[lug] comparing cat 5e and cat 6 cables

[Matt Thompson]

On Tue, 2005-12-27 at 11:56 -0700, Dean Brissinger wrote:
> On Monday, December 26, 2005 5:17 PM D. Stimits wrote:
> 
> > Now I know that cat 5e cables are the preferred cable for most 100
> > Mbit cable. The stores tend to try to sell more expensive cat 6
> > cable. I've also heard many times that cat 6 cables will sometimes
> > not work as well as cat 5e on 100 Mbit systems. In the past I've
> > always gone with a quality cat 5e, but I've never wired for gigabit. 
> > 
> > What's the story about which cable to use and when? I'm interested in
> > comparing for both 100 Mbit and gigabit. 
> 
> Cat5E is all you need for 10/100/1000.  Cat6 is said to support 10G over
> copper when it is common place.  If I was going to wire a corporate
> building I would go with Cat6 in the walls.  Cat6 patch cables only if a
> problem showed up.  But I've never had a problem with GigE speeds and
> good Cat5E.  Cat6 is the next generation cable and is designed to handle
> a higher spec than Cat5e.  There shouldn't be any case where a healthy
> Cat6 cable performs worse than a healthy Cat5e cable.
> 
> To a vendor the difference between CAT5E and CAT6 is about 2 cents a
> foot.  They charge quite a bit more than that at your local compusa
> though...

Or, you can go all out and the Cat 7+ cables on this page:

http://www.amabilidade2002.com/data4.htm

It's like the networking equivalent of audiophiles buying $1000 power
cords with tungsten in them or whatnot.

Matt

-- 
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   Matt Thompson -- http://ucsub.colorado.edu/~thompsma/
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