Author: Ross Ricky

Listen, I get it.

People take their gaming pretty seriously.

When it comes to online gaming, players look for every advantage they can get over their competition. As a result, every piece of their gaming experience gets evaluated very closely.

From graphics cards and RAM to keyboards and mice, no stone is left unturned.

The least of which is a player’s internet connection.

Not only is a player’s internet speed of vital importance to gaming experience (and performance), but how they connect to the internet is important as well.

On this front, it comes down to one question: is it better to connect to the internet with an ethernet cable or over WiFi when gaming?

When it comes to online gaming, you should use an ethernet cable to connect to the internet instead of WiFi. Not only will an ethernet cable provide you with a more reliable connection to the internet, but you will also experience less delay (also known as lag) while playing.

In this post, I’ll detail why you should use an ethernet cable for your online gaming. I’ll also talk about what types of ethernet cables you should consider for your internet connection.

Why an ethernet cable is better than WiFi for gaming

As I mentioned above, there are several advantages to using an ethernet cable for online gaming instead of WiFi.

Let’s take a look at the two major advantages that ethernet cables provide when it comes to gaming.

Ethernet cables experience less delay

Ethernet cables provide less delay than a wireless connection. That’s because you’re essentially connecting your device directly to the internet with a wired connection.

So what does this mean, exactly?

Let’s say you have a gaming console that you want to provide with an internet connection.

To do this, you need to plug one end of the ethernet cable into the gaming console. The other end gets plugged into your router.

Now let’s look at what your router is connected to. Your router will be connected to your modem with another ethernet cable (unless you have a modem router combo).

Taking it one step further, your modem will be connected to your internet service provider (ISP) with another cable. This cable won’t be an ethernet cable, but it’ll still provide a wired connection to your provider.

If we zoom out on this picture, your gaming console is connected to your ISP with all wired connections.

Now let’s see what it looks like if you connect your gaming console to the internet with a wireless connection:

Although the two diagrams above may look similar, the way you connect your gaming system to the internet can make a big difference.

The reason for this difference has to do with the speed of data when transferring it over a cable versus through the air.

Data transmission in wired and wireless connections

When you send data over the air in a wireless internet connection, a lot more is happening between your device and the internet.

I’ll try not to bore you with the technical details here.

When using a wireless connection, your data needs to be translated into a different format (from digital to analog) before it can be sent to your gaming system.

This is done by your router.

Once the data arrives at your gaming system, it needs to be translated back into a format that your device can understand (digital).

This same translation happens when your system needs to send data to the internet. For example, when you move your joystick during gaming, there’ll be a few millisecond delay before you see a response on your screen.

These milliseconds of delay are caused by the translation activities that happen when sending data in a wireless internet connection.

This isn’t a lot of time, but every millisecond counts if you take your online gaming seriously.

Conversely, no data translation is needed when sending data over a wired connection.

To put it another way, any time spent translating data and sending it through the air over WiFi is time saved by a wired connection.

That’s why data will travel to and from your gaming system with less delay over a wire instead of through the air. Each time data is sent wirelessly to your console, you have to wait for the data translation to happen.

That’s where ethernet cables provide a distinct advantage.

Ethernet cables provide a more reliable connection

Another major benefit of using ethernet cables to connect to the internet is that these connections are very reliable.

Simply put, when you directly connect devices, there’s less that can go wrong with the connection. Sure, you can have an ethernet cable go bad, but that won’t be a common occurrence if you take care of your cables.

In a wireless connection on the other hand, there’s a lot more that can go wrong.

Depending upon how far your console or gaming PC is from your router, it may experience a poor internet signal. This can lead to disruption in your internet connection.

It can also be an issue if you have multiple devices trying to wirelessly communicate with your router at the same time. Your router can get overwhelmed and your system’s connection to the router can get dropped.

Lastly, if you’re not careful, your wireless signal can get interfered with or blocked. This also depends upon where your gaming system and router are in relation to each other. To give a few examples, common household materials like metal and concrete are known to disrupt wireless signals in your home.

These are all things you don’t have to worry about with a wired connection. As long as your gaming system and router remain connected with an ethernet cable, you’ll have a strong signal.

When you’re gaming online, the last thing you want is your internet connection to get disrupted. The bottom line is that there are a lot more ways this can happen with a wireless connection.

Do yourself a favor and connect your gaming console with an ethernet cable.

Is using an ethernet connection faster than Wifi?

I know what you’re thinking.

I just talked about the benefits of using ethernet cables instead of Wifi, but I didn’t say anything about the speed of the connections.

There’s actually a good reason for that.

That’s because both ethernet cables and Wifi connections should provide you with the speed you need to game effectively.

Let’s take a closer look.

Internet speed required for online gaming

When it comes to online gaming, you might be surprised to hear that you don’t need a blazing fast internet connection.

In fact, most sites say that you only need about 5 megabits per second (Mbps) of internet speed to game online.

So what does this mean for you?

It means that as long as your internet connection is faster than 5 Mbps, speed won’t be an issue for you when gaming. In other words, whether you’re connecting to the internet with an ethernet cable or a WiFi connection, as long as the connection (and internet plan) can support a speed of 5 Mbps, speed won’t be a factor when you’re gaming.

This situation is like a motorized scooter on a road.

Example

Let’s say you have a motorized scooter with a top speed of 5 MPH. With this scooter, you’ll be able to drive it on any road with a speed limit greater than 5 MPH without having to slow down.

With that said, whether the speed limit is 50 MPH or 100 MPH, the speed you’re traveling will never be faster than 5 MPH. A faster speed limit won’t make your scooter any faster than it’s designed to go.

So as long as the speed limit is greater than 5 MPH, you’ll be able to scoot along at full throttle without having to slow down.

In this example, the motorized scooter represents the speed needed for you to game online without any issues (5 Mbps). The speed limit is the maximum speed provided by your internet connection method.

As long as your method of connecting to the internet provides faster than 5 Mbps of speed, you’ll be able to game at top speed without restriction.

The point of this story is: the maximum speed supported by a WiFi or ethernet connection to the internet doesn’t really matter. The connection just needs to provide a connection of more than 5 Mbps.

It’s safe to say that any modern WiFi or ethernet cable connection will support speeds faster than 5 Mbps. In order for this to happen, your internet connection will need to support speeds greater than 5 Mbps as well.

Most minimum internet plans today support speeds of at least 25 Mbps, so you should be with most internet plans.

Maximum supported speed is not a factor

In the end, it’s not really a question of which method of connecting to the internet supports a faster maximum speed. Both connection methods provide adequate speed for gaming. What’s really important is which method provides you with the necessary data faster.

As I mentioned above, ethernet cables do that because there’s less delay when sending and receiving data.

For those interested, I ran an experiment with Wifi and ethernet connections to see for myself. It was this experiment that confirmed for me that both connections will provide adequate speed for gaming.

All you need to do is make sure you have a suitable internet plan and you’re using modern internet equipment.

Which ethernet cable is best for gaming?

Using an ethernet cable to connect to the internet is the way to go when gaming online.

But the question is, what ethernet cable do you need?

There are multiple categories of ethernet cables to choose from. Each category of cable will support a different maximum speed.

So should you just buy the cables that support the fastest maximum speed?

As we discovered in the previous section, the maximum supported speed of the cable doesn’t really matter. It just needs to be fast enough to support your internet plan and the speed required for gaming.

This is the biggest issue I’ve seen with other sites that recommend ethernet cables for gaming. Many of them will suggest that category 8 cables are the best for gaming because they support the fastest maximum speeds.

This is overkill for just about anyone. Unless of course you run a datacenter out of your house.

From my perspective, your best move here will be to get an ethernet cable that’ll support your internet needs for the foreseeable future. After all, if you don’t get the right ethernet cable, it can limit your internet speed.

A conservative approach here is to buy category 6 cables. These cables support speeds up to 10 gigabits per second (10 Gbps). This’ll be more than enough for any current internet plan you may have.

Another benefit of buying cat 6 cables is that they’ll allow you to upgrade your internet plan in the future without having to worry about your ethernet cables not being able to support your internet plan.

With that said, if you have a slower internet plan and don’t plan on upgrading any time soon, category 5e cables will work just fine.

Is a cat 7 cable good for gaming?

You may have noticed that I didn’t suggest using category 7 cables for gaming.

There’s actually a good reason for this.

To make a long story short, it’s because they provide the same performance as category 6 cables. There’s no benefit to using them instead of cat 6 cables.

You may find that cat 7 cables cost more, however.

There’s a lot going on with category 7 cables, so I won’t get into all the specifics here.

Essentially what you need to know is that cat 7 cables:

• Provide the same performance specifications as cat 6 cables
• Aren’t recognized by the same standards group (ANSI/TIA) that all other cables are recognized by
• Were originally designed to use a different connector than all other categories of cables
• Haven’t been widely adopted due to their lack of backwards compatibility

What’s interesting is if you look for cat 7 cables online, they’re much harder to find than other common cable categories.

The ones you find (like these), however, will have the same connectors (RJ45) as all the other categories of cables. Once it was obvious that category 7 cables weren’t going to be widely adopted, they started being sold with these connectors so people will buy them.

Just be aware that these cables will perform exactly the same as category 6 cables.

If you were thinking about buying a category 7 cable, buy a cat 6 cable instead.

Do you lose gaming speed with a longer ethernet cable?

Ok so you’ve decided to pick up cat 5e or cat 6 ethernet cables.

The next common question here is how the length of the cable affects your gaming performance.

You’ll be happy to hear the length of the cable probably won’t matter. It’ll only affect your gaming performance if your cable is extremely long.

How long am I talking, exactly?

If you refer to the graphic above, you’ll be in good shape as long as your cables aren’t longer than 328 feet. If an ethernet cable is over 328 feet, your connection will get disrupted and you won’t get good performance out of it.

Outside of an office building, I don’t think I’ve seen an ethernet cable that comes even close to that length.

So the bottom line is: pick up the length of cable that makes your home setup most convenient. Your gaming performance won’t suffer if it’s a longer cable.

