[G5] Cables and Speed

[Steve Adams]

Cat5 cables are designed for 100 Megbits/sec. If someone took the time  
to put the connectors on correctly and used a high quality cat5 cable,  
it could do 1000 Megbits/sec but no guarantee.

If you have some Cat5 cables lying around, you could try them and see  
what happens. It won't blow anything up. Worse case, the computers  
just won't communicate.

A cat6 cable is designed to do 1000 Megbits/sec or Gigabit. With a  
cat6 cable, you will have no problems.

It's your choice if you want to spend money on a high quality Cat6  
cable, or try cables sitting around for nothing.

You can use Activity Monitor (in the utilities folder) to check your  
network transfer rates.


Steve Adams



On Apr 5, 2008, at 4:27 PM, Ken Schneider wrote:

> There is so much different advice about ethernet cables that I am  
> confused. Some people say that to get gigabit speeds you need to use  
> Cat6 cables. Some say Cat5e is OK and some say Cat5 is OK for short  
> runs. I want to get the fastest speeds possible. My longest cable  
> run is 25 feet. Do I need Cat6? If I need to get Cat6 cables I will  
> since they will be fairly short.
>
> Also, how can I tell how fast my network is running? I've looked for  
> applications that measure this but haven't found any. Is there any  
> software that will tell me the speed of my data transfers?
>
> Thanks,
>
> -= Ken =-
>
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