nakulak said:
cat6 is cat6 there's no mistaking it
it takes a beating its not for pansies it has intrinsically 2x the bandwith of cat 5e, right ?
Twice the bandwidth does the user no good. Physical
layers (e.g. Gigabit Ethernet) either work or they don't,
and data networking and other applications work just
fine on Cat5e.
As Rampage_Rick pointed out, one physical layer
(1000BASE-TX) which used Cat 6 was dead on
arrival, because there was the same speed available
that ran on Cat-5 or better (1000BASE-T).
I worked for a major manufacturer of computer network
equipment for 10 years, and when you look at what the
installed base is for Cat-5(e) vs Cat 6 or higher, and
what the trends are, it is completely obvious that if
you want to sell equipment, you are not going to orient
it to Cat 6 or higher. Simply put, the world has been
populated by Cat-5, and the next major upgrade is
not going to be a Cat-#. IMO, the likelihood of there ever
being a useful mainstream application for Cat-6 or Cat-7
is approaching zero. There are things like datacenter
10-Gigabit Ethernet, but at that point, the large majority
of end-users want to go fiber anyway.
If someone really wants to future-proof an installation
that doesn't have raised ceilings/floors/cabletrays,
e.g. in a residence, some form of raceway and junction
boxes is the way to go. It is a lot of labor to provide the
requisite support etc, but I've put ENT-type raceways
(e.g. Carlon Resi-gard) in a number of homes here in
Silicon Valley where the owners wanted to have whatever
is called for in the future. It is not for everyone, but
it certainly provides a useful upgrade path, albeit
at a pretty high cost to install.
As far as the beating issue, I try to be careful, but at
some point it's not uncommon for my CAt5e to get
stepped on etc, and I've never had a problem. Quality
definitely varies by brand though, and what I get from
my regular distributor is much better quality and easier
to work with than what the orange or blue stores sell.