Wrap up

Now you know the value of using ethernet cables when gaming online. If you have any questions about this material, please drop a comment below.

If this was useful information for you, check out some other posts I’ve written about similar topics:

Are Ethernet Cables Backwards Compatible?

Do the Colors of Ethernet Cables Matter?

What Does Cat Mean for Ethernet Cables?

Is a LAN Cable an Ethernet Cable?

Are Ethernet and Phone Cables the Same?

Ethernet cables seem like the most basic devices in your home network. They’re cables that you connect to the devices in your office or home, and they give you a connection to the network.

On top of that, they all look alike (although they might be different colors).

Just when you let your guard down and get overconfident about them, you learn that there’s way more to them than you first thought.

For example, you might be surprised to hear:

• There are different types of cables that are identified by a cat number
• If you choose the wrong type of cable, it can slow your internet connection
• Not every type of ethernet cable is compatible with the other types

And that’s just scratching the surface.

Another ethernet cable term that may have caught you off guard is pinout standards.

What exactly does this term mean, and how does it apply to ethernet cables?

Hopefully I can help sort this out for you.

Ethernet cable pinout standards detail the order of wires inside an ethernet cable’s connectors. This standardization ensures that ethernet cables and devices they connect to are all compatible with each other.

In this post, I’ll detail all you need to know about ethernet cable pinout standards. I’ll also answer some frequently asked questions about them.

Where did ethernet cable pinout standards come from?

Ok, so we’ve established that pinout standards establish how ethernet cables are wired.

There are a few natural follow up questions to this.

Firstly, who said these are the standards that should be followed when making cables? And why were they chosen to make the rules?

Truth be told, the cable pinout standards came from a collaborative effort.

The name of the standard that details how ethernet cables should be wired is called ANSI/TIA-568.

This standard was published by the Telecommunications Industry Association, which is where the “TIA” in the standard comes from. The “ANSI” stands for the American National Standards Institute, which is the group that signed off on the standard that TIA put forth.

These groups may not sound like a big deal, but they actually carry a lot of weight in developing different standards for industry.

After all, the whole purpose of ANSI is to develop standards in a wide variety of areas.

For the ANSI/TIA-568 standard, more than 60 groups worked together to come up with it. These groups consisted of different industries and professions (e.g. consultants, telecommunications companies, banks, etc.). Developing it with so many people involved ensured that everyone was on the same page.

With so many influential companies involved in the creation of the standard, it’s no surprise that it was widely adopted.

Why are pinout configurations needed in the first place?

Now that we’re done paying our respects to those who developed the standard, let’s dig a bit deeper.

Why are ethernet cable pinout standards needed in the first place?

That’s because when it comes to ethernet cables, communication is extremely important (pun intended).

The reason this standard is so important is because there’s actually quite a lot going on inside an ethernet cable.

Inside an ethernet cable, there are 8 copper wires. Each wire is assigned a different color for identification purposes.

These wires are used to move data back and forth between both ends of the cable. The data is moved using pulses of electricity through the wires.

Some of these wires are meant to send data, while others are meant to receive data. There are even some wires that don’t have any job at all.

The best way to think of this is a highway.

You have some cars traveling in one direction, while other cars are traveling in the other direction. If you don’t have a standard in place that explains which lanes are used for each direction, you’re setting yourself up for disaster.

Taking this analogy a step further, imagine if each town or city had different rules in place regarding which lane to drive in depending upon the direction you were going in.

Not a pretty picture, is it?

This is where the ANSI/TIA-568 standard is so helpful. It helps identify which wires are meant to send data to the other side of the cable, and which are used to receive data from the other side.

With all cable and device manufacturers following the same standard, it ensures everyone is using the same rules of the road. This makes data travel easier for all parties involved.

What are the pinout configurations?

As I mentioned earlier, inside an ethernet cable each wire has a specific role. The role of each wire is determined by its position inside the RJ45 connector at the end of it.

For those of you that may not be familiar, these are the 8 wires of an ethernet cable inside an RJ45 connector:

As you can see, the 8 wires are side-by-side in the RJ45 connector. The fact that each of these wires is a different color makes things much easier.

So how do you know what order the colors go in?

These positions are defined in the ANSI/TIA-568 standard.

The standard provides two different pinout configurations that can be used inside an RJ45 connector. These pinouts are called T568A and T568B.

T568A pinout configuration

Here’s what the T568A pinout configuration looks like (when the tab of the RJ45 connector is facing away from you):

With a T568A wiring configuration, the wires are in the following order from left to right:

• White with a green stripe
• Green
• White with an orange stripe
• Blue
• White with a blue stripe
• Orange
• White with a brown stripe
• Brown

T568B pinout configuration

Here’s what the T568B pinout configuration looks like (again with the RJ45 connector tab facing away from you):

In a T568B pinout configuration, the wires are in the following order from left to right:

• White with an orange stripe
• Orange
• White with a green stripe
• Blue
• White with a blue stripe
• Green
• White with a brown stripe
• Brown

To make it easier to see, here’s what a T568B pinout configuration looks like before it goes inside an RJ45 connector:

Please note that although you can’t see them, the white wires have colored stripes on them. They’re not all white. You have to trust me on this one.

Ok, there you have it.

Those are the two standards for wiring your ethernet cables. As long as the wires follow one of the two configurations, your cable should work just fine.

What is the difference between the T568A and T568B configurations?

To identify the differences between the T568A and T568B configurations, let’s take a closer look at the order of the wires in each case.

At first glance, it might look like these configurations are quite different.

In reality, the only difference between the two is that the green and orange wires are switched in the two different configurations. This includes the striped wires for these colors as well.

In other words, if you take every orange wire in a T568A configuration and replace it with a green wire of the same type (solid or striped) and vice versa, you’d get a T568B configuration.

So why is there more than one way to configure the wires in the first place?

That’s a good question. Let’s dive into it.

Why are there two different pinout configurations?

Let me start by saying that when ethernet cable pinout standards were developed, we were in a different age of computers.

Over the years, things have been simplified when it comes to your ethernet cables.

The reason there are two different pinout configurations has to do with the fact that you used to need different cables to connect different types of devices.

For example, if you were using your ethernet cable to connect two computers, it would need to be wired one way. If you were using an ethernet cable to connect your computer and a router, it would need to be wired a different way.

Long story short, this led to the development of two different types of ethernet cables.

The cables used to connect two different types of devices (e.g. a computer and an ethernet switch) were called straight through cables, while the cables used to connect two of the same type of device (e.g. two computers) were called crossover cables.

The details about these cables are less important in this discussion, but it explains why two different pinout configurations exist.

The bottom line here is that ethernet cables needed to be wired differently based upon the devices they were connecting.

With that said, you no longer need to worry about what ethernet cable you’re using when connecting two devices.

Due to advancements in technology, our devices are smart enough to recognize the type of device they’re connecting to. As long as the ethernet cable is wired to either of the standard pinout configurations, you won’t have any problems.

Can you use T568A and T568B configurations in the same cable?

For those of you that decide to make your own ethernet cables, there’s a common question I’ve seen that we should cover here.

As we’ve discussed, an ethernet cable will function properly as long as the ethernet cable is using one of the two standard pinout configurations.

But would the cable still work if you used one pinout configuration for one end of the cable and the other pinout configuration for the other end?

In other words, what if one end of the cable had a T568A configuration and the other had a T568B configuration. Would a cable that looked like this still work?

You bet it would.

This is actually the configuration of a crossover cable that I mentioned in the previous section.

In fact, if you’re making your own ethernet cables you could use any of the following combinations of pinout configurations:

• T568A and T568A
• T568A and T568B
• T568B and T568B

Hopefully you get the picture here.

This hammers home the point that any combination of standard pinout configurations will work fine with your ethernet cables.

Should I use T568A or T568B?

With several different combinations of pinout configurations to choose from in your ethernet cables, it begs the question: is there one pinout configuration that’s better than the others? Will one pinout configuration provide better performance than the others?

The simple truth is it doesn’t matter. You won’t get better performance out of your cable by choosing one pinout configuration over another.

With that said, you’ll find that many of the cat5e and cat6 ethernet cables you can buy online will have a T568B configuration.

In changing the lengths of some of the ethernet cables in my network, I found all of them to have T568B configurations.

Again, it doesn’t make any difference which one you choose. Just know that if you pick T568B configurations you’ll be going with the majority.

Ultimately the choice is yours.

You can be a rebel and use the T568A configuration, or you can follow the popular choice and go with a T568B configuration.

Wrap up

That just about covers ethernet cable wire pinout configurations.

If you have any questions about ethernet cable pinout configurations, or you’d like to share your experiences with ethernet cable pinout configurations, I invite you to drop a line below.

If you’re interested in learning more about similar topics, check out these other posts I’ve written:

Are Ethernet Cables Backwards Compatible?

Do the Colors of Ethernet Cables Matter?

How Do You Crimp Ethernet Cables?

What Does Cat Mean for Ethernet Cables?

The Difference Between Cat5e and Cat6 Cables

Are you looking to replace ethernet cables in your home network?

If so, you’ll probably need to answer some important questions before making any decisions.

You’ll need to know:

• The category of ethernet cables you currently have
• How long the new cables need to be
• The speeds the new cables need to support
• What color cables you want to buy

In addition to the information above, you’ll need to determine if the cables you want to buy are backwards compatible with the ones you’re replacing.

I know, this can feel overwhelming.

So let’s start at a high level: are ethernet cables backwards compatible?

The good news is that most ethernet cables commonly used today (cat5e, cat6, cat6a, and cat8) are backwards compatible with each other. The exception to this is cat7 cables.

In this post, I’ll go into detail about why these cables are backwards compatible. I’ll also talk about why you’ll want to avoid using cat7 cables in your network.

How to tell if an ethernet cable is backwards compatible

When it comes to identifying the ethernet cables that are backwards compatible, there’s one basic specification to pay attention to.

The specification that we care about the most has to do with the connectors at the ends of the cable.

To be specific, I’m talking about these:

The picture above is an RJ45 connector.

