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Will Cat 6 cable work with a Cat 5e coupler?

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Will Cat 6 cable work with a Cat 5e coupler?

Postby Morpheus on Thu May 26, 2005 12:31 am

I'm finishing off my bedroom / computer room / home theater room. I have 5 wall outlets which have Cat 6 networking cables running inside the walls (to use with the new pc I'm going to build soon and my current pc). I went to install the wall plates and I looked at the snap-in connectors, and found that they are Cat 5e bulkhead inserts. I went to the company's website and they don't have any Cat 6 bulkhead inserts. I the phoned the company and talked to a sales rep and asked if the Cat 6 cable will work with a Cat 5e coupler - he told me that it should work but the speed would be downgraded to Cat 5e speed. I then asked if they are planning on making Cat 6 bulkhead inserts and he said when they (Cat 6 couplers) become available (since they are fairly new). He also suggested I try online searching to see if I can find any Cat 6 bulkhead inserts - I spent 1-2 hours and found only one website selling Cat 6 couplers (regular and shielded).

So, looks like I have to use the Cat 5e bulkhead inserts for now and upgrade later when the Cat 6 bulkhead inserts become available. I just want to know will this work (using a Cat 6 cable with Cat 5e couplers?)
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Postby Boba_Fett on Thu May 26, 2005 11:51 am

It more than likely will. I must ask why you wired your house with Cat-6 when Cat-5e is virtually the same thing but also backwards compatable with everything below it? I think Gigabit ethernet will be with us for quite some time...
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Postby Ian on Thu May 26, 2005 12:18 pm

Cat5e was designed with Gigabit in mind. However, speeds are rated at like 350M instead of the 550M-1000M with Cat6. In any case, it should work fine.
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Postby Morpheus on Thu May 26, 2005 1:21 pm

Thanks, that puts my mind at ease. The new motherboards have Gigabit speeds and was told that Cat 6 was the best for that. I wired everyting for future-proofing - I have the TV speaker system being 8.1 even though it doesn't currently exist as we are at 7.1 now and I have 2 HDMI Pro cables running inside the walls, so I can connect my PC to the TV (I'm planning on buying the Sharp 45" LCD TV capable of 1920x1080P).
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Postby Boba_Fett on Thu May 26, 2005 6:01 pm

Morpheus wrote:Thanks, that puts my mind at ease. The new motherboards have Gigabit speeds and was told that Cat 6 was the best for that. I wired everyting for future-proofing - I have the TV speaker system being 8.1 even though it doesn't currently exist as we are at 7.1 now and I have 2 HDMI Pro cables running inside the walls, so I can connect my PC to the TV (I'm planning on buying the Sharp 45" LCD TV capable of 1920x1080P).


Good lord that will cost a lot...

Anyway, last time I checked all gigabit integeted mobos have RJ-45 jacks for Cat-5e plugins and below, not Cat6. Cat6 really isn't a consumer thing yet...

As for Ian's statement: Man I would be pissed if Cat-5e (rated for gigabit) couldn't reach its rated speed. Wouldn't that be false advertisement? I only have one gigabit NIC in the house (on my Xeon mobo) so I haven't been able to test out the full capabilites of my Cat-5e network. Not like HDD to HDD transfers could even half saturate a gigabit line, but still :evil:
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Postby Ian on Thu May 26, 2005 6:51 pm

Boba_Fett wrote:As for Ian's statement: Man I would be pissed if Cat-5e (rated for gigabit) couldn't reach its rated speed. Wouldn't that be false advertisement? I only have one gigabit NIC in the house (on my Xeon mobo) so I haven't been able to test out the full capabilites of my Cat-5e network. Not like HDD to HDD transfers could even half saturate a gigabit line, but still :evil:


Yeah well.. if you're serious about Gigabit, you'd do it over fiber. :D You are right though. Most people that would use Gigabit over copper are just looking to break the 100M barrier and will never reach 1000M due to HDD limitations, etc. Even at work we've switched most of our servers from fiber to copper.
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Postby hoxlund on Fri May 27, 2005 12:01 am

im looking to buy the sharp 37" lcd tv, half off retail price

thx to my connections still back in colorado springs

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Postby elgato610 on Sat Sep 17, 2005 4:22 am

We are still installing Cat5E for routine use and it works fine for gigabit over copper. The new imaging center will get Cat 6.

We have been using high quality Avaya Cat 6 patch cords (same RJ45) on 5E patch panels.

Most vendors have offered Cat 6 inserts for over a year.

Take a look at the Panduit products. Professional quality at a reasonable price. If you have a local Graybar you can see them there or just look at the Panduit website.

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Postby code65536 on Sat Sep 17, 2005 9:55 am

If you're in the United States, you can get get couplers, wall jacks, and cables at a pretty good price at compunettech.com. Had all the Cat 6 stuff that I was looking for, and pretty cheap, too. (I was recently asked to re-wire my parents' house, and after doing some searching, this was the lowest-priced place I could find). Shipping's reasonable and fairly fast. Worth a look if you're having trouble finding Cat 6 inserts (their Cat 6 stuff cost almost the same as their Cat 5e stuff, so I went with Cat 6 all the way--future proofing, I guess ;)).

But to echo the other posts here, I don't think it'd make much difference at all. Your computer system would act at the major bottleneck, and although I never picked apart a Cat 6 jack and a Cat 5e jack to see just how they are different, I somehow doubt that there would be much difference at all.
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Postby Morpheus on Wed Sep 21, 2005 5:50 pm

Strange. I typed up a message and hit "Submit" and then it went back to the login screen so I lost the message I had typed it.

I used the Cat 5e couplers (ie. I connected them to the wall plate) but I have not used the cables. I have only one computer for now - it won't be untill I build my second computer (which keeps getting delayed - it's been about one year late now). After that, I'll get a networking router and hook up the 2 pcs. I don't know how good the cables are - I used the Belkin Blue Cat 6 cables that I bought from Staples - one 7 foot and three 14 feet. They have a smallish cable diameter - I have since seen pics of other cables that look thicker (better shielding?). So, now I'm worried about the cables as well as the connectors. [-o<
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