Cat 5 vs. Cat 6

[mrapoc]

I need a 10m cable going from router downstairs to my pc (soon to be in my room) and I'll be running from a speedtouch 580 (rated at 100mbps) to my p5b deluxe onboard (gigabit innit?) for gaming, downloading and probably...eventually...possibly acting a server for other pcs in the house (640gb will probably be enough to house anything we require ).

Cat6 is a bit more expensive (double) and i'm not sure if i require such cables as it may be for "proper" networking not home stuff.

What you reckon?

 

[Hyper]

Cat5 has always been good enough for me

 

[equk]

I thought cat6 was designed for 10gb networks and also to have better shielding than cat5, making it able to run at 250mhz.

So running it for 10meters on a 100mb LAN would be a waste.

The only reason to go for cat6 I guess is if you want to 'futureproof' the network. Altho I'm guessing the majority of the bandwidth will be used via your adsl and so it would be bottlenecked down to <8mb.

Try to get cat5e as it supports up to 1gb. I'm pretty sure most places will sell cat5e now tho as it seems to be the new standard over cat5.

 

[Rastalovich]

We always say cat5 here, we mean cat5e. We don`t have cat6, anything over a distance or `important` uses fibre.

 

[Allsorts]

'Super flat' cables are very useful if you prefer to route under carpet or rugs, although they are usually a bit more expensive than 'rounded' cat5e/cat6 cables.

 

[ionicle]

Cat 6, futureproofing

its what i use

i have a 45 meter one, from my downstairs pc, to my hub upstairs, a 1 meter one from my router to downstairs pc, and 3 1 meter ones from my gigabit hub upstairs to my pc, and other stuff

 

[FarFarAway]

At work we use fiber for almost everything (Xtreme Networks equipment) and cat 5e or 6 for wall hub to PC