RJ45 is an ethernet cable standard that describes how an ethernet cable terminates at each end. In other words, it identifies the type of connector at each end of ethernet cables.

The “RJ” stands for “registered jack”, and the “45” is just an identifier for the interface standard of the connector. Essentially, the purpose of the RJ45 connector standard is to provide a way for everyone to make cables the same way.

On the other side of the coin, it makes it easy for companies making computers, gaming systems, and other devices to make their devices compatible with the standard. All they have to do is add a port on their device that fits the RJ45 standard.

That’s why you’ll find RJ45 ports on most of your electronic devices. For example, my router has 4 ethernet ports on the back of it that are for RJ45 connectors.

The RJ45 standard is universal. Everyone uses it.

Well, almost everyone. Unfortunately, not every ethernet cable adopted the RJ45 standard.

To bring this all together, the cables that are backwards compatible with each other will all be made to the same RJ45 connector standard.

So which ethernet cables have connectors made to this standard?

I’m glad I asked.

Which cables use RJ45 connectors?

Ok, so we’ve determined that the cables that are backwards compatible will have RJ45 connectors.

The good news here is that most ethernet cables used today are made to that standard of connector.

To be specific, the following categories of cables have RJ45 connectors on them:

• Category 5e
• Category 6
• Category 6A
• Category 8

So what does this mean, exactly?

It means you can replace any of the above cables with a different category of cable without any issues, so long as the cable you’re replacing it with is also in the list above. For example, you’ll have no problem replacing a cat5e cable with a cat6A cable.

Although the cables listed above are most of the ethernet cables you’ll see today, it’s important to note that not all categories of ethernet cables are compatible with each other. As you’ll find more about later, category 7 cables aren’t compatible with the cables listed above.

You may be wondering if categories 1 through 4 of ethernet cables are backwards compatible. To be honest, I left them off the list above because you won’t see them used today.

They don’t support speeds fast enough to keep up with the demands of today’s networks. It’s sad, but the truth is they’ve been left behind at this stage of the game.

What makes ethernet cables backwards compatible?

Ok, so ethernet cable categories 5e, 6, 6A, and 8 are all interchangeable with each other.

We also know that the reason they’re compatible with each other is because they all have RJ45 connectors.

This only tells a part of the story, however. To find out exactly why these cables are compatible, we have to dig a layer deeper.

That’s right, I’m talking about the wires inside the cables.

Ethernet cable wiring

Let’s start with the basics here.

Inside an ethernet cable, you’ll find 8 copper wires. This is what it looks like inside one of your ethernet cables:

These 8 wires are used to transfer information through the cable.

How they do that isn’t super important for this discussion, so we’ll blast past that part.

What’s important is that each of these 8 wires inside the ethernet cable has a job to do.

Some wires are used to transfer data to the other side of the cable. Other wires are meant to receive incoming data from the other side.

You might be shocked to find out that some of these wires inside an ethernet cable aren’t used at all.

So now for the hard hitting question: how do you know which wires are meant to send data and which wires are meant to receive data?

The answer to this question is similar to a sports team. Each position on the field has a certain job.

The same goes for ethernet cables.

The job of a particular wire is based upon the position of the wire inside the connector it’s attached to.

So who says what wire is responsible for what?

For this information, we have to go to another standard.

Let’s meet the TIA/EIA-568 standard.

The TIA/EIA-568 Standard

The TIA/EIA-568 standard plays an important role in how ethernet cables are wired.

In short, it provides a few different requirements that ensure ethernet cables are all made the same way. For this discussion, the area we’re focused on has to do with the wiring of cables.

Going back to our sports analogy, if the wires inside the ethernet cable are the players on the field, the TIA/EIA-568 standard is the rulebook for the game.

TIA/EIA-568 details what order the cables should be in inside the RJ45 connector to ensure all cables are made the same way.

In other words, it defines the positions of the players (copper wires) and where they should stand on the field (RJ45 connector).

So how does this apply to ethernet cables?

To answer this, we need to refer back to the RJ45 connectors at the end of ethernet cables.

Inside the connectors, there are 8 channels that the wires inside the ethernet cable fit in to.

As you can see, the colored wires are laid out side-by-side in the channels of the RJ45 connector. What the TIA/EIA-568 standard does is it defines which wire should be in which channel.

What’s interesting is that there are two different ways that these wires can be laid out inside the RJ45 connector. These are called ethernet cable pinout configurations.

As long as the wires inside the RJ45 connector follow one of these standard pinout configurations, the ethernet cable will work properly. It doesn’t matter which one is chosen.

Why are these standards important for backwards compatibility?

Now that we’ve laid this all out, we can get to answering our question.

How do the RJ45 and TIA/EIA standards allow these ethernet cables to be interchangeable?

In order for ethernet cables to be interchangeable, two things need to be in place. The cables need to:

• Be wired the same way
• Have the same connector

These two standards take care of both of those requirements. The RJ45 standard will make sure all the cables have the same connector and fit into the same devices. The TIA/EIA standard will ensure that wires inside the cables will be in the same order.

To put it another way, if two different cables meet both of the above requirements, the only thing different about them will be the speeds they support. They’ll support different speeds because of the different wires that’re used inside the cable. It has nothing to do with the connector on them or the configuration of the wires inside the cable.

This is why different categories of ethernet cables support different speeds. The wires inside the cables are made to different specifications. The different specifications determine the maximum speed the cable can support.

The good news is, if you need to get an ethernet cable that supports a faster speed, it’ll be interchangeable as long as it’s a category 5e, 6, 6A, or 8 cable.

Do yourself a favor and make sure you’re using one of these categories of cable in your network.

Which ethernet cables are not backwards compatible?

If category 5e, 6, 6A, and 8 cables are all interchangeable, which cables aren’t?

There’s only one type of modern-day cable that isn’t. Category 7 cables.

Some of the earlier versions of ethernet cables aren’t backwards compatible either, but you won’t see them in use today.

To understand why cat 7 cables aren’t compatible with the other categories, let’s revisit the criteria we posed before. In order to be compatible with each other, cables need to:

• Be wired the same way
• Have the same connector

Let’s address these criteria individually.

Are cat 7 cables wired the same way as category 5e, 6, 6A, and 8 cables?

This is a definitive yes.

Cat 7 cables are wired exactly the same way as the other common categories of cables. Cat 7 cables will be wired in one of the two approved configurations detailed by the TIA/EIA standard.

Ok, so we can check the box of the first criteria that compatible cables need to meet.

On to the next one.

Do cat 7 cables have the same connectors as category 5e, 6, 6A, and 8 cables?

This is where things fall apart.

Category 7 cables don’t utilize the RJ45 standard for connectors. They use a different standard called GG45, which stands for GigaGate 45 or ARJ45, which stands for Augmented RJ45. They can also be outfitted with TERA connectors as well.

Of course, the issue here with category 7 cable connectors is that they’re not interchangeable with the other commonly used categories of cables.

On top of that, you won’t find any GG45/ARJ45 or TERA ports on any of your computers or internet devices.

As a result, you won’t see these cables used very much.

With that said, it’s possible to outfit a category 7 cable with an RJ45 connector, but there’s little benefit to this. If you outfit a category 7 cable with an RJ45 connector, it’ll have the same performance characteristics as a category 6 cable.

In fact, if you try to buy a cat 7 cable online, you probably won’t find any with a GG45/ARJ45 or TERA connector. They’ll all have RJ45 connectors on them.

Don’t fall for this. These cables are either fake, or they’ll perform just like a cat6 cable. You’re better off just buying cat6 cable instead.

In conclusion, this is the reason why cat 7 cables are incompatible with cat 5e, cat 6, cat 6a, and cat 8 cables. They don’t utilize the same connector standard.

Wrap up

Well, there you have it.

That’s a complete breakdown of which ethernet cable categories are compatible with each other.

Chances are, the cables you have in your home all have RJ45 connectors, so you shouldn’t have any issues if you ever want to upgrade or replace them. You probably wouldn’t be able to get a cat 7 cable with a GG45/ARJ45 or TERA connector even if you tried.

If you have any questions about this information, or you’d like to share you experiences with your ethernet cables, please drop a line below.

If you’re interested in reading some more about similar topics, check out these posts that I’ve written:

Do the Colors of Ethernet Cables Matter?

How Long Do Ethernet Cables Last?

Are Ethernet and Phone Cables the Same?

How Do You Crimp Ethernet Cables?

What Does Cat Mean for Ethernet Cables?

Take a minute to stop and think about the different types of cables you have in your home. I’m sure you probably have:

• Power cables
• Phone chargers
• Coaxial cables
• Ethernet cables
• Phone cables
• Printer cables
• Adapter cables

The list goes on and on.

What’s interesting about these cables is that many of them seem to accomplish the same thing. This often leads to questions about which cables can be used interchangeably.

Two specific cables that generate the most questions are phone cables and ethernet cables.

Are phone cables and ethernet cables the same thing? In other words, can they be used interchangeably?

Unfortunately, ethernet and phone cables are not the same thing. There are multiple differences between these types of cables, and as a result, they’re used in different applications.

Phone cables are designed to be used almost exclusively for connecting landline phones. Ethernet cables, on the other hand, are mostly used in computer applications.

In this post, I’ll detail the differences between phone and ethernet cables. I’ll also answer some common questions about how phone and ethernet cables are used.

What is the difference between ethernet cables and phone cables?

Let me start by saying that phone and ethernet cables have the same purpose: they’re used to transfer data.

They take data from one end of the cable and transfer it to the other end of the cable.

That’s about where their similarities end.

To start, let’s just compare what an ethernet and phone cable look like:

They look pretty different, don’t they?

Wait until you see them from a side angle:

Appearance isn’t the only way ethernet and phone cables are different.

Despite achieving the same goal, phone and ethernet cables transfer data in different ways. This is why they can’t be used interchangeably.

So how do these cables transfer data differently?

There are 3 main differences between phone and ethernet cables that we’ll dive in to. These 3 differences are that phone and ethernet cables:

• Have different numbers of wires inside them
• Have different connectors attached to them
• Support different data transfer rates

Let’s take an in-depth look at each of these differences.

