The 4 Ethernet cable myths you still believe

In my experience, there are two kinds of Ethernet cable users: those who buy one cable and use it for the next 10 years without ever thinking whether it's good or bad, and those who overthink the topic of these cables into oblivion, almost min-maxing every purchase and upgrading every so often. There is some in between, but not a lot.

The funny thing is, both groups are prone to believing various Ethernet facts, and some of them are just plain wrong. Here are some myths you should stop believing.

Cat5e Ethernet is too old for a modern home network

That old cable may still be perfectly fine

Honestly, Ethernet cables are similarly confusing to USB-C cables in that there are a lot of different standards, and many people don't know how to make heads or tails of any of them. But, as with any other thing in tech, the mindset that old equals bad and lower number equals worse persists here. It's not untrue, but it doesn't need to apply to Ethernet cables.

Cat5e cables have been around forever by networking standards, sure ... but they're still considered sufficient for Gigabit Ethernet over a standard 100-meter run. And the thing many people tend to overlook when replacing their cables is that the rest of their network might not be ready for the upgrade, making it irrelevant (but more on that later).

Cat5e cables can even go beyond 1Gbps in the right setup. 2.5BASE-T and 5GBASE-T were designed, in part, to work with the huge amount of Cat5e and Cat6 cabling that's still in active use everywhere. Of course, this is more of a fun fact than a standard, as the vast majority will indeed cap out at 1Gbps.

One way or another, if you've got old Cat5e cables lying around, they're still perfectly fine for most home networks. Power users can benefit from upgrades, but most homes don't need them, provided the cable itself is working fine.

A higher category automatically makes your Ethernet faster

That's not necessarily true

Tied to the point above, when you do upgrade that Ethernet cable to one of a higher category, you might not see the results you were hoping for.

Let's say that you buy a Cat8 cable, the fanciest you can find, but your PC has a 1GbE port, or your router or switch is limited to that—then that's it. That's your ceiling, and no amount of fancy cables will change that. That's why just one slow link in your entire network can slow everything down considerably.

The only way for an Ethernet cable to actually make a difference is if you've upgraded every other piece of the chain, but left the cable as its slowest link.

The category number is simply a speed rating

There's a lot more hiding behind it

As I mentioned above, it's easy to treat the Ethernet cable category number as an indicator for how fast the cable is, but there's more to it than that.

Each category defines a whole set of performance requirements, and those include things like frequency, crosstalk, insertion loss, and performance over certain distances. That's why you'll see numbers alongside the category; such as 100MHz for Cat5e or 2,000MHz for Cat8. They're not Ethernet speeds, though; that'd mean that a Cat5e cable can only do 100Mbps, which just isn't true.

The category is really there to tell you the entire level of performance the cable is designed to deliver and certified to meet under specific conditions. Cat5e is good for Gigabit Ethernet over a full 328-foot channel, but Cat6A can do up to 10GbE over that same distance.

The cable category matters more than the length

Distance changes what the cable can guarantee

Cable length matters a lot more than you might give it credit for, because the longer a cable is, the smaller the chance that it'll be able to meet its promised maximum speed. Shorter cables are generally better, but cables are rated to a pretty decent length. Go beyond that, and speeds may drop regardless of category.

The familiar 328-foot (100-meter) maximum applies to a lot of common twisted-pair Ethernet standards, but higher speeds can cut into that limit depending on category. For instance, Cat6 can usually only do 10GbE over shorter runs than Cat6A.

Cat8 is perhaps the best example of why a higher category doesn't automatically mean the cable is better, regardless of the situation. The advertised 25GbE and 40GbE speeds are only intended for speeds up to 30 meters, which is just under 100 feet. That makes them great for a short run from your router to your PC, but if you're keeping your router tucked away in a cabinet (which, by the way, huge mistake ), you'll need to sacrifice some speed for length.

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Ethernet cables are simpler than people make them out to be

In all the confusion of Cat5, Cat6A, Cat8, and all the rest of it, it's easy to forget that Ethernet cables are just ... cables. Whichever one you own, if you plug it into a port and it's not broken, it should work. If your home network just needs internet, it doesn't matter if your cable's 10 years old. I have cables that old that still work just fine, and I'm not upgrading them until they break, because not every network needs the latest and greatest tech available.