purchasing cat6 cables: huge price differentials, advise sought

tired_dad

So planning a gigabit ethernet at home to speed up a variety of things.

Was looking at a switch and cables.

I'm not networking the house, just purchasing patch cables of varying lengths.

The price differentials have got me all confused.

You can get good lengths of cat6 for £2-3 and spend almost 4-5 times as much on a similar length, and thats just looking at amazonian.

Is the cheap stuff just as good? If not, what are the features you get for more £££.

TIA

colin79666

I'd go with the cheap stuff to be honest, especially if your not rewiring the house and planning on having long cable runs behind walls.

You can run gigabit on Cat 5e, Cat 6 just gives you shielding which isn't really all that necessary unless you think you have electrical noise issues or are doing long runs.

joe134

tired_dad wrote: »

So planning a gigabit ethernet at home to speed up a variety of things.

Was looking at a switch and cables.

I'm not networking the house, just purchasing patch cables of varying lengths.

The price differentials have got me all confused.

You can get good lengths of cat6 for £2-3 and spend almost 4-5 times as much on a similar length, and thats just looking at amazonian.

Is the cheap stuff just as good? If not, what are the features you get for more £££.

TIA

I bought 2x 30 metres for£2.41 each, from amazon, delivered free, one travels outside, running through garden hose, into conservatory, and both are fine.bad; wifi house, wouldn,t buy expensive , 7 months since I put mine in.good speed.

securityguy

tired_dad wrote: »

So planning a gigabit ethernet at home to speed up a variety of things.

Was looking at a switch and cables.

I'm not networking the house, just purchasing patch cables of varying lengths.

The price differentials have got me all confused.

You can get good lengths of cat6 for £2-3 and spend almost 4-5 times as much on a similar length, and thats just looking at amazonian.

Is the cheap stuff just as good? If not, what are the features you get for more £££.

TIA

As others have said, you only need Cat5e unless you have very specific requirements.

More expensive cables might give you better strain relief and better quality latches on the connectors. Or they might not. I think if I were buying long cables I'd make sure they had decent connectors, because it's a shame to write them off if the connector fails, especially if they were difficult to run. It's unlikely that you can crimp your own connectors and have them work reliably for GigE, although you might be lucky. But for short cables I'd just buy cheap ones and chuck them away if they fail.

Enterprise_1701C

If you are not recabling the house then the majority of the data is just travelling along Cat 5 anyway, not much point in spending out on Cat 6 patch leads.

We have already decided that if we achieve our dream of buying an old house and gutting it we will run the new cable that is out (think it is Cat 9 but it is not on general sale yet) that combines twisted pairs with fibre, but that is a good few years down the road and everything will be that much faster and run better over faster connections.