Different number of wires

One key difference between ethernet cables and phone cables has to do with what’s inside them.

This all starts with the general construction of the cables. Essentially, phone and ethernet cables are just bundles of copper wires.

The copper wires are what allows the transfer of data back and forth between the ends of the cables. Data is sent through these copper wires using a series of electronic signals.

When a phone or ethernet cable is plugged into a device, the device is able to translate these electronic pulses into the message that was sent to them from the other end of the cable. Think of it almost like Morse code.

Follow me so far?

Ok, so if both ethernet and phone cables are made of copper wires, what makes them different?

They’re different because they’re made up of a different number of wires.

Phone cables consist of 4 copper wires, while ethernet cables have 8 copper wires inside them.

For a visual, here’s what the inside of a phone cable looks like:

There are 4 wires inside the cable.

Compare that to what the inside of an ethernet cable looks like:

As you can see, these two types of cables are more different than they first appear. There are twice as many wires inside an ethernet cable.

As you’ll see later, this has an impact on how the two cables can be used.

Connectors used on each cable

Another major difference between phone and ethernet cables is the connector that’s attached to them.

Both types of cables have plastic connectors attached to each end. These connectors serve a few purposes.

For one, they make it easy to connect the cable to a device. That’s because the connectors for ethernet and phone cables have been developed to a standard.

In other words, all ethernet cables will have the same connector at the end of them. All phone cables will have the same connector as well.

Devices that are meant to be compatible with these cables will have specific ports that these standard connectors fit into.

The other purpose of these connectors is to prevent the cables from falling out of the devices they’re connected to. This ensures that the device and cable maintain a reliable connection that doesn’t get interrupted while data is being transferred.

How are phone and ethernet cable connectors different?

Ok, now let’s get to how phone and ethernet cable connectors are different.

The connectors on phone cables are called RJ11 connectors.

The “RJ” in this naming convention stands for “Registered Jack”, and it refers to the standard that the connectors are made to.

Conversely, connectors for ethernet cables are made to the RJ45 standard.

Here’s a close look at an RJ11 and RJ45 connector next to each other:

When comparing these connectors, one thing to pay close attention to is the gold pins on the connectors.

As you can see, there are 4 pins on the phone cable connector (RJ11) and 8 pins on the ethernet cable connector (RJ45).

The reason for this is that there’ll be one gold pin on the connector for each wire in the cable. These pins allow the data traveling through the copper wires inside the cables to reach the devices that the cable is connected to.

As we discussed previously, phone cables have 4 wires inside them, while ethernet cables have 8 wires inside them. That’s why phone and ethernet cables have quite different connector standards.

Data transfer capacity

The last major difference between phone and ethernet cables has to do with the data transfer rates they can support.

This difference goes hand-in-hand with the number of wires inside each cable.

To cut to the chase, ethernet cables can support much faster data transfer rates than phone cables can.

Let’s get into the specifics.

Speeds supported by phone and ethernet cables

Phone cables support a maximum data transfer speed of 24 megabits per second (24 Mbps).

Ethernet cables can support much faster data transfer speeds.

There are multiple categories of ethernet cables, and each of these categories supports a different data transfer speed. With that said, the most commonly used ethernet cable categories (cat 5e and cat6) support maximum data transfer speeds of 1 gigabit per second (1 Gbps) and 10 gigabits per second (10 Gbps), respectively.

In other words, ethernet cables can support data transfer speeds up to 40 times faster than phone cables.

This all has to do with the applications that these cables are used in.

Phone and ethernet cable applications

Phone cables are most commonly used to provide a home or office with a landline phone connection. In these instances, the phone cables are used to transfer audio data from one phone to another. This telecommunication data doesn’t require a lot of bandwidth.

On the other hand, the data transfer speed requirements for ethernet cables are much greater. This is because they’re used to support data moving between computers.

The data moving between computers is much more variable than the data moving across phone cables. Telephone cables were originally designed to only transfer audio data, while ethernet cables were designed to transfer audio, video, and file data.

This is why there are only 4 copper wires in a phone cable and 8 wires inside an ethernet cable. The more wires inside the cable, the faster the data transfer speeds they can support.

A good analogy here is lanes on a highway. The more lanes there are, the more traffic that can be supported at a given time.

Phone cables don’t need to support nearly as much data at a given time when compared to ethernet cables. That’s why they have less wires inside them.

Can a phone line be used for internet?

I previously mentioned that phone cables were originally designed to only transfer telecommunication data.

This was long before the internet age and the widespread use of computers.

As the internet age began and matured, the easiest way to connect computers to the internet was through the landline phone lines that were already running to everyone’s house.

So at this time, everyone was using phone lines to connect to the internet. This was called dial-up internet. The maximum data transfer speed provided by dial-up internet was 56 kilobits per second (Kbps). Phone cables could more than support this requirement.

As the internet matured, data transfer speed requirements increased. Eventually, dial-up internet using phone cables couldn’t support the data transfer speeds that were needed to keep up.

This lead to the development of digital subscriber line internet, or DSL.

Like dial-up internet, DSL provided internet over phone lines. However, instead of maximum speeds of 56 Kbps, most DSL providers could provide speeds up to 20 Mbps.

In fact, many internet providers still offer DSL today.

So if you have a DSL internet plan, you can still use phone cables to get an internet connection. With DSL, you’ll have a phone cable connecting your modem to a phone jack in the wall. This’ll provide your home with an internet connection.

One thing to keep in mind here is that 20 Mbps is considered slow in today’s age of the internet. With DSL you can probably support 1 person using the internet and streaming videos. If you have multiple people in your home who all use the internet at the same time, you may want to upgrade your service to a faster internet plan (which won’t use phone cables).

Can phone lines be used as ethernet cables?

If you can still use phone cables to connect to the internet (i.e. if you have a DSL plan), can you also use phone cables to connect your devices together?

Unfortunately, the answer here is no.

To answer this question, I’ll refer you back to the differences between ethernet and phone cables.

They don’t fit into ethernet ports

For starters, today’s internet devices don’t come with fittings for RJ11 devices.

If you look at any of your internet-connected devices, the vast majority will have ports that are made for an RJ45 connector. This is because they’re designed to be used with ethernet cables.

So even if you wanted to, you couldn’t use a phone cable as an ethernet cable because it wouldn’t fit into the devices you were trying to connect to.

Check this out for a visual example:

In the photo above, I’m attempting to plug a phone cable into the ethernet port on my laptop.

It might be a little difficult to see, but the phone cable doesn’t securely fit into the ethernet port. If you look closely, you might be able to see the gap on the right-hand side of the ethernet port.

Hopefully that’s enough evidence that phone cables can’t be used as ethernet cables.

If not, let’s refer back to the data transfer rates of phone cables and ethernet cables.

Data transfer limitations

Ethernet cables support much faster speeds (up to 1 Gbps or greater) than phone cables (up to 24 Mbps). So even if you could use a phone cable to connect your devices like an ethernet cable, it’d greatly slow down you network. The phone cable wouldn’t be able to support the data transfer speeds that your devices require.

If you don’t have any on hand, the best thing to do here is pick up a few cat5e or cat6 cables.

While you’re at it, you can probably get rid of any extra phone cables you have. Unless you still use a landline telephone or DSL internet, they won’t be of much use.

Wrap up

At this point, it should be clear that phone and ethernet cables have different purposes, and you can’t use them interchangeably. In fact, most home networks don’t have a use for phone cables anymore.

The only reasons why you’d still be using phone cables in your home network would be if you still have a landline phone, or you have a DSL internet plan.

If you have any questions about the information in this post, please drop me a comment below.

If this was useful information for you, check out some other posts I’ve written on similar topics:

What Does Cat Mean for Ethernet Cables?

The Difference Between Cat5e and Cat6 Cables

How to Tell What Type of Ethernet Cable You Have

Do the Colors of Ethernet Cables Matter?

Is an Ethernet Cable Faster Than WiFi?

Ethernet colors come in a variety of colors.

If you’ve ever bought ethernet cables online (like these for example), I’m sure you’ve seen the options that’re available to you. To name a few choices, you can find ethernet cables in the following colors:

• Gray
• Black
• Blue
• Red
• Green
• White
• Yellow

Depending upon where you look, you can find many other colors in addition to the ones listed above.

A lot of questions come from these different color choices.

What is the difference between cables that are different colors?

Do I need to buy cables that are a specific color?

Do all my ethernet cables have to be the same color?

All of these questions boil down to one basic question: does the color of my ethernet cables matter?

Thankfully, the answer is pretty straightforward.

The color of an ethernet cable doesn’t matter. A cable’s color has no impact on the performance or configuration of the cable.

Cables are made in different colors to make things easier on the end user. If a certain color is used for certain types of devices, a user can quickly identify what a cable in their network is used for.

In this post, I’ll discuss all you need to know about the colors of your ethernet cables. I’ll also answer a few of the most commonly asked questions when it comes to selecting what color of ethernet cable to buy.

What do the different colors of ethernet cables indicate?

Let’s compare two ethernet cables that are different colors.

Here are two ethernet cables that I use in my home network:

They’re both the same category of cable (cat5e), and the only difference between them is their color.

So the question is, will these two cables perform differently?

The answer is no.

The reason for this is because the color of the cable has no impact on its performance. The two cables above will perform exactly the same.

Think of it like two cars that are the same year, make, and model. One is painted red and the other is painted black.

Even though the cars are different colors, everything about the performance of the cars is the same.

Both cars will accelerate at the same rate, get the same gas mileage, and have the same top speed.

The same principle applies with ethernet cables.

In this case, as long as the design and technical configuration of the cable is the same (i.e. the category of the cable is the same), it doesn’t matter what color it is.

The category of the cable will tell you about it’s design, so that’s much more important to pay attention to if you want to know how a cable will perform.

To say it differently, you can’t tell anything about an ethernet cable by looking at what color it is.

