Cat5 or USB

[mjjohn]

My cable modem accepts a Cat5 or USB connection. Which will give me better performance ?
If i stick with the Cat5 would replacing my 3Com 905B-TX card with a new gigabit card increase performance ?

For it is not what is seen, but what is not seen.

 

[riser]

Cat5, no need to change your NIC - you won't get any better performance.

USB if you want the ease. The performance increase/decrease is marginal at best.

 

[4Ryan6]

Cat5 is best by far!

As far as gigabit is concerned, I think its more relavent to what your ISP is capable of!

In my area the onboard gigabit controller was constantly a problem child, and I dropped back to the dedicated 10/100 controller and the problems disappeared, faster may not always be better, if the ISPs equipment is not giga ready!







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[tcsdoc]

If you use the Ethernet then drivers are not an issue. When using USB you have to install a driver. You won't see a speed difference since both are much faster than your bandwidth. I just like having one less driver to fool with.

 

[emogoch]

Stick with the Cat5. Far easier to set up and expand to a network should the need arise. Here are some hard numbers for you though:

USB2: 480 megabits per second
Cat5: 100 megabits or 1000 megabits (gigabit) depending on your NIC and the modem.

ADSL: 1.5, 3, or 5 megabit in most cases.
T3 connection: 44.736 megabits per second

As you can see, from the numbers, your internet connection won't be able to flood the line between the modem and your computer, no matter which connection you go with.

 

[Rob423]

cat5 without a doubt.

 

[thinair]

I've supported cable modems for a while, I've always steered people away from USB, it causes more problems, and is more processor intensive then just using CAT5 and a normal NIC. Plus NIC's generally don't have driver issues.

And as emogoch pointed out, even a 100Mb NIC is overkill for a normal DSL or cable modem connection. You could technically use a 10Mb card and notice no performance difference.

 

[upec]

When connect to the cable modem to the USB port it will appear as an NIC to the computer.
USB NICs have more overhead than PCI NIC.
It is better to use the CAT5 to connect to the cable modem.