Topic: Cat5e versus Cat6 (Read 2164 times)

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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")

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

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

Even 5e is overkill for miners, unless you have LONG runs for some reason.
Standard Cat5 is plenty.

 Only reason to run "better" is to have the infrastructure in place for later faster connections - would make sense to run Cat6 from the rest of your network to the switch(s) your miners are connected to, but the run FROM that/those switches should be a short one and cat5 patch cables should be plenty.


 1000 GB from an ISP is a bloody rare thing, unless you have a LARGE business - and even then it's not widespread or common unless that large business is running a HUGE data center for web access out of that location, like Amazon or GoDaddy or Mickey$loth or the like.

one of my exact reason  i got Cat 6  all my switches are 10/100/1000 including the fios router my ISP speed is 150/150 sense there is no 1000 gib speed were i live yet  and only one or two things on my home network are below 1000 and those one or two things don't matter like the print server and vonage phone jack or vonage router.


 oyea my miners .

Ethernet cables are rated to 330 feet without issue before needing a repeater. My longest run is about 80 feet of Cat 6 direct burial to link my garage. Never had any issues, but only hit ~700 Mbps over the cable for some reason, not that it matters. I've been fishing Cat 6 these days to take advantage of my new gigabit fiber optic connection. Wireless AC wasn't cutting it!

For mining cat5 or cat5e, your not sending/receiving that much data mining.  Cat5e can carry gigabit speeds on your network like cat6 can but all devices i.e. modem, routers/switches and computers need gigabit ports to complete the gigabit network speed.  If you have a non-gigabit switch in front of the other devices regardless of the cabling type or use cat5 you won't reach gigabit speeds.  Gigabit speeds are mainly for large downloads but we are now seeing upload speeds reaching a level that gigabit will help.  
Since they're cheap now always buy cat6 cables they're backward compatible, it will save you in the future from upgrading later.

Longest I have in my current is 50 foot.  I can say that it works fine for me.  No issues with mining over it.

I have not tried near the 100 mark though.  That is quite a ways but might be doable.

25 foot should be fine i think but not sure beyond a 100 feet or so it starts to break down some .

Thanks everyone.  Do you think even if it is a 25 foot cable it doesn't make a difference? 

With my fios router they told me i can use C6 if i want to it will help but not needed  but C5 is fine and sense C6 is as cheap as c5 if not cheaper why not ?.




I think  100 is the norm now for most sites on the wed and backbone is at 1000, i wish it was like that every were with IP6 .

cat5/5e is fine for mining, i have 6 for my home network but for mining cat 5 is all you need . ,my home network is all  @1000 gib till it hits the net on fios but i have 6 just for my home use, it was cheap so i replaced my c5 to C6 .

I don't know if 10M is the normal  now.  I live in the middle of nowhere and have gigabit internet.

But as far as mining does not take anything special on bandwidth.  The shielding aspect was interesting someone put.  But really I don't think you will have a problem with either one your thinking about.

The only time I had a problem with Cat5 when I run the cable besides electrical wires, devices would not to connect. Cat5e with better shield solved the problem, so look for cables with improved shielding.

Cat5e is sufficient to run a gigabit network, you don't need Cat6. Besides, your internet connection is likely only 10M or so. Your speedy local network's bottleneck is still the internet connection.

That depends a lot on your setup, both local and poolside. If it's one machine or one worker - in any case, one vardiff from the pool - you probably would see under fifty packets per minute. I'm not up on stratum protocol and vardiff optimization enough to give a thorough answer but if you don't have a lot of gear on separate pools or workers, a decent dial-up connection should have enough bandwidth required.

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

Bandwidth requirement on miners doesn't exceed what 10base could handle. A lot of the controllers probably have 100mbit ethernet but you'll never come close to needing it.

thats the other point, you can also take 1gbit per sec with cat5 cable type in short distance. it depends what switch you are using. btw miners not needed much bandwith

No difference for mining. Get Cat 5 or 5e.

you only need 5e for mining.. since it doesn't take up much bandwidth at all getting cat6 would be pointless

What do I need to buy for my miners?  Cat5e or Cat6?  Thanks!