For example, here are two other cables in my network:

The cable on the left is a cat5e cable and the one on the right is a cat6 cable.

Even though they’re both yellow, they have totally different performance specifications. The cat6 cable will support faster speeds than the cat5e cable because it’s built to higher specifications.

The same would be true regardless of the colors of the two cables.

What color ethernet cable should I use?

If the color of an ethernet cable doesn’t affect its performance, does that mean you can use any color cables you want in your home network?

Yes it does.

You can choose any color of ethernet cable that you like. With that said, there are a few considerations you might want to keep in mind when choosing your cable color.

Where will the cable be located?

Perhaps the most important question to ask yourself is where your ethernet cables will be located. Answering this question can go a long way towards helping you figure out what color of ethernet cable to get.

For example, will you be wiring ethernet cable jacks in different rooms of your home?

If that’s the case, the ethernet cables will be located in the walls and ceilings of your home. You won’t be able to physically see the cables, so it doesn’t matter what color you choose.

You’re free to choose any color of the rainbow.

What if your ethernet cables will be out in the open in your home? Does that change the color selection of your cables?

Honestly, that boils down to how much you care about how your house looks.

If you don’t want your ethernet cables standing out, you might want to pick a color that matches the walls of the room the cable will be in. This might be especially important if you have long ethernet cables.

Here’s an example of what I’m referring to:

As you can see, with the gray walls in my home, a gray ethernet cable is a good choice. It blends in with the background and you don’t really notice it.

What would this look like if I used yellow ethernet cables?

It wouldn’t look very pretty:

The yellow ethernet cable is much more noticeable than the gray ethernet cable.

Again, for some people it isn’t a big deal if their ethernet cables don’t match their environment. It’s just something to consider when deciding what color to get.

How complex is your network?

The other variable to consider when selecting an ethernet cable color is how complex your network will be.

If you’re like me and your home network isn’t very complicated, the color of your ethernet cables won’t matter as much.

To give you some perspective, I currently have yellow, black, and gray ethernet cables in my home network. With that said, my home network isn’t very complex so I can get away with it.

Here’s what my home network looks like:

At the end of the day, I don’t have too many wired devices in my home. As a result, I’m not too worried about grouping my wired devices by color.

If I wired my entire house with ethernet cables, and had multiple ethernet switches with different cables plugged into them, that would be a different story.

If you’ve seen pictures of datacenters or other complex environments, you may have noticed that the ethernet cables are all the same color.

I’ll refer you to example A:

The cable colors are coordinated because it makes it easier for IT administrators to identify what each cable is used for. If the network wasn’t organized like this, it would be much harder to find out what each ethernet cable is used for.

I’m sure you’ve experienced a similar situation in your home when a bunch of wires are tangled together. It can make it extremely difficult to figure out what wire goes to what device. This is what complex environments are avoiding by coordinating the colors of their cables.

I would imagine for most home networks this color coordination of ethernet cables may not be necessary, but it’s something to consider if you have a lot of security cameras or other wired devices in your home.

Do all my ethernet cables have to be the same color?

Ok, so we’ve established that we have freedom when picking what color of ethernet cable we want to use. We can choose any color of cable we want.

A common follow-up question to this is: once you pick a color, do all your ethernet cables have to be the same color?

The answer is no. You have freedom here as well.

Take my home network for example.

As I mentioned, I have 3 differently colored cables in my network. It might not be the prettiest, but it gets the job done.

Every single cable in your network can be a different color if you so desire.

This supports the key point that the color of the cable has no impact on its performance. So long as the cable is a category that supports the speed of your network, the color doesn’t matter. This is true for every ethernet cable in your network.

Wrap up

The color of an ethernet cable doesn’t have an impact on its performance, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be useful.

You can use ethernet cable colors to organize your network, or make them blend into the background of the room they’re in.

For many people, the color of an ethernet cable isn’t even a consideration. As long as the cable works, it doesn’t matter what color it is.

The bottom line is, the choice is yours. You can put as much or as little thought into it as you want.

If you have any questions about any of the information in this post, or you’d like to share your experiences with ethernet cable colors, please drop a comment below.

If you found this post helpful, be sure to check out some of the other posts I’ve written on similar topics:

What Does Cat Mean for Ethernet Cables?

How Long Do Ethernet Cables Last?

How to Extend an Ethernet Cable

Does Ethernet Cable Length Affect Network Speed?

Can an Ethernet Cable Slow Your Internet Speed?

In order to make your own ethernet cables (or modify ones you have), you need quite a few tools to get the job done correctly.

If you’re crimping your own cables, you may have:

• A crimping tool
• An ethernet cable stripping tool
• RJ45 connector boots
• An ethernet cable testing device

In addition to the items above, you’ll also need RJ45 connectors (also called ethernet cable connectors) for any crimping job you do.

Of all the tools needed to crimp an ethernet cable, RJ45 connectors cause the most questions.

The most common question surrounding these connectors is if they can be reused or not.

In other words, if you remove a connector from one cable, can you attach it to another cable? Or if you remove a connector to shorten one of your ethernet cables, can you reattach the same connector to the end of it?

There’s good and bad news here.

RJ45 connectors cannot be reused once they’ve previously been attached to another cable. With that said, RJ45 connectors are very inexpensive, and you can buy them online or your local electronics store for an affordable price.

In this post, I’ll break down everything you need to know about why you can’t reuse RJ45 connectors, as well as your alternatives if you need to replace one.

How is an RJ45 connector attached to an ethernet cable?

In order to understand why RJ45 connectors can’t be reused, you first need to understand how they’re attached to cables in the first place.

RJ45 connectors are attached to cables through a process called crimping.

When you crimp an connector onto an ethernet cable, a few different things are happening at the same time.

The copper wires are joined to the RJ45 connector pins

The first (and most important) thing that happens during crimping is the copper wires inside the ethernet cable are joined with the metallic pins on the RJ45 connector.

Let’s slow things down here a bit.

Inside an ethernet cable, there are 8 copper wires.

These 8 wires make the ethernet cable work as intended. Data is sent through these wires from one end of the cable to the other in the form of electric signals.

The next piece of this is the RJ45 connector.

The RJ45 connector needs to take the electric signals from the 8 copper wires and transfer them to the device its plugged in to.

In order to accomplish this, you might notice that RJ45 connectors have metallic pins on them.

These pins transfer the electric signals from the wires in the cable to your devices.

For your information, if you look closely at the ethernet ports on your devices, you’ll also see metallic pins.

When these pins are in contact with the pins of the RJ45 connector, the electric pulses from the connector are able to travel to the ethernet port of the device.

The pins on the RJ45 connector and ethernet port basically serve as extensions to the copper wires in the ethernet cable.

So yeah, the pins are a pretty big deal. Without them, your ethernet cables wouldn’t be able to transfer their information to your devices.

The reason crimping is so important here is because the crimping process is what connects the wires in an ethernet cable to the pins of the RJ45 connector.

How ethernet cable wires and RJ45 connector pins are joined

As I mentioned, the crimping process connects the 8 wires inside the ethernet cable with the pins on the RJ45 connector.

It’s important to understand how that happens, because it gives us good background when answering the question if RJ45 connectors can be reused or not.

Let’s start with a connector that’s never been connected to an ethernet cable.

Here’s what it’ll look like:

Everything looks normal there, right?

As you can see, there are 8 pins. There’s one pin for each wire in the ethernet cable. Below each pin is a channel that each of the copper wires in the cable fits in.

When you look at the RJ45 connector from the side, you’ll notice that the gold pins on the connector are a little raised.

If you look a little closer, you’ll see that on the bottom of each of these pins is 3 prongs.

These prongs are used to pierce into the copper wires of the ethernet cable during the crimping process.

During crimping, a crimping tool is used to push the pins down into the wires beneath them.

After the crimping process, the pins won’t be raised like they were before.

On top of that, you’ll see that the prongs from the pin are now going into the wires beneath them.

This is what ensures a good connection between the wires and the pins on the RJ45 connector.

Ok, that covers the first part of the crimping process.

Now let’s talk about the other action that happens during crimping.

The RJ45 connector is clamped onto the sheath of the cable

The other action that happens during the crimping process has to do with the protective sheath of the cable.

When a connector is crimped onto a cable, it’s clamped onto the cable’s sheath. This action prevents the RJ45 connector from separating from the cable.

Here’s what it looks like after the crimping process:

As you can see, the pointed plastic piece has been pressed onto the cable. This makes it much harder for the connector to get ripped off.

If the connector and cable were only attached to each other by the connector’s pins and the wires of the cable, the connector could get ripped off the cable. This would cause the wires inside the connector would break.

Clamping the connector onto the outer sheath of the cable helps prevent this from happening.

Can an RJ45 connector be reused?

Now we have a good understanding of how RJ45 connectors are connected to ethernet cables through crimping.

With this information, we can clearly answer whether RJ45 connectors can be reused or not.

To put it simply, the answer is no.

Once they’ve been crimped, RJ45 connectors can’t be reused.

The main reason for this has to do with the pins on the RJ45 connector.

As I mentioned above, the pins on an RJ45 connector are raised before they’re crimped. These pins are pushed down and clamped onto the wires beneath them during crimping.

Once these pins are pushed down, there’s no way to clamp them on a new set of wires. In other words, the crimping process is irreversible when it comes to RJ45 connectors.

I actually learned this the hard way when I first got my crimping kit.

I wanted to see how my crimping tool worked, so I put an RJ45 connector into the tool and pressed down.

Upon removing the RJ45 connector from the crimping tool, I realized my mistake.

The pins on the connector were pushed down.

As a result, I couldn’t insert the copper wires from the ethernet cable as far into the RJ45 connector as I needed to. The pins that were pushed down were blocking the wires.

If you’d like, you can even test this for yourself. Use your crimping tool on an RJ45 connector that isn’t attached to a cable. You can actually see the pins of the connector being pushed down by the crimping tool.

If you look closely, you can see the 8 pins pushed down at the end of the connector.

The bottom line here is: once you’ve used a crimping tool on an RJ45 connector, it can’t be reused.

