CAT5e Wall Socket with CAT6 Cable

I used cat5e sockets with solid cat6 cable when I wired up a friend's house. He hasn't had any problems, and has gotten the expected performance out of it. I can't really say if there is or isn't any difference.
 
Not really, CAT 5e is rated for gigabit anyways. Unless you are planning to go 10G (which I kinda doubt), go ahead and grab 5e jacks. Are you using keystone jacks? On monoprice, the difference between 5e and 6 punchdown keystone jacks is 17 to 22 cents a jack, not really that bad.
 
The difference in the cables is mostly in the shielding, the actual number of cables inside the wire doesn't change so you could even use a regular cat-5 jack. Same number of wires in all cases, so the jacks will obviously be compatible.

You don't even need Cat5e for gigabit either. Gigabit was designed to work just fine over existing old Cat5 wiring. An HP network engineer I used to know did a test where they ran gigabit over 8 strands of rusty barbed wire laying on a table, and it worked fine.
 
The gauge of the wire is also different (23 gauge vs 24). Unless you are running 10G you only need cat5e performance - you can almost always use a cat5e keystone jacks or punch blocks with Cat6 wire, as long as you don't break the vampire taps when punching in the slightly-too-large wires. Cat6 keystones/blocks often don't work reliabily because the vampire tap is too large and might not pierce the insulation and grab the wire.
 
GotNoRice said:
The difference in the cables is mostly in the shielding, the actual number of cables inside the wire doesn't change so you could even use a regular cat-5 jack. Same number of wires in all cases, so the jacks will obviously be compatible.

You don't even need Cat5e for gigabit either. Gigabit was designed to work just fine over existing old Cat5 wiring. An HP network engineer I used to know did a test where they ran gigabit over 8 strands of rusty barbed wire laying on a table, and it worked fine.
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Wow...that really worked? I wonder why I have so much trouble with old cables auto negotiating on a gigabit setup then...probably shorts or breaks.

/me goes to price out a cable tester
 
Cat 6 is overkill for home use... generally it's only appropriate to use it in high-density deployments in data-centers

My home is pre-wired with cat 5 in fact and I don't have any problem reaching gig speeds...
 
your not going to need a cat 5e connection throughout the house for another 10 years.
 
PigLover said:
The gauge of the wire is also different (23 gauge vs 24). Unless you are running 10G you only need cat5e performance - you can almost always use a cat5e keystone jacks or punch blocks with Cat6 wire, as long as you don't break the vampire taps when punching in the slightly-too-large wires. Cat6 keystones/blocks often don't work reliabily because the vampire tap is too large and might not pierce the insulation and grab the wire.
Click to expand...

This would be my biggest concern with mixing the two. The slightly different wire sizes might result in bad terminations.


And while Cat6 is currently overkill, if you're wiring up a house right now, you might as well pay a few extra bucks and have Cat6 in the walls for future upgradability (just in case some breakthrough allows for dirt-cheap 10Gb NICs and switches next week). Even if you put Cat5 jacks on the ends for now, you're not going to want to run new cables all over.
 
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