Sorry, this offer has expired. Set up a deal alert and get notified of future deals like this. Add a Deal Alert

Expired Hot Deals

Sorry, this offer has expired.
Set up a deal alert and get notified of future deals like this.
Set up a Deal Alert
Princess Auto

50 ft Cat6 Network Cable $7.49

  • Last Updated:
  • Feb 1st, 2021 12:14 pm
Member
Nov 13, 2010
313 posts
533 upvotes
Toronto
BiggieWalls wrote: Yeah that was my intention. Thought I'd be able to run these cables and terminate at the outlets with a keystone coupler. Still some research to do on all of it and I'm sure the builder's electrician will do it properly anyway.
These are probably stranded core. Try to use full copper (not aluminum) solid core. Little more money, never touch it again. There are cables I ran 15 years ago running gigabit today (they were only cat5 but they work at gig speeds) ... These aren't the best choice for that application. It might be ok ... But might not.
Sr. Member
Nov 20, 2017
502 posts
748 upvotes
ttiger wrote:
Amazon learned that trick from sellers ... they usually list a cell phone for $19.99 but they include a "case" in the dropdown that satisfies "lowest price requirement" (the case is $19.99 but the cell phone is $129.99).

You'll also see several products grouped into one amazon listing for favourable review purposes, or for "satisfied" customers or star-reviews. Read enough reviews, and you'll notice they aren't for the particular "focused" object being sold.
Same for every "small annoying thing to replace" listing on ebay.
Deal Addict
User avatar
Oct 28, 2016
1884 posts
7842 upvotes
Albertariolandbec
shampygarg wrote: well my house is being built and my builder friend allowed me to run my own wires... however i choose to pay 100$ to electrician 2 wires for access point and he had his own cable... on top i ask alarm company to run all the alarm wires that includes 4 free ethernet wire drops, that I picked based on my requirements... Normally in my existing home i have pretty much everything wifi except desktop.. for newer build, i am still thinking if I should run more ethernet cables and speaker wires ( or is it just waste of money)....especially when I will be having 2 access points to cover the whole 2 stories.

I still thinking for the speaker wires, should I invest that money to buy SONOS speakers or still go with traditional way...
Always run miles of ethernet in you house and coil and remaining cable inside the walls. Nothing being being plugged in for speed. I wish we had done that when we bought our new house as now I'm forced to snake the whole house. Major pain
What's in your wallet?
Deal Addict
May 21, 2004
3000 posts
2243 upvotes
GTA
Ralcog wrote: You are fairly off on that claim.
5e will max out a 500 mbps most of the time. I've been using 5e for the last 10 years and monitor the transfer speeds. You will rarely get 1 gbps on 5e cables.

There is a chance you lucked on out good 5e cables.
I'd disagree. I have Cat5e cabling and consistently get ~980mbps. My house came with the Cat5e cabling in place and I highly doubt it is of high quality. This is based on a slew of garbage material used throughout the house that I'm having to replace.
Deal Addict
Dec 11, 2008
2356 posts
1558 upvotes
Toronto
Britex wrote: I'd disagree. I have Cat5e cabling and consistently get ~980mbps. My house came with the Cat5e cabling in place and I highly doubt it is of high quality. This is based on a slew of garbage material used throughout the house that I'm having to replace.
I think that anyone complaining about poor gigabit cable network performance doesn't understand that it's not the cable, it's the network configuration.
I think about 10 years ago, I found that tuning the ethernet adapter settings can get me a huge boost in performance. (Initial 20MB/s-50MB/s speeds would reach almost 150MB/s (megabytes/s).
Sadly, I find even today, I still have to modify these settings to get faster speeds.
Sr. Member
Dec 5, 2004
502 posts
607 upvotes
Canuck_TO wrote: I think that anyone complaining about poor gigabit cable network performance doesn't understand that it's not the cable, it's the network configuration.
I think about 10 years ago, I found that tuning the ethernet adapter settings can get me a huge boost in performance. (Initial 20MB/s-50MB/s speeds would reach almost 150MB/s (megabytes/s).
Sadly, I find even today, I still have to modify these settings to get faster speeds.
Please explain where you found this information. I've always found the slew of configurations in the network adapter settings in Windows and have always wondered what they do.
Sr. Member
Oct 21, 2005
837 posts
812 upvotes
Ralcog wrote: You are fairly off on that claim.
5e will max out a 500 mbps most of the time. I've been using 5e for the last 10 years and monitor the transfer speeds. You will rarely get 1 gbps on 5e cables.