What should you do if you need an RJ45 connector?

Finding out that RJ45 connectors can’t be reused probably isn’t the best news.

It’s not all bad news, however.

If you need an RJ45 connector for an ethernet cable, you have a few good options.

Buy spare RJ45 connectors

If you’re going to be crimping your own ethernet cables, you’re going to need RJ45 connectors.

If you can’t reuse the connectors you have, what are you supposed to do?

Buy some!

You can find RJ45 connectors online or at your local electronics store. They’re inexpensive, and they usually come in packages with multiple connectors.

The best thing to do is buy a bunch of connectors so you always have some fresh ones on hand when you need them.

It might not be as easy as reusing the connectors you have, but it’s still pretty easy.

Buy new ethernet cables

If you don’t envision yourself crimping a lot of cables in the future, or you don’t want to keep an inventory of RJ45 connectors, you have another option.

You can just buy new ethernet cables when you need them.

This might be a good approach if you have a connector break and you just want to replace it, but it won’t solve your problems if you want to build your own custom ethernet cables.

On top of that, if you replace multiple ethernet cables just because they have a broken RJ45 connector tab, it’ll cost you more to buy replacement cables instead of buying a crimping kit and fixing them on your own.

If you need connectors, I recommend you just buy some spare connectors instead of buying brand new cables. It can save you money in the long run.

With that said, if you take good care of your cables and you don’t need any that are custom lengths, you can probably get away with just buying new cables when needed.

It all depends upon your unique situation and what’s best for your home network.

Wrap up

Let’s go over what we’ve learned today.

You can’t reuse RJ45 connectors after they’ve been crimped.

You can, however, buy replacement RJ45 connectors that you can use any time you need one.

If you have any questions about the information in this post, or you’d like to share your experiences with replacing ethernet cable connectors, please feel free to drop a comment below.

If this information was helpful to you, check out some of these other posts on similar topics:

How Do You Crimp Ethernet Cables?

How Long Do Ethernet Cables Last?

The Difference Between Cat5e and Cat6 Cables

How to Extend an Ethernet Cable

What Does Cat Mean for Ethernet Cables?

Have you ever purchased an ethernet cable that was just a little too long?

Better yet, have you ever thought about buying a coil of ethernet cable and making your own cables?

If you ever find yourself in this situation, you need to know how to crimp your ethernet cables.

So how do you crimp an ethernet cable?

At a high level, the steps for crimping an ethernet cable are as follows:

1. Identify the length of the ethernet cable you need
2. Cut the ethernet cable so it is a few inches longer than what you need
3. Strip at least 1 inch of the protective sheath off of the end of the cable
4. Put an ethernet cable connector boot on the cable (if you have one)
5. Untwist the exposed pairs of twisted wires
6. Line up the untwisted wires into one of the standard ethernet cable pinout configurations
7. Cut the aligned wires so they are all the same length
8. Insert the wires into the end of an ethernet cable connector
9. Use a crimping tool to crimp the wires inside the ethernet cable connector
10. Test the cable to make sure it works properly

There you have it. That’s all you need to do if you want to create your own ethernet cables.

In this post, I’ll provide more detail about the high-level steps above, as well as everything you’ll need to crimp your ethernet cables.

What is crimping?

Before we get into how to crimp ethernet cables, let’s make sure we have an understanding of what crimping is.

Crimping is the process of terminating the wires inside an ethernet cable with a connector. These connectors are called RJ45 connectors.

Despite their confusing name, I’m sure you’ve seen them before:

RJ45 connectors allow you to connect your ethernet cable into an ethernet port on one of your devices.

Essentially, crimping is a fancy term for putting an RJ45 connector on an ethernet cable. It may sound easy, but the process actually requires a little attention to detail.

I’ll detail all about that later.

Why you need to crimp ethernet cables

Ok so now we’re on the same page about what crimping means.

Let’s talk about why you’d want to crimp an ethernet cable in the first place.

There are a few reasons why you’d want to crimp your cables. You either:

• Need to shorten one of your ethernet cables
• Want to make your own cables
• Want to replace the connector on a cable

Chances are, at least one of these situations will be applicable to you at some point. In breaking down each of these scenarios, you’ll see that knowing how to crimp ethernet cables can come in pretty handy.

You need to shorten an ethernet cable

This is probably the most common situation for everyday home networks.

We’ve all been there.

You buy an ethernet cable and connect it to the two devices you need to connect. At this point you notice there’s a lot of slack in the cable.

Maybe this is a tripping hazard, or maybe it just makes your home look disorganized.

You have a few options here.

One option is to buy a cable tie to keep the excess cable neatly coiled. The other option is to shorten the cable so there’s less excess between your two devices.

That’s where crimping comes in.

If you crimp the ethernet cable and make it shorter, you won’t have any excess cable. It’ll look much neater as well.

You want to make your own cables

It’s not uncommon for people to make their own ethernet cables. Especially if they’re going to use a lot of them in their home.

Some people even buy long coils of ethernet cable and wire an ethernet jack in each room in their home. This is usually what you’ll find in offices as well.

You really can’t fault them either, because there are benefits to using ethernet cables instead of WiFi to connect devices.

If you need really long ethernet cables, or you just need a lot of them, you can save a lot of money making your own cables. That’s because buying ethernet cable in bulk is much cheaper than buying individual cables.

It also gives you the flexibility of making cables that’re exactly the length you need.

You want to replace a connector of a cable

This is another situation I’m sure you’ve seen before.

Have you ever had a tab break off of one of the RJ45 connectors on your ethernet cable?

It ranks as one of the most annoying things in the world.

One minute the connector on your cable looks like this:

The next thing you know, it looks like this:

When a tab breaks off a cable connector, it’ll constantly fall out of the device it’s plugged in to. Many people go and buy a brand new cable when this happens.

You won’t have to do that if you know how to crimp your own cables.

By crimping the cable, you can replace the connector with a brand new RJ45 connector. The bonus here is it only takes a few minutes.

Much better than having to go out and buy an entirely new cable. Or worse yet, struggle to get by with an ethernet cable with a broken tab.

What you need to crimp ethernet cables

Ok, let’s say you want to crimp some of your ethernet cables.

Where do you start?

The first thing you should do is make sure you have the right equipment.

The most important piece of equipment you’ll need is a cable crimping tool, which looks like this:

You can find these online and in many electronics stores. The catch here is that you’ll probably need more than just a crimping tool if you’re going to crimp your own cables.

The good news is that there’s an easy solution for this.

To get everything you need, you can buy a crimping kit. A lot of crimping kits will include:

• A crimping tool
• An ethernet cable stripping tool
• Ethernet cable boots
• RJ45 connectors
• An ethernet cable testing device

Let’s look at each of these items in a little more detail to explain why they’ll be useful when crimping ethernet cables.

Crimping tool

As I mentioned, a crimping tool is essential if you want to quickly and reliably crimp your cables.

Crimping tools are used to attach the wires inside an ethernet cable to an RJ45 connector. They’re very easy to use once you know how to order the wires correctly (which we’ll get to later).

If you have a small number of cables to crimp, it’s possible to use a screwdriver instead of a crimping tool to attach the RJ45 connector to the wires in the cable. I would advise against this, however, because using a screwdriver is much slower and less effective than using a crimping tool.

On top of that, you don’t know how many cables you’ll have to crimp in the future.

Trust me, you’ll be much happier with a crimping tool. Even if you don’t want to buy a complete crimping kit, I suggest you at least pick up a crimping tool.

Ethernet cable stripping tool

An ethernet cable stripping tool is also very handy to have.

Here’s what they look like:

As you may have guessed, ethernet cable stripping tools are used to remove the sheath of an ethernet cable. You can use other tools to cut the sheath off an ethernet cable, but if you’re not careful you can damage the wires inside it.

The last thing you want to do is damage the wires in the cable, because then the cable won’t work properly.

With a stripping tool, you can quickly and easily strip the sheath off of a cable without having to worry about damaging the wires inside it.

You’ll need to do this when crimping your cables, because you need access to the wires in the cable in order to attach them to an RJ45 connector. If you’d like, you can buy these separately from an ethernet cable crimping kit.

Ethernet cable boots

Although they aren’t mandatory, ethernet cable boots are good insurance for your ethernet cables.

I’m sure you’ve seen these before, as they’re pretty common on ethernet cables.

The purpose of ethernet cable boots is to protect the tab on the RJ45 connector.

When an ethernet cable has a boot on it, it prevents the tab of the RJ45 connector from snagging on something. If the tab of an RJ45 connector gets broken off, it’ll be much harder to keep the cable connected to the device it’s plugged in to.

As you can see, the boot provides a protective housing over the tab of the connector.

Again, you don’t need to use these on your ethernet cables if you don’t want to.

With that being said, if the tab on one of your RJ45 connectors breaks off, you’ll wish you had a boot on it. You can buy these separately if you don’t want everything that comes in a crimping kit.

RJ45 connectors

RJ45 connectors are pretty self-explanatory.

The bottom line is that you can’t have a working ethernet cable without RJ45 connectors on each end.

It’s very helpful to have some spare connectors on hand at all times. You never know when you’ll need to crimp a cable or replace a connector.

Ethernet cable testing device

When you’ve finished crimping an ethernet cable, you want to be able to check your work.

That’s why ethernet cable testing devices are so helpful.

Here’s an example of what they look like:

An ethernet cable testing device will tell you if a cable is working properly. In other words, it’ll tell you if you correctly crimped your cable.

These devices are also handy because you can use them to troubleshoot if you think one of your ethernet cables has gone bad.

I recommend one of these devices for anyone who uses multiple ethernet cables in their home network. You can also buy them separately if you don’t want the other items that come in a crimping kit.

How to crimp ethernet cables

Ok, now you have everything you need to get started crimping some cables.

I’d recommend gathering all the items you need to crimp an ethernet cable so you can complete the process without getting interrupted.

Let’s get started.

1. Identify the length of cable you need

Like most things in life, preparation is key. Before you start chopping up your cables with reckless abandon, there are some things you need to consider first.

