Cat5e versus Cat6

[TTravis]

interesting topic...can someone tell us aproximatly how much 1th of upload is in terms of bandwidth?

I have a mine operation of s5's that total around 1th.  Until recently, I've been using Verizon 4G le network access unit for my Internet because I live way out in country.  I was burning up close to 15 GB/month.  I would not recommend 4G wireless at all.  I finally got a T1 line, which does not sound like much at 1.5Mb up and down rate, but I can mine and watch Netflix all at the same time.  T1 costs me $200/month which is just part of my doing business.

My miners pull somewhere around 128k bandwith constant, both up and down.  That adds up over time.

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[Meech]

Living in the country can suck at times but the benefits usually out-way the city life.  Me, in the future hope to have both amenities.  Nowadays you almost have to be where there is good internet service.

[BLOCK_C]

Cat 6 has a divider in the middle of the cable to make it easier to splice.  There is zero difference for your mining system whether you use 5e or 6.

[notlist3d]

Also i should have mentioned this earlier.  If you need it like tomorrow go with amazon or someone.

If able to wait a few days look at monoprice - http://www.monoprice.com/category/computers-and-networking/networking .  It is hard to beat their pricing, and also lots of color's so easy to manage.   Highly recommend checking it out. 

[edric]

You can generally think of it this way:

Cat5: Old standard, made for 10/100 mbit transfer rates
Cat5e: Improved version of Cat5, made for 1Gbit transfer rates, improved shielding/cable gives better protection against so called "crosstalk" interference.
Cat6: New standard, way better shielding against crosstalk. Also made for gigabit transfer rates, but can handle 10Gbit over shorter distances (50 meters).

CAT6 are generally used in datacenters and hopefully as infrastructure wiring in new buildings. CAT6 between switches, Cat5e to the clients.
All the above CAT's can perform their stated transfer rates over max 100 meters. Cat5 = 100mbit@100 meters, Cat5e = 1Gbit@100 meters, Cat6 = 1Gbit@100 meters.

What is crosstalk interference?
It's basically the interference on the signal traveling through the cable, from external sources.
Like if you install a TP-cable parallel (or if you cross it) with your electric cables, the electromagnetic interference created by the power cable, will affect your TP signal.

The reason these cables are twisted in pairs (TP/Twisted Pair), is to evenly spread the interference on all the cable pairs inside a CatX cable.

On this pic you can see 4 pairs of 2. A regular patch-cable only uses 2 of these pairs.

This means you can actually run "2 cables in 1", just add another RJ-45 plug on the unused pairs.


To answer your question:
Buy whatever is cheapest. If its a permanent cable installation (in the walls or something), go with Cat6 for future proofing.

Awesome, thank you.  I will get the Cat6.  Why not?  Faster is better.

[torepia]

You won't get 10gbit unless you have switches and devices with 10gbit interfaces, which you don't. And probably never will! ^^
Cat6 cables are generally stiffer as well. ("Harder to work with")

[LoneRangir]

One benefit of going 10/100 instead of gigabit is that you can use splitters and put twice as many miners on the same network cable.  10/100 uses 4 conductors and gigabit uses all 8.  These splitters allow you to use all 8 conductiors and save on cabling, or in my case, put two miners on the same port in my room.  This will NOT save you ports on your router, but it will allow you to use less cables only.

[edric]

One benefit of going 10/100 instead of gigabit is that you can use splitters and put twice as many miners on the same network cable.  10/100 uses 4 conductors and gigabit uses all 8.  These splitters allow you to use all 8 conductiors and save on cabling, or in my case, put two miners on the same port in my room.  This will NOT save you ports on your router, but it will allow you to use less cables only.

Interesting point.  So if I ran a really long Cat6 cable from my router to another room I couldn't use a splitter to break it off into two miners, you are saying?  I would need to use Cat5e?

[VirosaGITS]

Just use whatever's cheapest. I just use a hub and plug the cheapest cable everywhere. 1mbit, 10mbit, 100mbit, 1000mbit, it doesn't matter. My 20 miners + personal PC, chat and everything is ~ 30kB/s total.

For something a bit more explicit. I have 7 Antminer S1 on wlan, and my wlan usage at the moment is average 800bytes per second. The windows GPU rig that also run USB stick seem to take more, 3kB/s. Bloaty windows 8 Services.

[LoneRangir]

One benefit of going 10/100 instead of gigabit is that you can use splitters and put twice as many miners on the same network cable.  10/100 uses 4 conductors and gigabit uses all 8.  These splitters allow you to use all 8 conductiors and save on cabling, or in my case, put two miners on the same port in my room.  This will NOT save you ports on your router, but it will allow you to use less cables only.

Interesting point.  So if I ran a really long Cat6 cable from my router to another room I couldn't use a splitter to break it off into two miners, you are saying?  I would need to use Cat5e?

No, both cat5 and cat6 cables have 8 conductors.  I'm saying you can operate the cat6 cable at 10/100 speeds using these splitters, you can't operate it at gigabit speeds.  Gigabit uses all 8 conductors, 10/100 uses only 4.

[GigaBit]

I use CAT5e (550mhz) for mining.
I use CAT6 (600mhz) for the main internet connection.

The only notable differences are the speed, wire size and the connector... on the CAT6, it the connector is metallic... oh and the price of course.

On the switch aspect, I got bottlenecked with a Cisco 10/100 UM switch and went to a RoseWell GigaBit UM switch.
If you do any type of serious mining, you should gigabit anything internet touches where possible since you will need it eventually.
I used to say... I'm just getting one miner... 3 years later I got a room full of them shits.