Cable - Cat 5e vs Cat 6

**greg-g** · 18th December 2011, 06:01 PM

Do you have any long runs?
There will be less attenuation on cat 6 compared to 5 but as others have said its probably irrelevant.
If everything is going out from a central point it probably doesn't matter, but just for the insurance I'd probably run Cat 6 between any hubs.
I've recently wired most of our house in cat 6 and found no difference with cat 5. Installers may charge more just because they can, but what's the true difference in costs when the major cost will be labour. A bit more for cable and fittings, say $1000 difference, but that's just a guess.

**Yorkshire_Jon** · 19th December 2011, 03:03 PM

The twists per inch in CAT6 is greater than in CAT5e. This translates into a couple of things. Firstly, less attenuation / noise, secondly a higher theoretical throuput of data for a given amount of noise.

What does that mean to Mr average? Not a lot!

Consider CAT6 if:
1. You have long (80m+ cable runs, noting that 100m is the maximum as per ratified standards) and you need to run Gb Ehternet over that cable.
2. You are running the cables in a particularly noisy environment, particularly radio and power cables.

Otherwise, for your house, your probably better saving the $$ and using CAT5e.

As a side note, the standards for CAT5e allow for 1000Mb/s transfer, CAT6 allows for 2000Mb/s.

HTH
Jon

**goingbush** · 19th December 2011, 03:38 PM

in my experience, 30 yrs in the industry, contractor installing networks do not test them, not hard to find something on any job that was not up to acma regs, when commissioning telco stuff I found at least 30 % of krone connectors not terminated propley, cat 6 is an overkill, unless you are selling data storage you dont need that sort of thruput, the system is only going to be as fast as the slowest part of the network, and that is not in the lan.

**Basil135** · 19th December 2011, 04:42 PM

Well, after speaking to the network guys today, as well as the Project Manager who is paying the bill, the total difference is $2700 between the 2 cables. This in a project that is around the $800k mark, so small change really.

The cable guy has given us a written assurance that all terminations will be certified to Cat 6, and are warrentied against faults for 8 years.

So, at the end of the day, the cost per meter was 17c different, and the rest is in the testing / certification.

Thanks for the range of responses. I certainly learnt a fair bit.

Cheers guys.

**DAMMAG** · 20th December 2011, 07:42 PM

What product are they using as a matter of interest?

We install cat6 these days as a matter of course only installing cat5e when the customer specifies it for "cost" reasons. It is standard in schools and most other government installations we do.

I like cat6 cable as it is generally more "solid". Once you get used to it, it doesn't take much longer to terminate.

It is probably overkill (you can successfully run an ethernet connection over a 50pair voice cable, I've done it when we couldn't pull another cable thru an underground conduit) but why wouldn't you when the cost hasn't been overinflated because it is no longer a "new" technology.

Thread: Cable - Cat 5e vs Cat 6

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