There is a chance you lucked on out good 5e cables.
50 feet of 5e won't max out at 500 Mbps, that's absurd. You can easily get 10,000 Mbps at double, or even triple, that length. Maybe you're running them 1,000 feet or something.
Last edited by LBJackal on Jan 8th, 2021 10:02 am, edited 1 time in total.
Deal Addict
Jan 18, 2009
3363 posts
1990 upvotes
anthony.d wrote: That link is quite old and doesn't represent what's in common use today. CAT5e cables are rated for at least 100MHz, enough for 1Gbps. I have never seen an issue with nearly 1Gbps throughput on a CAT5e cable (or even a CAT5 cable) that wasn't caused by incorrect installation, poor termination, cable damage, or an issue with the endpoints. Not to say cable issues don't exist, but concern about these cables from princess auto is probably unwarranted, and replacing existing CAT5e cables is probably a waste of time.
GigE requires minimum 125MHz: 4 pairs, 2 bits per signal. 4 signals x 2bits/signal x 125MHz = 1Gbps.
The first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Usenet
Deal Addict
Nov 23, 2004
1472 posts
2777 upvotes
Ontario
flexsingh wrote: I ordered a few of these. Need a good deal on a spindle of 1000ft next
Just don't cheap out on that spool by falling for all the copper clad aluminum (CCA) junk being sold on Amazon - the third party chinese sellers have just flooded Amazon with cheap cable spools and it's hard to find actual proper CAT6 on there anymore. A lot of them bury it deep in the specs that it's actually CCA cable and not solid. I typically buy from Cable Sales Canada - their spools are always a good price for some good quality CAT6 solid core - not marked up like crazy and I think free shipping usually too.
Deal Addict
Jan 18, 2009
3363 posts
1990 upvotes
Raident wrote: Uh what? There's no 500 mbps ethernet standard so if it didn't work at 1 gbps it'd bump you all the way down to the next lower standard which is 100 mbps. Unlike wifi there's no it sorta works in the middle speeds.
GigE links (almost) always negotiate the clock rate. Something between 25MHz (100BaseT) and 125MHz (1000BaseT). Too much noise from crosstalk/interference will pull the clock down. 4 pairs at 25MHz would give you 200Mbps.
The first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Usenet
Deal Addict
Feb 13, 2017
1366 posts
176 upvotes
mindabsence wrote: Just don't cheap out on that spool by falling for all the copper clad aluminum (CCA) junk being sold on Amazon - the third party chinese sellers have just flooded Amazon with cheap cable spools and it's hard to find actual proper CAT6 on there anymore. A lot of them bury it deep in the specs that it's actually CCA cable and not solid. I typically buy from Cable Sales Canada - their spools are always a good price for some good quality CAT6 solid core - not marked up like crazy and I think free shipping usually too.
Yeah lots of terrible quality cable out there. Most is good enough in smaller runs.

Another rabbit hole you may wish you didn't go down...

Why Your Cat6/5e Network Cable is Slowing You Down
https://www.audioholics.com/audio-video ... -interview
We were recently perusing facebook and came across an article written and shared by our friends over at Blue Jeans Cable, entitled, “Is Your Cat 6 Cable a Dog?”. We were pretty shocked to discover that 80% of the cables they tested didn’t pass rated spec.
Deal Addict
Dec 24, 2007
1493 posts
1623 upvotes
Kingston
5e is fine for most, especially on short (read: under 75') runs. I've snaked my current and previous 3 homes as well as assisted some friends along the way, never had an issue registering as 1gb connections and achieving satisfactory speeds when all the gear is properly set up. Excellent price for this, and pretty sure its plenum rated, so feel free to snake it as you require. Pretty easy to terminate your own ends with the proper crimper, though a good one won't be cheap.
Deal Addict
Jan 18, 2009
3363 posts
1990 upvotes
mindabsence wrote: Just don't cheap out on that spool by falling for all the copper clad aluminum (CCA) junk being sold on Amazon - the third party chinese sellers have just flooded Amazon with cheap cable spools and it's hard to find actual proper CAT6 on there anymore. A lot of them bury it deep in the specs that it's actually CCA cable and not solid. I typically buy from Cable Sales Canada - their spools are always a good price for some good quality CAT6 solid core - not marked up like crazy and I think free shipping usually too.
The Cat5/Cat6 cable market on Amazon is a cesspool.

