Cat5 vs Cat6 ethernet cable

[TheSurgeon]

I recently changed all the cat5 ethernet cable in my house to cat6 ethernet cable to obtain the most frequency, bandwidth and performance from my internet connection.

Cat5 cable is 23 gauge wire and has 5 twist per inch.

Cat6 cable is 24 gauge wire and has 6 twist per inch.

Cat6e the E meaning enhanced which has an extra layer of shielding around it that allows you to run longer distances with less distortion or interference.

Any runs longer than 100' you should use Cat6e.

If you buy your cable in bulk rolls and install your own ends and connectors this is very affordable if you have the time and are a little tech savvy.

Today with everyone wanting to watch internet movies without buffering it's all in the cabling and connections and your internet speed.

I hope this was of some help to everyone.

[David_Loves_Ubonwan]

I use wifi, no cabling and can connect devices from any room or even the garden.

David

[Eric67]

To get the best performance you should look at what the bottleneck is in your setup.

Some typical speeds:
Cat5: 100Mb
Cat5e/Cat6: 1Gb
Wifi: from about 20Mb (for older stuff) to about 50Mb (if you bought everything within the last 2 years or so), actual speed depends on interference from walls, other Wifi signals, etc.

So from this you can see that if your Internetline has a speed of 20Mb or less, it doesn't really matter what you use, because your Internetline is the bottleneck in the performance.
On the other hand, if you have an Internetline of say 120Mb or more, then your cabling will be the bottleneck and it pays off to install Cat6 cabling in your network.

[ian71]

How do you check your speed, i know on my laptop its in the bottom right corner, but my home pc, all i can find is in the windows task manager something called PF Usage? its at 360mb when i watch something on Youtube, is that internet speed? never been a problem as apart from when im in Thailand,

Uk everything is fast enough, even in Thailand i dont have many problems with Wi Fi, i only seem to have slow Youtube buffering when there? so i dont use it then or if i do just buffer it on pause or download on Youtube downloader and watch later.

[David_Loves_Ubonwan]

MB is an amount of data
Mb is the speed of data
mb has no meaning...

David

[ian71]

MB is an amount of data
Mb is the speed of data
mb has no meaning...

david so so petty, mb means megabyte, this was a basic question on a learn thai web site about checking internet speed,not a petty correct cap letters or not, MB Mb or D not d for the start of names! just a basic question, please dont answer my posts with stupid replys, thankyou!!!!

[badfish]

I use wifi, no cabling and can connect devices from any room or even the garden.

David

Problem is if you want to do streaming of 1080P wifi even with 2 channels just isn't fast enough. Hence many devices still require gig ethernet.

[TheSurgeon]

Thank you badfish! I also use hdmi 1.4 cables with audio reverse channeling so there is no need to use optic fiber cables for audio connections to sound systems anymore and the hdmi cables I use are capable of handling 17 plus gigabytes.

I think most of us don't realize that internet TV and movies will not be anywhere near close to the resolution obtainable from cable, satellite or antenna connection.

I hope this was of some help to everyone.

[David_Loves_Ubonwan]

david so so petty, mb means megabyte, this was a basic question on a learn thai web site about checking internet speed,not a petty correct cap letters or not, MB Mb or D not d for the start of names! just a basic question, please dont answer my posts with stupid replys, thankyou!!!!

You may think it it a stupid reply but if you don't use the correct capitalisation it is immpossible to tell if you are talking about Megabytes (MB) or Megabits (Mb) which are two entirely different things. One is an amout of data, the other is the speed at which it travels.

David

[paul_au]

Well it won't belong till fiber optics come through this area and I will forget about copper altogether.