Should i get cat 6 cable

[gow75]

I live in a older apartment, i pretty sure that the wiring is old as well. I have currently ATT uverse package with 24mbit dsl interent which is the highest ATT offers. what i am trying to do or if i can do is upgrade to cat6 instead of using cat5. the devices i have are the following.

I have xbox 360, nintendo wii. i have a server, 3 desktop pc,s and 2 laptops. the laptops conenct via wireless N AP so that doesnt matter. what i want to do is run cat6 between my gateway router and a couple of switches. since i have hubs which are 10/100mbs they will not work with CAT6 correct? is this even worth doing. also i dont think the xbox 360 will work with cat6 either? any advice on this would be helpful. thanks

 

[Emerald]

CAT5 cables are able to run 1GigaBit networks; therefore, it would be a waste of money to change to CAT6a.

CAT6a will work with all your devices you listed.
The difference is that a CAT6a cable has more twists over 5 centimeters than a CAT5 and therefore can be used for upto 500MHz Frequency Bandwidth and 10GigaBit networks

spend the money on network switches and change out those Hubs if they really are Hubs

 

[icode3]

CAT5 supports up to 100baseT (100mbps) and uses 2 wire pairs while CAT5e supports up to 1000baseT (1gbps) and uses all 4 wire pairs found in an ethernet cable. A CAT5 cable, when spliced, can support multiple ethernet connections or phones. A CAT5e which utilizes all 4 pairs (8 wires) to achieve gigabit speed can be "downgraded" to a CAT5 (100mb speed) depending upon how the wires are utilized.

Likewise, CAT6 is basically CAT5e with better insulation/shielding allowing for both gigabit speed and reduced signal loss especially over a run distance of over 100meters, and CAT6 is backwards compatible with CAT5e or CAT5 specs/hardware.

But since you have a switch that only supports up to 100mbps speed, the CAT5 cables that you have should work fine. If you want to invest in future-proofing your wired networking go with CAT5e since it supports higher bandwidth if you plan to get a gigabit switch in the future.

Good luck!

 

[clverner]

Get Cat6 its gotten so cheap that you might as well. For example http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=220994234768 - 62.50$ for 1000ft cat6.