The TIA/EIA-568 standard defines Catetory5/Cateogry6 as: eight-conductor 100-ohm balanced twisted pair cabling.

No f*ing flat cable on Amazon should be called Cat5 or Cat6.
The 100-ohm spec would eliminate all wires above 29AWG. And sure enough, you can find thousands of 30AWG huh... Cat6... cables on Amazon.

You shop from a cesspool, you got crap! as simple as that.
Last edited by bogolisk on Jan 8th, 2021 10:44 am, edited 2 times in total.
The first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Usenet
Member
Dec 10, 2003
224 posts
53 upvotes
bogolisk wrote: GigE requires minimum 125MHz: 4 pairs, 2 bits per signal. 4 signals x 2bits/signal x 125MHz = 1Gbps.
I'm far from an expert on layer 1 networking and Ethernet signalling, but wikipedia indicates that CAT5/CAT5e cables are rated at 100MHz:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_5_cable

And that gigabit Ethernet is transmitted eight bits at a time, at 100MHz:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabit_E ... 1000BASE-T
Deal Addict
Jan 18, 2009
3363 posts
1990 upvotes
anthony.d wrote: I'm far from an expert on layer 1 networking and Ethernet signalling, but wikipedia indicates that CAT5/CAT5e cables are rated at 100MHz:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_5_cable

And that gigabit Ethernet is transmitted eight bits at a time, at 100MHz:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabit_E ... 1000BASE-T
yes, the transmission is still in GigE mode (4 pairs, 2 signals/pair) but the effective rate will be 8x100 = 800Mbps, not 1000Mbps.
The first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Usenet
Sr. Member
Dec 8, 2012
987 posts
644 upvotes
Calgary
Chocolinx wrote: This is perfect. I needed some stranded CAT6 for patch panel cables. Much cheaper than me having to buy 500 ft bulk.
how come it's cheaper? 1000ft FT4 cat6 cable is like $80 at ADI/Anixter/Norelco and you-name-it cheap security distributor. It comes to $4 for 50ft. And you get solid cable while the patch-cord they sell is most likely stranded (pain to terminate with RJ45 connectors)
Sr. Member
Dec 8, 2012
987 posts
644 upvotes
Calgary
bogolisk wrote: yes, the transmission is still in GigE mode (4 pairs, 2 signals/pair) but the effective rate will be 8x100 = 800Mbps, not 1000Mbps.
omfg, where do you guys find this stupidity? effective rate 800 mbps. Did they teach you that in it college?

Cat5 - you will not find it, forget about
Cat5e - rated 1 gigabit, 100m link
Cat6 - rated 1 gigabit, 100m link
When it's about your home, both Cat5e and Cat6 will work with 10 gigabit links, unless you have a mansion.
Sr. Member
Oct 21, 2005
837 posts
812 upvotes
MaDgamEr wrote: 5e is fine for most, especially on short (read: under 75') runs. I've snaked my current and previous 3 homes as well as assisted some friends along the way, never had an issue registering as 1gb connections and achieving satisfactory speeds when all the gear is properly set up. Excellent price for this, and pretty sure its plenum rated, so feel free to snake it as you require. Pretty easy to terminate your own ends with the proper crimper, though a good one won't be cheap.
I've got some Cat 5 running through my house that was ripped out of an old office building I worked at. Just laziness on my part to not go out and get proper cables which are dirt cheap. Thought I'd test the old cables first and, hey, no issues at all so I'm just leaving them for now. I get Gigabit speeds with no problem. And that's Cat 5 which I'm sure is from 20+ years ago, not even Cat5e. Maybe the reason people think Cat5e can't do 10 Gbps is because they're buying crappy knockoff cables from China that aren't actually to spec. Or maybe they haven't actually tried it, they just read the spec sheets put out by the people selling Cat6a cables.

Top

Thread Information

There is currently 1 user viewing this thread. (0 members and 1 guest)