Article: Why Your Cat6/5e Network Cable is Slowing You Down

I've pulled more Cat5, Cat5e, and Cat6/6a then I care to remember. I've tested every drop across multiple brands of cables (Honeywell, Beldin, even Monoprice) over the past several years and passed 1Gb's for every drop. Do you know what brand of cable the installer used? Every decent installer in town gets their supplies from Graybar around here it seems.
 
Article is mostly FUD. Yes, true, you can test cables and show it doesn't meet the letter of the spec. Maybe a frequency response fault here or a bleadover fault there - but if your network is connecting at 1gbe successfully over it and not throwing errors then the cable is not "slowing you down".

The TIA specs they reference specify operation at the extremes. Few, if any, real applications ever require that kind of performance. If you have short-run 1gigE circuits that run fine over generic "web seller" cat5 cables then installing a premium priced cat6e cable from "bluejeanscable" wont make your connection run any faster. Its still 1gigE.

I am in favor of using quality parts. But these guys - much like "Monster Cable" in the audio world - are nothing but creative packagers trying to get premium prices and margins on window dressing.

Its nothing more than marketing hype from a seller of "premium" cables.
 
While I usually take articles & advice from "audiophiles" with a huge grain of salt, I can't find any real fault in what they say. They may be over-reacting slightly. If a cable works, it works. The only thing that really surprised me is their claimed failure rate of pre-made cables. I do kinda wish that the article went into the fact that there is no reason to install Cat 6 as nothing calls for it in its specs. The next step up from Cat 5e is 6a.

This quote, in particular, is a decent summary of why most people here shouldn't bother with Cat 6/6a for their home (and even possibly most business) installs (never mind the cost):

- Cat 5e: good cable and connectors, plus good termination practices, means you will almost never make a bad cable. Even without a tester to guide you, you'll probably hit 100% compliance.

- Cat 6: good cable and connectors, plus good termination practices, will not get you to 100% compliance unless you can test cables and learn from the feedback the tester gives you. However, once you do learn how to make compliant cables, you will be close to 100% compliant and rarely have to reterminate a cable.

- Cat 6a: for the uninitiated this can be a vale of tears. Good cable and connectors, and good termination practices, are no guarantee and even after you have learned best practices you will still make some bad cables and have to reterminate. Without a very sophisticated tester, you won't know which ones are bad, and without the feedback you get from such a tester, you may well never make a compliant cable at all.
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While there certainly could be truth in the article, it's basically a CEO saying "our stuff is better than anyone else's". What else do you expect him to say? I have no industry inside knowledge to prove or disprove anything he is saying, but I would take it with a grain of salt.

Edit: BlueLineSwinger was quicker to the reply button.
 
I haven't read the article, but I have done testing utilizing iPERF, FTP, and plain old windows NFS transfers. I have seen no more than a 10 percent difference between cat5e and cat6. I have acutaly seen the difference and it was never more than 80-100mbps.
And honestly, if you are really going to be pushing a hard 900+mbps on a port. It is time to LAG/Etherchannel that bad boy.
 
Would be interested to know the test results of my network runs around my house. Have 10GbE going over a few of the cat6 cables, even HDBaseT runs flawlessly over some older CCA 'cat6' which I installed before I knew anything about network cable.

But the fact everything works I'll pass on buying a expensive tester I don't understand how to use
 
The specs for both cat5e and cat6 for 1Gb are 100m. They will both run gigabit at the exact same speed. This article is nonsensical.
 
As long as you don't have any large power lines causing massive interference running right next to the cat5e/cat6 cables and you have the end terminated properly, you have nothing to worry about.

The ONLY reason for one of those expensive testers is if you are selling to a company that specifies that the cables must be tested with it to meet a specific specification.

I have done hundreds of runs and have also made hundreds of custom length cables. The only tester I ever use is one that verifies that I have connection through all eight wires and that I don't have any wires crossed.

Have never once had a problem with Gb speeds even with really long runs (150+ ft). I even have about 20 or so runs that are using couplers because some hardware was relocated and I didn't want to completely re-run all those cables.
 
green91 said:
The specs for both cat5e and cat6 for 1Gb are 100m. They will both run gigabit at the exact same speed. This article is nonsensical.
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Not really. Read it again. It's not about the speed differences of Cat 5e vs. 6 vs. 6a. It's about degraded performance that can be caused by cable that is not manufactured to spec and/or installed/terminated improperly. There's also a bit about the inherent difficulty of properly installing/terminating 6/6a relative to 5e, leading to the likelihood or performance problems.
 
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canna said:
Hogwash. The big thing to look out for is CCA cabling. Avoid it like the plague.
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I second this. It's no good. Nothing more annoying than getting stuck with 1000 feet of it, either. They always come wrapped in that crap plastic that turns white when you bend it, too.
 
LOL
AH: First off, Can you tell us the differences between Cat5e, Cat6, and Cat6a cables?

Kurt: Well, on superficial physical examination, there's very little difference at all, other than that 6 and 6a typically have higher twist rates and a pair-separating spline;
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fail.

Cat6a is NOTICABLY larger diameter than even cat6 is, and it doesn't really bend much on its own.

if you put all 3 together, cat6a stands out fairly well
 
That's not really an article - more like an advertisement piece disguised as an article.
"Buy our shit, it's better." :rolleyes:
 
For hobbyists or small deployments it probably won't matter but for larger scale, MDF, data center, etc. I wouldn't cheapen out but rather go with quality something like Systimax CAT6 minimum. I've seen funky issues in data centers because they skimp on small things that most people brush off like grounding of each individual rack because they think grounding via power is sufficient. So, while is this part advertisement it's also truth that Belden is better than a lot of no-name crap out there.
 
I have GigE running over probably 10 feet of cat 3 with another 30 feet of cat 5e around it... seems to work fine; so I'm going to keep my fingers in my ears. (The cat 3 goes under a sidewalk; my detached garage was wired for a phone line, but ethernet is more useful)
 
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