All in the title really. Ive been using a veritable pick and mix of ethernet cables up to now and for the sake of neetness want to standardise them. And in truth was only ever familiar with upto CAT6 and have never hears of CAT 7 and above.which are the best cables for a high use home network? And can anyone recommend where i can buy good quality shielded cable? been told that half the stuff out there is misslabled CAT5. Should also point out that these wires run through a very high interfearance area. Thanks in advance.
cat 5e, or cat6 be mindful of the gauge of the cable, and whether or not its pure copper or copper clad aluminium I mistakenly bought some cat6 cable that's 28awg, it should be 23 or 24awg. the problem with 28awg is trying to find connectors that work properly, its a lot thinner cpc.farnell are just about as good as any oh snd unless you are in an electrically noisy area, you wont need shielded cable, utp by design kind of self shields
- CAT5 only does 100Mbps. Avoid at all costs. - CAT5e does up to 1Gbps, but is essentially a hacked up CAT5. - Cat 6 the wire is more stiff than Cat 5e, cost more (hence not included in routers, modem, and so on, at the consumer level), but will give you a solid 1Gbps. Cat 6 uses a different frequency, and perform better at longer distances than 5e, and is less prone to interference, improving its performance (reduce error correction needed). This is why CAT6 is certified 1Gbps, and not Cat 5e. If you are wiring a house, pay extra, get Cat6, is what I recommend. Makes no sense to use Cat 5e. However, if you are connecting a computer or device a short distance, Cat 5e will do as the distance is too short to notice anything (and you'll most likely won't, even on benchmarks). Cat 6 can also do 10GBps but the distance is reduced considerably. (55m compared to 100m) - Cat3 is phone lines. Avoid for networking. - Cat6a is like Cat 6, but can do 10Gbps at longer distances. - Cat 7 is fairly new. It is CAT6a with stricter requirement to reduce crosstalk and noise. It is also shielded by default. It is designed to deliver 10 Gbps over longer distance than Cat6a. Note: Cat 6 and 6a the cable must not be bended completely, it will damage the cable, reducing the performance of the cable. Use shielded cable when wires will pass next to electric wires or is in a high interference area. If you are wiring a house, and you have the funds, it doesn't hurt using that. I don't know if you need a supported router to do ground for the shielding or not. Note: I am not networking expert. Please verify facts before doing important decisions.
We went cat6 (after advice from these very forums) non shielded when we had the house networked. Cable cost was a bit under double of 5e (but we'd planned 4 runs per double wall outlet and reduced that to 2 with cat6 so cost worked out the same) Research how much benefit you get from shielded cable in a high interference area - I was led to believe termination is important using shielded but didn't research as we didn't go down that route. Deff go cat6 though, just make sure (if you get someone in to do the work) they know how to run network cable (I.e away from electrical cables etc in separate runs) and they know how to treat cat6 (I.e due to bend radius)
its being used to plug in a ps4, ps3, media centre, TV, sound system, and virgin box. all located within a meter of each other and basically resting ontop of the power supplies and the cables for the surround sound so i think im going to go for the CAT7 just to absolutely sure everything is interference free and running like butter on a hot plate. really appreciate the help, thanks all.
