Identify this cable for me?

[wambulance]

I've an ethernet cable, RJ-45. It doesn't say Cat5 or Cat6 or anything and am wondering what it is in that regard. The printing reads;

FOXCONN E204149 (UL) TYPE CM 75oC STP 26 AWG 2PAIRS PATCH CABLE

any ideas?

[Atomic Rooster]

It's just your run of the mill LAN cable. Typically Cat 5 cable is 24AWG, but your's is a bit smaller at 26AWG.

[wambulance]

Thanks for that, going in the trash then. Need to get some Cat6.

[johnross2007]

I wouldn't throw it away. You will eventually find yourself in need of a cat5 sometime. And why do you need cat6?

[EXreaction]

Cat6 really isn't needed. Just get some Cat5e, it is much cheaper.

The only reason to go with Cat6 would be if you are installing a brand new network through ceilings and walls and don't want to upgrade to Cat6 in 5-10 years.

I wouldn't throw it away either, if it is STP (shielded twisted pair) you may find it useful at some point if you have to run a cable in an area with a lot of interference.

[wambulance]

I just figured with a gigabit network sitting on a jumble of cables, that the cat6 might improve my throughput as I'm only ever able to get about 20% (200mbps) of the resource when transferring large files. Cat6 won't help with that eh?

[EXreaction]

Cat6 may help. Are you using Cat5 right now or Cat5e?

[wambulance]

5e

[johnross2007]

I doubt the Cat6's will give you a noticable gain. Chances are you have a bottleneck somewhere else, likely your internet speed.

[EXreaction]

The cause could be from interference, or bad quality cables, or a bunch of other things.

It could also be something internal causing the speed. 200Mbps is 25MBps, and that could be getting near the limit of your hard drive (depending on it's age, speed, etc).