intelspeed Posted December 6, 2006 Share Posted December 6, 2006 Hi, is it possible to make a cat 5 network cable into a cat 6? Its prob a bit of a n00b question but any help would be appreciated. Thanks :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cooper Posted December 6, 2006 Share Posted December 6, 2006 The number indicates electrical qualities of the wire inside the cable. It's impossible to 'upgrade' a CAT5 to a CAT6. You can, however, in most places just use CAT5 (or the more common CAT5E) in place of CAT6 so long as the cable lengths aren't too excessive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparda Posted December 6, 2006 Share Posted December 6, 2006 I believe the only difference between cat5 (or cat5e) and cat6 is the gauge of the wire in side the cable. Cat6 is one gauge smaller then cat5. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Uncle Toxie Posted December 6, 2006 Share Posted December 6, 2006 I believe the only difference between cat5 (or cat5e) and cat6 is the gauge of the wire in side the cable. Cat6 is one gauge smaller then cat5. It is possible that things have changed over the years but back in 99 I took a "certification" class from Panduit. They were just starting to push Cat 6 to their customers so we got a little hands on with the new products and the wire. That being said, I'm not sure if the gauge of the wire was different but the distinct difference was the addition of a plastic core. I hope that I can describe this correctly. The core served as a separator for the four pairs, think of a + that extends through the entire cable. It also twisted as it went down the length of the cable. That way you had the twist of each pair plus the twist of the core itself. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparda Posted December 6, 2006 Share Posted December 6, 2006 Isn't that shielded Ca5(e)/6? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CompTech Posted December 6, 2006 Share Posted December 6, 2006 The RJ45 connectors on cat 6 are different, the wires are seperated slightly different. Depending on what type of Cat 6 you buy it could have a flat plastic piece seperating the two pairs or it might not. The exterior shielding is thicker too. You can't really "upgrade" a Cat 5 to Cat 6, however you could use a Cat 5e in place of a Cat 6 without too many problems. Since Cat 5e is generally able to support up to 250MHz without to much attenuation to cause problems. Why do you want to upgrade one anyway? The cost between 5e and 6 are not the big. Wow, three post in 5 minutes, lol. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
intelspeed Posted December 6, 2006 Author Share Posted December 6, 2006 i was looking at upgrading because the router i bought has the 1000Mbps Cat6 and for faster file sharing for music and videos etc.... Thanks for all the help everyone :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparda Posted December 6, 2006 Share Posted December 6, 2006 What's your internet connections speed? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stingwray Posted December 6, 2006 Share Posted December 6, 2006 Cat6 has to be wired in a more specific way to certify as Cat6, where as Cat5e if you make the wires go in the right place then its Cat5e. Theres really no point in Cat6 unless you have gigabit etc. and for home use Cat5e is fine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
intelspeed Posted December 6, 2006 Author Share Posted December 6, 2006 i have a 3mb download 354Kb upload....i keep alot of my music,videos and files on another pc and it would of been nice to had 1000Mbps speed :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VaKo Posted December 6, 2006 Share Posted December 6, 2006 If there not to far apart physically you could just use a firewire cable like me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cooper Posted December 6, 2006 Share Posted December 6, 2006 If there not to far apart physically you could just use a firewire cable like me. I was thinking about using that as a cluster interconnect. The thing is that I don't think it works well when you want to connect up multiple machines which is kinda the whole point of the cluster. Would be nice if it were possible though. FireWire offers some very decent speeds, and keeping the full network capability around for servicing the actual client has definite advantages. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loki Posted December 7, 2006 Share Posted December 7, 2006 I thought that the only difference between cat5e and cat 6 was the number of twists in the wires. At least thats what my IT teacher told the class. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
intelspeed Posted December 8, 2006 Author Share Posted December 8, 2006 yeah from a few sites ive been on i think it has something to do with the twists...weird how cable can transfer at different speeds because of a few twists Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VaKo Posted December 8, 2006 Share Posted December 8, 2006 If there not to far apart physically you could just use a firewire cable like me. I was thinking about using that as a cluster interconnect. The thing is that I don't think it works well when you want to connect up multiple machines which is kinda the whole point of the cluster. Would be nice if it were possible though. FireWire offers some very decent speeds, and keeping the full network capability around for servicing the actual client has definite advantages. I've only gotten firewire networking to work under XP, vista seems to lack that feature or maybe that was just the betas. And even then I only used it to copy large amounts of data across or output a video I was rendering to a mapped network drive. Also, it seems to kill your internet connection randomly when you use it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
intelspeed Posted December 8, 2006 Author Share Posted December 8, 2006 didnt know you could have an internet connection over a firewire, only disadvantage is when it comes to having 3 or more pcs networked lol.....apart from that 480Mbps transfer is nice :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparda Posted December 8, 2006 Share Posted December 8, 2006 It would be possible to make network connections over firewire. I think it would require a kernel module (one has probably been written) to map the firewire devices as Ethernet devices. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VaKo Posted December 8, 2006 Share Posted December 8, 2006 Yeah, its pretty cool, although you would have to do something funky with a old PC stuffed full of firewire cards for the full effect. In windows XP its just a case of using ICS on a machine with IEEE 1394 connections and a WAN connection. No idea about *nix but I know you can do similar with Mac hardware and a beret. Just need to tell the traffic where to go and it will work, eventually. In a fashion. (/me thinks back to the ad-hoc networks he's built in the past and shudders). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparda Posted December 8, 2006 Share Posted December 8, 2006 Look what I found ;): http://www.linuxtopia.org/online_books/sys....html#id2534697 Unfortunately not a kernel module... has to be a kernel include :( http://www.google.co.uk/linux?q=firewire+ethernet Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
metatron Posted December 18, 2006 Share Posted December 18, 2006 Hi, is it possible to make a cat 5 network cable into a cat 6?Its prob a bit of a n00b question but any help would be appreciated. Thanks :) No. The main difference is the amount of impurities in the copper, there are other differences but it's related to shielding and some other crap, that is not really that important. There is also CAT6a and CAT7 if you want something that can handle more data, but generally speaking if you need something that can handle more data then CAT5e you should be looking at fibre. If you need backwards compatibility and high speeds then CAT6a is not expensive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matir Posted December 18, 2006 Share Posted December 18, 2006 Do note that cat5e does support Gigabit ethernet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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