When do patch cable categories start to matter? Cat5 vs Cat5e vs Cat6

[Gaboris]

Hello LTT forums!

 

Sorry if I got the wrong idea for my title and tags so if you have a better idea for them then just tell me.

 

I'm trying to make this thread since I couldn't find any on the subject when I originally looked for it earlier.

I've been trying to optimize the cabling of my network for a while now and I've found some good 2m(6feet?) long patch cables at a store and just bought a pair of Cat6 ones "for science". As a bonus one was a normal cable and the other was was the flat design that doesn't even seem to be able to fit any proper shielding.

 

I live in Hungary and have a Gigabit connection but even with everything else that net related is disabled I can "only" get the 55-65% of the bandwidth and even thought I KNOW I wouldn't notice it if it was at full speed the tech guy in me just wishes to see what could be the bottleneck.

My router and modem both rest in a hellscape of power/data cables and other clutter behind my monitor with WiFi running all the time. It also just turned out that my router was connected to our modem with a simple Cat5 cable so I was actually excited to see what can an upgrade do.

 

I ran almost 2 dozen test by pairing different categories with each other and after I went from Cat5+Cat5e all the was to Cat6+Cat6 it turned out that it all meant NOTHING. My speeds didn't change at all, not with the basic Cat5 nor with the flat(I can't believe these are shielded) Cat6 cable.

They stuck around 60% and the only time it shot up to 70% was when I did a last test late at night which probably just means that other people have went to sleep.

 

So I know that these categories are meant for REAL distances that span whole rooms or buildings and my 2m long cables might as well just be PCB level connections, but still I feel like a place to collect such experiences could be useful for those who are lost in the sea of definitions and marketing. So if you had any positive or negative experiences with different distances or were able to pull off an upgrade that wouldn't have made sense then please leave a story here for people to find.

[Gaboris]

DANG IT!

I just noticed that there's a Networking category over here. I swear those did not load for me when I made this thread so could I request an admin to move this over there somehow or should I repost it and delete this one?

[Lurick]

2 minutes ago, Gaboris said:

DANG IT!

I just noticed that there's a Networking category over here. I swear those did not load for me when I made this thread so could I request an admin to move this over there somehow or should I repost it and delete this one?

Yah, just report the post and select "Posted in Wrong Subforum" and it will get moved

 

Still reading your original post but I'll edit this one when I'm done.

[Morgan MLGman]

Thread moved to Networking as requested

[Spotty]

7 minutes ago, Gaboris said:

I live in Hungary and have a Gigabit connection but even with everything else that net related is disabled I can "only" get the 55-65% of the bandwidth
... with WiFi running all the time

You're using wifi to your PC? That could possibly explain your speed loss. Try using a cabled connection to your PC (unless I misunderstanding what you're saying).
 

4 minutes ago, Gaboris said:

DANG IT!

I just noticed that there's a Networking category over here. I swear those did not load for me when I made this thread so could I request an admin to move this over there somehow or should I repost it and delete this one?

You can report your post with the triangle ! symbol at the bottom and select the "Wrong Category" option and a mod will move it. No need to delete or make a new post. Lots of threads get dumped in the General section anyway so mods are pretty vigilant in moving them to their correct category.

[Lurick]

Just now, Spotty said:

You're using wifi to your PC? That could possibly explain your speed loss. Try using a cabled connection to your PC (unless I misunderstanding what you're saying).

Agreed. I just made up a saying "When WiFi is in the mix, your speeds they cannot be fixed"

 

OP, what modem and router do you have? How many devices connected to WiFi?

It's possible the router just can't keep up with the connections and all the devices at once or isn't strong enough to actually push gigabit throughput. There are alot of "gigabit" routers that struggle to do over 600Mbps or so.

[Morgan MLGman]

Also, check if the router is hot. Many cheap-ish routers get too hot and throttle speeds, especially when people use Wi-Fi a lot and many devices are connected to the router.

Solution? I wouldn't cheap out on routers unless you just want to have issues. If not now, it will be in a year or so but it will most likely happen with those cheaper models

[Gaboris]

1 minute ago, Morgan MLGman said:

Thread moved to Networking as requested

DARN! I just sent the report in. Sorry.

 

1 minute ago, Spotty said:

You're using wifi to your PC? That could possibly explain your speed loss. Try using a cabled connection to your PC (unless I misunderstanding what you're saying).

HECK NO! I couldn't call myself a tech guy if I did, but we have several smartphones and laptops in our household so we need it running non stop.

Just upgraded a Cat5e to a Cat6 cable just for pointless science.

 

2 minutes ago, Spotty said:

You can report your post with the triangle ! symbol at the bottom and select the "Wrong Category" option and a mod will move it. No need to delete or make a new post. Lots of threads get dumped in the General section anyway so mods are pretty vigilant in moving them to their correct category.

Just did, thanks. Problem is that a mod moved it just as I made my report so I hope that won't be a problem.

 

2 minutes ago, Lurick said:

Agreed. I just made up a saying "When WiFi is in the mix, your speeds they cannot be fixed"

Good saying and I keep saying something similar to my brother who keeps complaining about his PS4, PC AND TV having poor speeds with his router being a whole room apart from them...

