CAT 5E, 6, or 6A?

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Rbadeau

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Jan 14, 2015
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Okay, so here is yet another question(s) about Ethernet cables.

The 3-5 dollar difference per cable does not make a difference to me (Quality over quantity).

I plan on having these cables installed and in use for 10 years plus more than likely. Also, they will be 25ft cables.

I am not a big thinker on how our (The United States, New England) infrastructure will go with upgrading these types of things, like (POP). For example will we see 10 Gb/s for at home use within the next 10 years?

My mobo is the Asus z77 extreme6 and my wife's I put in the 990FX extreme3. An Asus tech stated in an email they would support up to CAT 6. I see PCIE x1 Gigabit LAN 10/100/1000 Mb/s in the specifications for both boards and don't know if that is the info I need to look at to tell.

But is that true only up to CAT 6 or can I go with CAT 6A, and even CAT 7.
Is there even a point to getting CAT 6A or CAT 7?

Should I just buy CAT 5E or go with 6? Or back to buying CAT 7 just because I'd rather not have to upgrade later.

Lastly, some cables I see with covers on the RJ-45 connector itself (not the boot), its either gold or chrome. What is this and should I get it on the cables I buy?

Again, I am about quality. Sorry about the crazy long question(s).

Thank you very much for your help and/or advice in advance.

Rick
 
Solution
RealBeast
Within 10 years I would say yes. If you want to be ready for that use CAT6 or CAT6A. 6 will allow runs up to around 55m and 6A up to 100m, and 6A is better if you have bundled cables or improper power cable crossings due to reduced alien crosstalk.

I use mostly CAT6 now because it is about the same price as 5e and has the possible advantage of future higher speed use.

Although I must say that for 99% of home users gigabit Ethernet will remain sufficient for a long time, rarely will you be doing file transfers between home computers that will really need anything faster than gigabit.

For patch cables take a look at Monoprice. I often buy my bulk cable for installations from Home Depot.
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RealBeast

RealBeast

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Within 10 years I would say yes. If you want to be ready for that use CAT6 or CAT6A. 6 will allow runs up to around 55m and 6A up to 100m, and 6A is better if you have bundled cables or improper power cable crossings due to reduced alien crosstalk.

I use mostly CAT6 now because it is about the same price as 5e and has the possible advantage of future higher speed use.

Although I must say that for 99% of home users gigabit Ethernet will remain sufficient for a long time, rarely will you be doing file transfers between home computers that will really need anything faster than gigabit.

For patch cables take a look at Monoprice. I often buy my bulk cable for installations from Home Depot.
 
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bill001g

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Aug 9, 2012
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It will be interesting to see if some new technology evolves that will push the need for bandwidth. Your average household can not even come close to using 1g and that has been on the market for almost 20 years. Even when you look at extremely high bandwidth application like streaming uncompressed video it is not even 100m.
Pretty much you use 1g interfaces because the cost difference between 10/100 and 1g is so low you buy it even if you don't actually need it. Right now the disk subsystem quickly limit you but then again why do you really need to copy many terabytes of data from one location to another 24/7.

Right now most the people who are putting 10g in their house are doing it for bragging rights not because they can actually prove they need it...they just want a bigger "number" than all their friends in most cases.

If you are not running this in the wall where it is hard to get to I would buy cat5e for now and if you ever need it in the future just buy cat6a or whatever is on sale. It is likely that by the time 10g is common in home machines the price of cat6a and cat5e will be pretty much the same and be sold at the grocery stores.

I never try to look to far into the future on technology. You could have gone out and paid for expensive monitor cables and now every single one currently being used is going to be obsolete. It appears everything is going to display port or the newer HDMI. They could just as easily decide to say use 8 pair cables or something to increase the speed to 100g....assuming we have magic disk systems that can deliver data that fast.
 
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RealBeast

RealBeast

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Bill what can I say, except total agreement. I went to CAT because my Home Depot stopped carrying CAT5e and instead has 6 at the same price. I still have a few thousand feet of CAT5e -- and if you need any I have a few spools of thinnet and a box of connectors and terminators left that I don't need. :D

 
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Rbadeau

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It just makes me nervous that the Asus tech said I could use CAT 6 but he was not sure about 6A and 7. But, I guess backwards compatible is backwards compatible right.
 
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