After seeing that my wireless speeds were much faster than the speeds I was getting over Ethernet, I decided to invest in some new cables. I didn’t know it before, but I saw while I was changing them out that my current cables were Cat 5e. While putting my network together, I had just been grabbing whatever cables I could find in my scrap drawers. Now I have Cat 8 cables and my speeds jumped from 7MB/s to an average of over 40MB/s. It’s a much bigger improvement than I expected, especially for such a small investment.
Not all cat 5e is created equal…you can buy a good cat5e from a reputable supplier or a super shit one at the dollar store…they just stamp 5e on it even if it is under sized wire and not actually been tested to work
My favorite failure was when someone used solid-core cabling for all their patch cables instead of stranded and kept bitching about how unreliable everything was.
Which, of course, it is when you use the wrong cable and it keeps breaking as you move it around.
Cat 5e cables are tested to meet the cat 5e standard. Anything outside of that is false advertising and you should return it for a full refund
Dollar store and Aliexpress make it a bit difficult to return LOL.
In the US you are legally allowed to return something that is defective.
Yeah here dollar store purchases are final sale, no returns, and aliexpress really depends on the seller. Some good stuff there, some just scammy junk. And many manufacturers will skimp on purpose, and say they are certified without actually getting a certification or testing.
Yes but… tests are done in controlled environments and ideal conditions, there are big real world differences with CCA vs fully copper or those solid core options vs stranded ones. They’ll all perform differently depending on distances, noise immunity will vary and will break differently in different ways when tension is applied. You can also get Cat5e on different AWG sizes, all spec compliant but all very different from each other.
The bottom line is: it all comes down to how much you’re willing to spend.
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