 

2 minutes ago, Lurick said:

OP, what modem and router do you have? How many devices connected to WiFi?

It's possible the router just can't keep up with the connections and all the devices at once or isn't strong enough to actually push gigabit throughput. There are alot of "gigabit" routers that struggle to do over 600Mbps or so.

My modem is some Huawei model that my ISP provided and REALLY hope it actually has the proper throughput and my router is an Asus RT-AC58U which is my most expensive router yet so it's still a big upgrade.

 

I deliberately did the test at night when only my PC, my laptop a "sleeping" 2 in 1 and my brand new NAS were on it cuz this was just about checking "tech stuff".

In the day my speeds fall right down to 30% probably due to "local traffic".

[Gaboris]

7 minutes ago, Morgan MLGman said:

Also, check if the router is hot. Many cheap-ish routers get too hot and throttle speeds, especially when people use Wi-Fi a lot and many devices are connected to the router.

Solution? I wouldn't cheap out on routers unless you just want to have issues. If not now, it will be in a year or so but it will most likely happen with those cheaper models

Well its warm, but I wouldn't say hot. I actually upgraded to an Asus RT-AC58U just a year ago and didn't have any real problems since I got this baby.

 

Luckily I already stopped cheaping out on my stuff, but still that's a good point.

 

P.S.: Hope it's okay, but I'm stealing your signature's setup. I always end up needing to look up my HW names whenever someone asks for them so this might help in the future.

[Lurick]

8 minutes ago, Gaboris said:

-snip-

Hmmm, the router seems to be good from what I can see. Most people seem to get between 800Mbps and 900Mbps download on that router.

https://www.digitalcitizen.life/reviewing-asus-rt-ac58u-ac1300-router?page=1

 

Is perhaps QoS turned on in the router under the Traffic Monitor page? Is there anything similar to a performance monitor that you can turn on/off? And if it's on can you try turning it off and retesting?

[Gaboris]

6 minutes ago, Lurick said:

Hmmm, the router seems to be good from what I can see. Most people seem to get between 800Mbps and 900Mbps download on that router.

https://www.digitalcitizen.life/reviewing-asus-rt-ac58u-ac1300-router?page=1

Yeah took me a good while to find this baby. Been browsing reviews and tests all across the net for it.

 

6 minutes ago, Lurick said:

Is perhaps QoS turned on in the router under the Traffic Monitor page? Is there anything similar to a performance monitor that you can turn on/off? And if it's on can you try turning it off and retesting?

No I deliberately kept all extra functions off to not stress the router any more than needed. Also QoS is still a mystery for me and I'm not even sure if it would be useful for me in the long run to set it up.

[mariushm]

To answer the question at the start of the thread

 

The cat ratings of cables tell you the quality of cable (thickness, quality of copper, the way pairs of wires are twisted inside , the insulation between pairs inside) is good enough to carry the signals properly up to a certain distance, usually 100 meters.

 

ca5 is designed for maximum 100 mbps  up to 100 meters

cat5e was designed for maximum 1 gbps at up to 100 meters

cat6 can do 1gbps up to 100 meters , and 10 gbps over a smaller distance of - I think - 45 or 55 meters maximum AND under some conditions (like not having more than a few cables bundled together)

cat6a is rated for 10 gbps up to 100 meters.

 

One of the latest ethernet standards , 802.3bz makes it possible to use cat5e for up to 2.5 gbps and cat6 for up to 5 gbps on 100 meters and 10 gbps for that smaller distance.

It does this by basically making processors on network cards use more processing power and stronger transmitters to push the data on the wires, so the cables don't have to change to get the higher speeds.

So if both ethernet cards - at each end of the cable - support 802.3bz standard, then they can send and receive signals between them at 2.5gbps or 5 gbps on cat5e or cat6 cable. If one ethernet card doesn't know this standard, they'll connect at only 1 gbps.

 

At small distances, like 1-3 meters, even cat5e cables these days are constructed so well that they'd handle 10gbps over that short distance, without transmission errors.

So if you have a decently built cat5e or a cat6 cable, the cards will connect at 1 gbps and have the opportunity to transfer at up to 1 gbps

 

So your problem is not the cables.

 

Now for actual throughput, first you should look into your hardware... are you trying to save to disk what you download? If so maybe the hdd slows down the maximum transfer. Use ImDisk Ram Disk - https://sourceforge.net/projects/imdisk-toolkit/  - or any ram drive software to create a ram drive, then download a file on the RAM drive... this way your SSD or hdd doesn't come into play.

If you have two computers and your modem/router has two ethernet ports , connect both computers to the modem and transfer a file between the computer ... use RAM drive on a computer or both computers to test actual network not how fast your hard drives read data... if you get 110 MB/s or higher, the connection between your pc and the modem is good.

Network card drivers can affect maximum speeds sometimes ... go in device manager at the network card driver, look in advanced properties. Maybe increase read and write buffers, maybe disable "Green" modes or power saving modes (you'll make your ethernet card consume a bit more power, basically something like 0.5w vs 1w, practically nothing) ... you can also play with the Jumbo frames settings which can affect speeds if they're not matched on both ends...