Cat5e or Cat 6?

lennshow66

lennshow66

lennshow66

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17 Aug 2010
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Hey,

Im moving house and want to know what cable to use, i will only be using it around the house and up to 1gb speeds. The cable will mainly be used for network streaming of movies and songs and just playing casual games etc.

So should I use cat 5e or cat 6?

I will need to run my cabling outside of the house and up the walls do i need to buy shielded cabling for this or is any okay?

Thanks for any guidance you can give :)
 
Both will be fine for your gigabit LAN, however, I'd be looking at exterior CAT6.

CAT6 as it is just better quality cable and the exterior grade will stop the cable degrading due to weather.
 
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The price difference these days isn't a lot so I'd just go with CAT 6 cable. I think Cat 5e is fine for a gigabit setup and is easier to work with but when the price difference isn't huge why not just future proof as cat 6 can work upto 10 gigabit which might seem like an overkill now but maybe not in 5 years time! Also like ots3go says it has better shielding and more durable so more suitable when used outdoors.
 
Shielded cable is designed for electrically noisy environment and needs to be terminated properly to give any benefit.

I'd probably go Cat6 if you see this cabling serving you for a good length of time. It's more difficult to work with, harder to terminate and it's bend radius needs to be greater than Cat5e but it'd be a nightmare to rip walls open to replace the cable when 10Gbps networks becomes mainstream.

Make sure your runs are a good distance from power cables, at least 50mm, preferably more, and if they do need to cross them make sure it's at right angles to the power cables.
 
Tealc said:
Shielded cable is designed for electrically noisy environment and needs to be terminated properly to give any benefit.

I'd probably go Cat6 if you see this cabling serving you for a good length of time. It's more difficult to work with, harder to terminate and it's bend radius needs to be greater than Cat5e but it'd be a nightmare to rip walls open to replace the cable when 10Gbps networks becomes mainstream.

Make sure your runs are a good distance from power cables, at least 50mm, preferably more, and if they do need to cross them make sure it's at right angles to the power cables.
Click to expand...

Cat6 won't be much use for 10Gig, it supports it but only over a very limited distance. To get 10Gig over any decent length run you'll need Cat6a.
I'd also not worry a huge amount about power cables, the network runs @ 200+MHz operational frequenc, which is well off the harmonic range of 50Hz mains. I've never had Mains cable cause an issue on cat5 or 6. to get a strong enough field to seriously degrade the signal you'd need 415v if not more.
 
As everyone has said use either it will make no difference.

For the external runs you want exterior not shielded cable, if you use normal internal cable the sunlight temperature changes and moisture will degrade the cable causing it to fail allthough personally I'd never run it externally as it always looks appaling and cheapskate.
 
Ive bought the cat6 external one dont really want to upgrade in the future but im lazy :)

I also need a switch can anyone recommend any good cheapish ones?? No need for any more than 8ports :)
 
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