Will switching to a Cat 5e ethernet cable from a cat 5 speed my connection speed?

Question

I have verizon fios with a connection plan that runs at download speeds of 20mbps. Is my cat 5 ethernet cable efficient enough?

Answer 1

Well Cat5 is good up to 100mbs so 20 shouldn't bother it at all. In fact Cat 5 in short runs really is good to much more. The only difference in 5 and 5e is the number of twists per inch of run. 5e wont change your connection speed. So keep you cable and enjoy the 20mbps.

Answer 2

Cat5 cable is suitable for 100BaseT (100mbps) networking which is the more common communication speed between network interface card and your router or modem. This is far faster than your downlink speed with FIOS, so I'd doubt that you will even begin to see transmission rates reaching that maximum, and even if you did the cable would be fine.

Dont spend the money on a 5e cable.

Answer 3

The only reason to change it is if you have any distance that you are running. Otherwise, you NIC in the PC is either 10/100 or if you are lucky 1000 mbps. The same holds true for the router to LAN (physical) wireless a/g is 54 mbps, wireless b is 11.The interface to your provider is the final denominator. It could be somewhere in from 45 mbps and up or down depending. If you look at everything together and find your lowest common denominator then you can figure whether you have the infrastructure to carry a given rate. Getting it as throughput is another story :)

Answer 4

You do not need a new cable. Cat5 maxes at 100mbps cat5e maxes at 1000mpbs or 1gbps.

Answer 5

Well I think I need to retract since it is FiOS... nevermind...

Answer 6

You can't read data at 20Mbs. your computer won't notice the difference.

Answer 7

no - the "speed" is choked at your modem or router.

Answer 8

not sure