more in favor of destroying any companies that pervert the truth like this. It may suit your needs but in the long run it creates a jungle of chaos, as evidenced by other markets like 18650 batteries, flashlights, audio amps, etc. where it's not even enough to have severely fraudulent specs, but add onto that the issue that it requires regulating sellers too big to fail like ebay or amazon, so they get away with it. [/rant]
So well said--I couldn't agree with more, especially about destroying the fakers and their lack of integrity.
 

mindless1

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^ What is a serious user? The first thing I do is not tear apart something I just bought, rather test the performance in use, and if it doesn't degrade performance at 10Gb, it meets the need, but the whole issue of claims vs reality, is why specs exist and if we throw out specs, it becomes a circus.
 
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