Cat5 cabling is the global standard used for connecting Ethernet devices together. It is cheap and effective and widely available and so has been used frequently for all kinds of cable run for just about any Ethernet capable device. In the past few years there has been a big movement from standard 10/100 networks to gigabit networks. Sadly standard cat5 cable cannot support these kinds of speeds and so is useless for gigabit networks. That is where cat5e cable comes into play.

Cat5e – Category 5e cabling is an advancement on the original cat5 spec and its main purpose is to support gigabit speeds. Not only that but cat5e also offers less ‘crosstalk’ which is the term used for interference from other wires in the cable. This kind of interference can cause poor performance and slower speeds. Cat5e cable addresses this issue but does not remove it completely; however it will make your network more reliable and quicker over normal cat5 cabling.

Cat6 – Category 6 on the other hand is a complete overhaul of the cabling itself. It is thicker than cat5e and can theoretically support speeds of up to 10 gigabits if implemented correctly, of course these theoretical speeds are unlikely to be seen in most production networks. Not only that Cat6 allow much faster speeds but it also uses longitudinal separators which are used to separate the cable strands from each other. By doing this it can reduce crosstalk massively and make for a more reliable and error-free network. One thing to note is that due to the thicker cable size you will struggle to use regular RJ45 connectors and will probably need to use specially designed Cat6 connectors.

The differences between cat5 / cat5e and cat6 cable – In summary, the main differences are:

• Cat6 is thicker than cat5 and cat5e.
• Cat6 is capable of speeds up to 10 times faster than cat5e and 100 times faster than regular cat5.
• Cat6 has a lot less crosstalk on the cable as opposed to cat5 and cat5e.
• Cat6 if implemented properly will make a network more reliable, quicker and less error-prone.
• Cat6 is more expensive than cat5 and cat5e.