One question you need to ask yourself is: how long do I want my ethernet cable to be?

If you’re just replacing an RJ45 connector on an ethernet cable, this is a simple question. You don’t need to worry about changing the length of the cable.

It’s a little bit different if you’re making your own cables, however.

You’ll want to make sure you take a measurement of the length of cable you need.

2. Cut the ethernet cable a few inches longer than you need

Once you’ve identified the length of cable you need, you’re ready to cut the cable.

The key here is that you’ll want to add a few inches to the length of the cable when you’re cutting it. This gives you a little extra length to work with when you’re adding the RJ45 connector to the cable.

As you’ll see, you’ll lose a few inches of the cable when you’re preparing to attach the RJ45 connector.

If you have to add an RJ45 connector to both ends of the cable, you should cut the cable even longer. You’ll want to give yourself even more room to work with.

Cutting the cable longer than you need has multiple benefits. It ensures the cable is long enough after you’ve attached the connectors to it. It also gives you room for error in case you make some mistakes and have to crimp the cable multiple times.

When you’re ready, I recommend you cut the cable with your crimping tool if you have one. It should come with a blade on it that’s made specifically for cutting ethernet cables.

If you don’t have a crimping tool with a cutter on it, you can use a pair of scissors. You just want to make sure the cut is even across the cable.

3. Expose more than 1 inch of wires at the end of the cable

Ok, you’ve gone ahead and cut the cable.

The end of the cable should now look like this:

In order to attach an RJ45 connector to your ethernet cable, you’ll need to be able to access the wires inside it. That’s the next thing we need to take care of.

This is where our ethernet cable stripping tool comes in handy. It’ll remove the sheath from the cable without damaging the wires inside it.

How to use the stripping tool

The first thing to do is identify at what point you want to strip the sheath from the cable.

I recommend you remove more than an inch of the cable’s outer layer. This’ll give you more room to work with when preparing to insert the wires into a connector.

To remove the outer layer of the cable, press down on the lever at the top of the stripping tool and insert the cable into the notch that it fits in. Once the cable is in place, release the lever at the top of the stripping tool to lock the cable in place.

Make sure the blade on the stripping tool is at the location on the cable from where you want to strip the sheath off of it.

At this point, the cable and stripping tool should look like this:

Now that everything is in place, you’re ready to cut the sheath.

Stick a finger into the circular part of the stripping tool and rotate the tool in a circular motion all the way around the cable.

Once the outer layer of the cable has been cut all the way around, you can unclip the cable from the stripping device and remove the sheath. This’ll expose the wires inside the cable.

It should look something like this:

As a reminder, make sure you have more than an inch of exposed wires to work with.

Ok, let’s move to the next step.

4. Put a boot on the ethernet cable

If you’re going to put a boot on your cable to protect the RJ45 connector, now’s a good time to do it.

I’ve made this mistake too many times. Once the RJ45 connector is on the cable, you can’t put the boot on. It won’t slide over the connector.

It’s best to put the boot on now before things get complicated.

Feel free to slide the boot far down the cable so it’s out of your way. Here’s a good example of what I’m talking about.

By adding the boot now, it makes things easy once the connector has been attached to the cable. All you have to do is slide it up and over the tab of the connector.

Keep in mind that you don’t have to use boots on your cables. They just serve as a layer of protection so the tabs on the RJ45 connectors don’t break.

5. Untwist the exposed pairs of wires

This next step is pretty easy.

Take a look at the wires you exposed with the stripping tool. Hopefully you’ll notice that the wires are twisted in pairs of two inside the cable. In total, you should have 4 pairs of twisted wires.

Go ahead and separate these pairs of twisted wires so you can clearly see the 4 pairs.

Now that you have the 4 pairs of twisted wires separated, go ahead and untwist them.

For the next step, you’ll want all the wires separated like the picture below.

6. Order the wires in a standard ethernet cable pinout configuration

This next part is where it can start to get a little tricky.

Now that you’ve separated the wires, you need to line them up in a certain order.

There are two possible ways to line up the wires. These are called pinout configurations.

The two different pinout configurations are called T-568A and T-568B. Here’s the order of the wires in each configuration:

Due to advancements in ethernet cable technology, you can pick the pinout configuration you want to use. The cable will work regardless of the pinout configuration.

With that said, if you’ll be adding a connector to each end of the cable, I recommend using the same pinout configuration at each end.

If you want to follow the crowd here, most ethernet cables I’ve come across have a T-568B configuration.

Go ahead and pick a pinout configuration and get the wires lined up next to each other.

7. Cut the untwisted wires so they are all the same length

Once all your wires are lined up in a pinout configuration, your cable will probably look like this:

As you can see, the wires are not all the same length.

To get a good fit with the RJ45 connector that goes on the end of the cable, you’re going to want the wires to be the same length.

Here we can use our trusty crimping tool to even the wires out. Once again, if you’re in a pinch you can probably get away with using scissors to do this.

After cutting the wires, they should all be the same length.

Just make sure you don’t cut the wires down too much. They still need to fit into the end of the connector when you attach it.

8. Insert the wires into an ethernet cable connector

After trimming the ends of the wires, make sure they stay in order. The ethernet cable won’t work if the cables aren’t in one of the standard pinout configurations.

After ensuring the wires are still in order, you’re ready to insert the wires into an RJ45 connector.

Carefully insert the wires into the connector. The tab of the connector should be on the side facing away from you when you do this. Insert the wires all the way into the connector until they reach the metallic pins at the end.

At this point, it should look like this:

It’s very important that the wires of the cable reach the pins at the end of the connector.

Unfortunately I’ve made the mistake of cutting the wires too short before. Here’s the evidence:

As you can see, the colored wires don’t reach the gold pins in the connector. When I tested the cable above with my ethernet cable tester, it indicated that the cable wasn’t working. It was at that time I realized my fatal mistake.

Don’t let this happen to you.

9. Crimp the wires inside the connector

Now you’re ready to finish the cable. Make sure your crimping tool is on hand.

Before your take any action, take a look at the side of your crimping tool. You should see two openings that’re labeled “8P” and “6P”.

These openings are designed for crimping RJ45 connectors. The 8P refers to 8-pin connectors, while the 6P refers to 6-pin connectors.

In this case, we’ll want to use the 8P opening because there are 8 pins (and 8 wires) in your RJ45 connectors. To prove this point, you can count the gold pins on an RJ45 connector.

See? There’ll be one pin for each wire inside the cable.

For your information, the 6-pin opening on your crimping tool is for RJ11 connectors. RJ11 connectors are used in phone line connectors.

Now that we’ve identified the 8-pin opening, we’re ready to crimp your ethernet cable.

All you have to do is place the RJ45 connector into the 8P opening in your crimping tool. Make sure the connector is inserted all the way into the tool.

Once it’s fully inserted, squeeze the handles of the crimping tool all the way.

Next, release the handles all the way and squeeze them again. By squeezing the handles twice, it’ll ensure the cable is crimped correctly.

Once you’ve crimped the cable, remove the connector from the crimping tool and make sure it’s securely attached to the ethernet cable.

Next, you want to make sure it works properly. Before we get into testing the cable, there are a few things to keep in mind while crimping your cable.

Important notes when crimping

When crimping your ethernet cable, there are a few things to take note of.

For one, you need to make sure that the RJ45 connector goes into the side of the crimping tool that’s labeled “8P”. If you put the ethernet connector into the crimping tool from the side that isn’t labeled, it won’t crimp correctly.

When you crimp a cable, the 8 pins on the RJ45 connector get pushed down into the 8 wires in the cable. If you look closely, you’ll see that your crimping tool has teeth on it on one side.

If you don’t put the connector into the crimping tool from the correct side, the teeth won’t match up with the pins it needs to push down.

And yes, I’ve made this mistake before.

The other thing you need to be aware of is the fact that you can’t crimp a connector more than once. In other words, you can’t reuse your connectors.

I didn’t realize this when I first started crimping cables.

If you think about what’s happening when you crimp a connector, it makes sense. As I mentioned above, when you crimp a connector onto an ethernet cable, the pins of the connector are pushed down onto the wires in the cable.

After you’ve crimped a cable, the pins will be pushed down on the connector. Once they’re pushed down, you can’t reset them again.

Here’s what the pins on a connector look like before they’ve been crimped down:

And here’s what a connector looks like after it’s been crimped:

Just make sure the connector that you’ll be crimping has its pins up. Otherwise, it won’t crimp onto the cable properly.

And yes, I’ve made this mistake before as well.

10. Test the cable to make sure it works properly

So you’ve successfully crimped your ethernet cable.

Before we do somersaults and celebrate your accomplishment, let’s make sure the cable works first.

The fastest and easiest way to test your newly crimped cable is with an ethernet cable tester. Many crimping kits will come with a tester, and they make things much easier when you get to this point.

Essentially, all you have to do is plug each end of the cable into two of the RJ45 connector ports on the device. One connector goes in the Master side of the tester, while the other plugs into the Remote side.

Once the cable is connected, just turn the tester on.

Each light numbered 1 through 8 will light up in order (one at a time). If the lights on the master and remote tester devices light up at the same time and in the same order, you’re in good shape.

How to tell if a cable fails the test

Something is wrong with your cable if:

• One of the lights on either device is skipped
• Any of the lights on either device turn red
• The numbered lights on both devices don’t light up at the same time

If something is wrong with your cable when you test it, you may want to try crimping it again. Carefully go through the steps detailed in this post to see what might’ve gone wrong.

It’s also possible that something is wrong with the cable you crimped. If you try to crimp it a few times and the cable isn’t passing the test, you might need to get a new cable.

Alternative to using an ethernet cable tester

The other alternative here is to connect the cable to two devices and see if they’re able to communicate.

The trouble with this is, there might be other reasons why the devices can’t communicate. It might not be because the cable was crimped incorrectly.

That being said, if you use the cable to connect two devices and they’re able to communicate, you know you’re all set.

To know for sure if your cable is in good shape, it’s worth getting a cable tester.

Wrap up

Now you should be able to crimp your own ethernet cables.

