Is Cat 6 network cable faster than cat5?

Yes its faster than Cat5e

CAT5e - 100mhz
CAT6 - 250mhz (if i remember correctly)

I have CAT6 at home, I don't notice any difference in performance.

all the 100mhz and 250mhz means is the can maintain line clarity at them levels, gigabit ethernet would be the same on both over a distance less than 5m... no difference.

you will only see performance increases if you have a faster NIC (for example if you had gigabit LAN)

Cat 6 has a bit thicker wire and will carry data in a longer run distance than Cat 5.
Most people don't have 400 foot long runs of wire from a router in their homes so don't worry about it.

Cat 6 is less prone to signal noise and will allow for higher speeds (subject to network components of couse). We moved into a new building about a year ago and it is fully setup with Cat6 - we aren't allowed to plug Cat5 into the network ports. Cat6 was installed because it will allow us to upgrade beyond 1GB in the future (we have CAD users).

See if this helps

http://www.broadbandutopia.com/caandcaco.html

difference would be price

[quote="hassa"]Cat 6 is less prone to signal noise and will allow for higher speeds (subject to network components of couse). We moved into a new building about a year ago and it is fully setup with Cat6 - we aren't allowed to plug Cat5 into the network ports. Cat6 was installed because it will allow us to upgrade beyond 1GB in the future (we have CAD users).

See if this helps

http://www.broadbandutopia.com/caandcaco.html[/quote

thanks for the link hassa. it is very helpful.

get a fiber system


unless your application is wiring some huge building i'm not sure any home user would see any difference.

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey