Thoughts on Cat 5E, Cat 6 Ethernet cable and higher?

Up until a couple years ago 100Mbit was okay on my home network. This is because I didn't know better. My Gigabit network adapters were connected to a router that was 100MBit, and even when upgrading to Gigagit (a Rosewill I still like) router my speeds were still 100Mbit because one connection was 100Mbit, which slowed everything.

So I get a Gigabit switch. Yes the computers blaze and it even has 9k jumbo frame support. Still one GBit ThinClient was having major packet loss and it turned out to be a long Cat 5 cable and adapter connected to another long cable.

Pogoplugs come with a Cat 5E cable bundled, and that ought to work Gigabit for short lengths, right?

So overall I was wondering if anyone has thoughts on "proper" cabling? It's a jungle out there but I much prefer wires when possible because of stability, reliability and security (for all I know).

When I say it's a jungle out there, for instance I just got a 50-foot cable called Cat 6 for $5.50 new and shipped. The cable, while having an unnerving kink in the way it was wound, works perfect now that I carefully un-kinked it, but the cable itself is labeled Cat6E 24AWG and there's no real 6E spec!

So in conclusion, cable prices are unbeatable right now and cable lengths can be very long, quality is all over the pace too.

So what do you think, should we all toss every Cat 5 wire and upgrade to Cat 6? 1' cables are around $1 apiece (eBay not Menards!), so for router and Pogoplugs, $10 could go a long way. And a 150' to the shed for $15.

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-= Cloud 9 =-



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/07/2015 02:19PM by JoeyPogoPlugE02.

Cat 5e is fine. I have used a 25' cable from Monoprice before.

-bodhi
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the only thing to watch out for joey is cable length, the maximum single length you can safely have without attenuation and signal degradation is 100metres

bear in mind tho -
that this is a theoretical maximum and will depend heavily on the qualtiy of cable and microvoltage delivered by the devices in question.

so if you are doing 100ft expect some drop in signal with a lower quality cable - otherwise go for it!!