cat5 vs cat6 network cables

Hi all

I heard from a friend of mine not too long ago, that he noticed an increase in his browsing and upload/download speeds when he went from the standard cat5 rj45 cable, to the cat6 which I hear supports more bandwith....Ive been holding back a bit cuz their like 20 bucks for 6 feet I think, and I would need two of them...modem to router then router to pc..

just wanted to try to get a few opinions before I decide if its worth it or not...

Thnx

 

Not.

If you were doing Gbps (gigabit per second) on copper you'd see (probably) some improvement with cat6. The only difference in the two is the number of twists per inch of the cable pairs which serves to cut down on "static" and allows the use of unshielded cable.

With a 100Mbps LAN (the max potential speed of newer - but non-Gbps - network cards and routers) you might see a slight improvement but I've never read a good study showing that.

With a 10Mbps LAN (last generation network) you don't even see a large improvement going from cat3 to cat5.

Since the fastest broadband connection a normal person can afford will run well under 1Mbps, there simply can't be a speed improvement from cat6. Even T3 lines which rent for around $25K per month operate at less than 100Mbps.

The one possiblilty would be if your friend makes up his own cables by putting the ends on himself. If you are sloppy and untwist too much cable at the ends to make installing the connectors easier, you can effectively move cable from cat5 to cat-trash. So much static that you will be plagued with lot and lots of dropped packets, retrys, and other speed killers.