Cat5, Cat5e, Cat6

J

jamezzz122

Supreme [H]ardness
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Jun 1, 2003
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Is there a comparison somewhere that shows the pros and cons of each? Is it worth upgrading to Cat6 patch cables?
 
Just speed. Cat5 is for 100Mbps, Cat5e is poor man's Cat6 (~500Mbps I think), Cat6 is for 1000Mbps.

Whether or not an upgrade is needed is dictated solely by applicable equipment.
 
It's only worth upgrading to cat6 if your backbone is fast enough and your switches, workstations and servers are gigabit capable OR you plan to make these things hapen in the near future. At the very least I would want to get my connection from the servers to the backbone on gigabit ethernet.
 
I don't get how a switch can tell the difference between Cat5 and Cat6. It's not like there are more wires, right?
 
lomn75 said:
Just speed. Cat5 is for 100Mbps, Cat5e is poor man's Cat6 (~500Mbps I think), Cat6 is for 1000Mbps.
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Cable is not rated in Mbps, it is rated in Mhz.

Cat5 is good for up to 1000Mbps or 1 Gbps transmission rates, that is if you are using all four pairs, per spec. Read the Gigabit over copper spec, it states clearly that minimum reuirements are 4 pairs of Cat 5

If your Cat 5 was run to spec, and installed properly it will have not problem with GigE equipment.

Why upgrade? Really just to future proof things.
 
miazmaticdotcom said:
I don't get how a switch can tell the difference between Cat5 and Cat6. It's not like there are more wires, right?
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It's when they try to auto-negotiate for a certain speed, it won't know the cable type, just that it can't sync properly.
 
valve1138 said:
Cable is not rated in Mbps, it is rated in Mhz.

Cat5 is good for up to 1000Mbps or 1 Gbps transmission rates, that is if you are using all four pairs, per spec. Read the Gigabit over copper spec, it states clearly that minimum reuirements are 4 pairs of Cat 5

If your Cat 5 was run to spec, and installed properly it will have not problem with GigE equipment.

Why upgrade? Really just to future proof things.
Click to expand...

I find your post about 95% correct.

Unfortunately because the original spec for CAT5 never had GigE in mind you may find strands of CAT5 that won't do GigE or will do GigE but with errors. That would be a quality control issue really.

I'm also just nitpicking but in reality there are CAT5 strands that you will run into that won't do GigE...you'll just have to test them and find out. Personally I've come across roughly 80% success rate for GigE and standard CAT5. Your results may vary.
 
So my best bet would be to go with the Cat5e right? Is seems the best for common usage out of the three...
 
Wolf-R1 said:
I find your post about 95% correct.

Unfortunately because the original spec for CAT5 never had GigE in mind you may find strands of CAT5 that won't do GigE or will do GigE but with errors. That would be a quality control issue really.

I'm also just nitpicking but in reality there are CAT5 strands that you will run into that won't do GigE...you'll just have to test them and find out. Personally I've come across roughly 80% success rate for GigE and standard CAT5. Your results may vary.
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You may find Cat5e runs and Cat6 runs that won't lock up for GigE either.
 
The only physical difference is the number of twists in the wire..

Cat 6 has more twists per inch then Cat 5.

Aside from speed Cat5e or Cat6 should be slightly more resistant to interference.

-scoob8000
 
valve1138 said:
You may find Cat5e runs and Cat6 runs that won't lock up for GigE either.
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True but that would indicate that they are bad runs rather than low quality. I've had a couple of CAT6 cables that wouldn't do anything over 10mb full duplex. :(
 
yep, and I wasn't clear in my other post, but my point was, when a cable is installed correctly it will work as intended. So a properly installed Cat 5 cable can be better than a half assedly installed Cat 5e or 6 cable.
 
valve1138 said:
yep, and I wasn't clear in my other post, but my point was, when a cable is installed correctly it will work as intended. So a properly installed Cat 5 cable can be better than a half assedly installed Cat 5e or 6 cable.
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Amen to that brother! :cool:
 
i laugh at the people that say u need different cable to run gigE

copper is copper my friend

the only difference in the cable is the number of twists and the amount of shielding


the super dupper shielded cat5 only has 3 wires in it....
 
Cat6 cable is 23AWG and Cat 5 or Cat5e are 24AWG cables. Cat6 cable is also thicker and can resist bending a bit more than Cat5 or Cat5e which is just better protection against having sharp turns. Sharp turns really hurt the bandwidth of the cable and consequently could cause the cable to not run at gigE speeds. I've seen cases where a customer wanted cables installed and the installer made the cables look really neat by running as many of them parallel as possible and as tight as possible, but ended up not being able to run gigE speeds because the installer made so many sharp turns and ran too many cables in parallel with each other.
 
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