If you've ever gone to buy an ethernet cable
for any reason, you may have noticed that there are several types to choose from. Some of them may say Cat5, Cat5e, Cat6, or
Cat6a. But what exactly do all these mean, and does
it really make a difference which one you get? Well that's what we're going over today, so
you can know what you're buying, and potentially save some money. And I'm also going to do a real world test
to see how much of a difference it makes. First of all, what the heck are these "Cat"
ratings anyway? Well for ethernet cables, that stands for
Catagory, and the different numbers represent different standards and specifications for
the cable, so you can think of them like different versions. Now the good news is that all of these cables
will typically "work", since the new versions are all backwards compatible. They all use the RJ45 connector, often just
called an "ethernet port", but the difference is in the rated performance of each. So let's go over all the different types of
ethernet cables you may come across, from Cat5 all the way through Cat7 and beyond. The first type is really common, which is
"Cat5". However, these days when someone says Cat5,
they usually are referring to Cat5e, but we're getting ahead of ourselves. Now a true Cat5 cable is actually obsolete,
and you probably can't even buy them any more. A cat5 cable is only rated for up to 100mbps
at 100 meters, with a 100 Mhz bandwidth. So obviously only being rated for 100mbps,
you almost never see these anymore, and if you're still using one, you should definitely
replace it. Which brings us to Cat5e, or Catagory 5 "enhanced". Cat5e is very common these days, and it is
rated for 1 gigabit speeds at 100 meters, again with a bandwidth of 100 MHz. This is due to improved specs regarding twisting
of the wire pairs inside, shielding, and other improvements which reduce "crosstalk" or interference,
which would reduce speed. Also, a regular Cat5 cable only required 2
twisted pairs of wires, while Cat5e uses four, so obviously it can transfer much more data. Though it is important to note that just rating
certifications are for bare minimum, so it's very possible that a cable will be capable
of much more than what it's rated for. So for example, a "Cat5" cable might actually
be capable of gigabit speeds if it is high quality. And the same will go for all of these types. After Cat5e came Catagory 6, which bumped
the spec from 1 gigabit to 10 Gigabit, at 55 meter length, with a bandwidth of 250 Mhz. And by the way, the bandwidth refers to the
range of frequencies the cable is able to reliably use, which explains how that would
improve the speed. It's got more "space" to fit the data in a
way. Cat6 further reduces crosstalk, using tighter
wound wire pairs, and may also use things like a plastic core to better separate the
internal wires. Cat6 I would say is a good choice if you're
not sure what type of cable to buy, since it probably won't be much more expensive,
depending on where you buy it, and will be future proof for a while. This is especially so if the wire can't easily
be replaced, like if you're wiring a house, where I would get at LEAST Cat6. But, if you're just buying a general purpose
cable for your laptop or something, Cat5e would definitely be fine, since I doubt any
of your devices are capable of 10 gig anyway. So by now you might be thinking, ok surely
Cat6 is the best, I mean why would you need anything more than that? Well, you may be right, but we're not stopping
there! Because there's also Cat6a! This one is also capable of 10 gigabit, but
at a longer maximum distance of 100 meters instead of 55, and it has a larger 500MHz
bandwidth. So if you are actually running a 10 gig network,
Cat6a will be more reliable at getting your full speed, since again it has further improved
specs for reducing crosstalk. And now finally, the big daddy of ethernet
cables, is Catagory 7. As far as I could tell, this is the fastest
type you can buy at the moment. Cat7 is also rated for 10 gigabit speeds,
but with an even larger bandwidth of 600MHz, and the strictest specifications for reducing
crosstalk, such as requiring shielding between individual wire pairs, as well as the whole
cable as itself. This seems to be all about improving reliability,
since it doesn't actually improve the speed requirement, even though it probably is capable
of higher speeds if you had a switch that was capable of faster than 10 gig. So I think Cat7 would be best suited for extreme
future proofing permanent wire installations, for people who are not just satisfied with
the "best", but rather want the "completely unecessary". Ok, so we've learned that there are tons of
different ethernet cables you can use, but does it really matter? Well I wanted to find out, so I decided to
do a quick test! I've got three different cables, a Cat5e,
a Cat6, and a Cat7, all the same 5 ft length. And I wanted to find out if they would make
a difference when used with a gigabit internet connection, since that's really the fastest
internet you're gonna get right now. And yea I know I could do a local gigabit
test, but I want to do it this way. For this I'm simply going to connect my laptop
directly to the router using each cable. And to make sure there are no limiting factors,
I have the router to fiber optic intake with a cat7 cable. So what was the difference? Well, none at all. As I pretty much expected, with such a short
distance, all cables were more than capable of handling the full gigabit connection. I had also tested upload speed but it was
very inconsistent between tests so I didn't consider that. Then out of curiosity, I did a speed test
on my desktop, which is is plugged into a port in the wall, using my apartment's Cat6
wiring. And with what I would guess is an extra 50
feet of cat6 cable, the speed only dropped less than 10 megabits, so a loss of less than
1% of speed. So the takeaway here is that unless you need
to worry about future proofing your connection, it really doesn't matter what type of cable
you buy. Perhaps if you have tons and tons of cables
packed right next to each other, the improved shielding on the better catagories will help
you, but in almost all other cases, it shouldn't matter. But you may all be wondering, what's the point
of all these other cables if most people can't use them! Well, part of it's marketing, since it's easy
to say you need the "better" cable with the higher number, which of course costs more. But of course there is networking hardware
out there capable of 10 gig ethernet, usually commercial equipment. However, we are starting to see some 10 gigabit
consumer grade switches coming out. For example, there's the Asus XG-U2008 switch,
which has two 10 gigabit ports, along with 8 regular gigabit ports. So you could hook up your computer, and maybe
a network storage device to the 10 gig port, then everything else to the gigabit ones. That way, even if none of the other device
on the network are capable of 10 gigabit, it would allow multiple gigabit data transfers
to multiple devices simultaneously, or a 10 gigabit transfer
to whatever is on the other fast port. In that sort of situation, where you do have
10 gigabit capabilites, at least Cat6 would be required, at least for the 10 gig ports. And if it's over any kind of distance, Cat6a
would be ideal, for the better reliability. But something tells me not too many people
are going to be using 10 gigabit for a while. So I guess my takeaway from all this is that
even old ethernet standards have held up surprisingly well. Believe it or not, the same RJ45 connector
used in these ethernet cables was first standardized in 1987! At that time, the initial spec was only 3KHz
bandwidth, and now it's getting into the GigaHertz. So I think it's safe to say that that connector
probably won't be going anywhere any time soon, since it seems like there's still a
lot of room for expansion. So I think that's it, hopefully you guys thought
this video was pretty cool and interesting, I'd love to hear what you think down in the
comments section. Are you still using old Cat5 cables, or do
you need that 10 gig speed? I myself kinda went crazy recently and bought
a bunch of Cat 6 and 7 cables, since I could never find any when I needed them. And I used the Cat7 cables to connect all
the most important stuff like the router and switches hooked up to it for maximum performance,
even if it doesn't make much of a difference. I wanted to remove all doubt. But anyway, if you guys did like this video,
be sure to give it a thumbs up, I'd appreciate it, and if you want to keep watching I'll
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forward to hearing from you, and as usual I'll see you next time, have a good one.