You’re officially dangerous.

Knowing how to crimp your own cables provides a lot of flexibility for you in your home network. You’ll also find that with these skills, you’ll be able to help a lot of your friends with their networks, if you so choose.

If you have any questions about this procedure, or you’d like to share your experiences and frustrations crimping cables, please leave a comment below.

If you’d like to learn more about similar topics that I’ve written about, check out the following posts:

How Long Do Ethernet Cables Last?

How to Extend an Ethernet Cable

Does Ethernet Cable Length Affect Network Speed?

How to Tell if an Ethernet Cable is Bad

How to Tell What Type of Ethernet Cable You Have

Nothing lasts forever.

It’s a saying as old as time. It’s also true.

Especially for the devices in your home network.

For one reason or another, all the components in your home network will need to be replaced at some point. This includes your:

• Modem
• Router
• Computers/laptops
• Smartphones
• Gaming systems
• Ethernet switches
• Ethernet cables

Those are just a few examples. The actual list is much longer than this, and it’s growing by the day as more devices are connected to the internet.

They’ll all need to be replaced eventually.

The real question is: how long will each of these components last before they need to be replaced?

In this post, the focus is on ethernet cables.

So how long can you expect ethernet cables to last?

Your ethernet cables can last you 20 years (or longer) if the following conditions are met:

• The cables are used in a dry and mild environment
• You do not abuse your cables and you handle them with care
• You buy cables that allow for future growth of your network and can support demand for faster speeds

In the following sections, I’ll detail everything you need to do to get the maximum life out of your cables.

What is an ethernet cable made of?

To understand how to preserve your ethernet cables, you should have a good idea of what they’re made of.

Before you get overwhelmed, I have some good news: ethernet cables are pretty simple devices.

Most standard ethernet cables consist of 8 copper wires inside of a PVC (polyvinyl chloride) sheath.

The PVC sheath is meant to protect the copper wires in the cable from being damaged. It also serves as a barrier against moisture and other elements in the environment that can cause the wires to oxidize or corrode.

Inside the cable, the 8 copper wires are usually separated into 4 pairs of 2 wires each. These 4 pairs of wire are twisted together inside the cable.

Here’s what the twisted pairs look like:

This type of cable is called an unshielded cable.

You’ll also find that some cables will have extra foil shielding around the 8 wires in the cable. These are called shielded cables.

The shielding protects the cable from electromagnetic interference (EMI) in environments where there’s a lot of commercial equipment nearby.

Shielded and unshielded cables are the two types of ethernet cable configurations. Even though shielded cables have more components than unshielded cables, neither of them are complex.

Due to the fact that ethernet cables are simple components, it’s easy to make them last a long time.

How long can an ethernet cable last?

Although ethernet cables are simple components, that doesn’t mean they can’t last a long time. On the contrary, they’re easy to preserve and take care of.

Before we get into the specific steps for what you can do to make your cables last a long time, let’s establish some expectations.

If you do all the right things, it shouldn’t be surprising for your cables to last 20 years or longer.

In fact, I’ve read that some poeple have cables that are 30 years old and still working perfectly. Considering ethernet cables are inexpensive components to begin with, that’s some pretty good bang for your buck.

The best part is, there’s no reason why your cables can’t last just as long.

At this point, I’m sure you’re wondering what you have to do to make your cables last 20 years. Let’s take a closer look.

How to make ethernet cables last a long time

If you want your ethernet cables to last a long time, you’re in luck.

It doesn’t take much to set your cables up for success.

If you want your cables to last a long time, there are a few things you need to do:

• Handle your cables with care
• Keep your cables out of harsh environments
• Buy cables specific to the environment they will be used in
• Use cables that can support your future network needs
• Buy cables from a quality manufacturer

Let’s break down each of the actions above to make sure you can put a proper plan in place for your cables.

Handle your cables with care

This one should be pretty straightforward.

I’ll accompany this item with a life lesson: if you want things in your life to last, you need to handle them with care.

This goes for your relationships, your house, your car, and most of all, your ethernet cables.

As I mentioned previously, most of the ethernet cables you’ll be dealing with in your home or office have a PVC sheath.

Although PVC will provide your cables with some protection, it’s not exactly a suit of armor. After all, that’s not the only purpose of the sheath. It’s also meant to be flexible so you can snake your cables into tight spaces.

For an example of the flexibility that PVC provides, here’s how much you can safely bend a cat5e cable without it causing any problems:

With that said, even with the added flexibility that PVC provides, it should also provide your cables with plenty of protection.

The key here is to protect the 8 copper wires inside the ethernet cable. If these wires get damaged, your cable will stop working properly.

To ensure your ethernet cable doesn’t get damaged, you should be careful with how your cables are handled when they’re set up.

This includes:

• Making sure your cables aren’t bent at extreme angles
• Preventing the cables from being yanked or pulled when disconnecting them
• Avoiding laying anything heavy on the cable that may crush it
• Gently coiling any excess cable and using a cable tie to secure it

I’m not saying you need to handle your ethernet cables like they’re made of glass here.

They’re still fairly durable items. Just be mindful of how you’re handling them.

It’ll pay off in the long run.

Protect your cables from harsh environments

Once you buy your ethernet cables and you have them connected to your devices, there are two variables that can limit how long they last.

The first variable is how you treat them, which I detailed in the previous section.

The second variable is the environment they’re in and where they’re used.

Ethernet cables are electronic devices. They transfer data from one system to another using pulses of electricity. When one device wants to communicate with another, it sends electric pulses through the copper wires in the cable to the other device.

Now that we’ve established that ethernet cables rely on electricity, let’s ask ourselves the question: what do electronic devices dislike?

The answer here is sunlight, heat, and humidity.

Regardless of the electronic device, almost all of them are negatively impacted by sunlight, heat, and humidity.

This is especially the case if the device isn’t made to interact with a hot and humid environment. You can put ethernet cables in that category.

Standard ethernet cables are designed for use in home and office environments. These areas are often dry and climate controlled.

If cables are exposed to hot environments where there’s a lot of moisture in the air, it can corrode the wires inside them.

The same goes for sunlight exposure. If a standard ethernet cable is exposed to a lot of sunlight, it’ll wear down the sheath protecting the wires in the cable.

Both these situations are not good. If the wires inside an ethernet cable corrode or the sheath degrades, it’ll greatly shorten the cable’s lifespan.

So keep this in mind when you’re deciding where you’ll use your ethernet cables. If you need an ethernet cable that’ll be exposed to a harsh environment, you’ll need a special cable.

Speaking of which…

Buy cables for the environment they will be used in

This goes hand in hand with the previous section.

Your everyday ethernet cables are made for pretty comfortable environments. That doesn’t mean you’re out of luck if you need to use a cable in a harsh environment, however.

There are a variety of specialty ethernet cables you can buy depending upon where you’ll use them.

The key here is identifying the environment where the cable will be used.

Let’s take an example.

I mentioned earlier that some ethernet cables have extra foil shielding to protect them from electromagnetic interference.

These shielded cables are meant for environments with lots of commercial equipment in the area. With an unshielded cable, the electric signals given off by the nearby equipment can prevent the cable from working properly.

The message here is if you need cables where there are commercial air conditioners or heavy machinery nearby, grab some shielded ethernet cables.

The same goes for other challenging environments.

If you need to run an ethernet cable outside, you’re in luck as well. They make cables that’re reinforced to better withstand the elements. These outdoor rated ethernet cables are better protected from moisture and ultraviolet rays that would damage a standard ethernet cable.

The key takeaway here is that you need to get cables that’re designed for the environment you’ll use them in. If you don’t, you’ll have to replace them much sooner than you’d like.

Get cables based upon your future network needs

Ok, we’ve gone over the two variables that can extend the life of your cables once you own them.

But wait, there’s more.

There are actually a few things you can do to extend the life of your cables before you even buy them.

The first one comes down to planning.

Have you heard of the term future proofing?

To put it simply, future proofing is the process of accounting for your future needs in the original design of something.

So how does this apply to ethernet cables?

Depending upon the category of a given ethernet cable, it’ll have a maximum speed that it can support. When buying your ethernet cables, you should make sure that you buy cables that allow for growth of your network.

What I mean here is you should do a little forecasting.

Do you think you’ll be upgrading your internet plan in the future? Are your internet needs going to change at all in the coming years?

Some situations that might cause your internet needs to change in the future are:

• Adding more internet-connected devices to your network
• Upgrading to a faster internet plan
• Adding more internet users to your household
• Working from home as opposed to going to the office

When picking out which ethernet cables to buy, you should take the above situations into consideration.

For me personally, I like to include a significant buffer for growth when planning my network. Internet plans are only going to get faster (and more affordable) in the future.

Here’s a pro tip: if you’re in the market for ethernet cables, you should buy cat6 cables.

Cat6 cables support a maximum speed of 10 Gbps for cables shorter than 180 feet. That should give your network plenty of room to grow regardless of your current network demands.

Buy cables from a quality manufacturer

Let’s talk about the other step you can take to prolong the life of your cables before you buy them.

This is all about setting yourself up for success.

You need to make sure you’re buying quality cables.

In today’s world, this may be easier said than done.

When it comes to ethernet cables, there are tons of different options to choose from on Amazon or at your local computer store.

What makes things even more challenging is the fact that all ethernet cables look the same from the outside. You can’t tell if a cable has been cheaply made or not.

Why does this matter?

Common sense will tell you that quality cables will last longer than ones that are cheaply made. Ethernet cables aren’t expensive to begin with, so if you have to spend an extra dollar for a quality cable that’ll last you 10 years longer, it’s well worth it.

The best way to get quality cables is to go with vendors that you know and trust.

If you have ethernet cables in your home that’ve lasted you a long time, buy more from the same vendor.

Not sure which vendors are good?

Buy cables from a company you’ve heard of before. You can also poll the audience and ask others about their experiences with different cables.

For me personally, I’ve had good experiences with ethernet cables made by Monoprice.

That’s just my experience though.

Feel free to do your own research, or buy cables from a few different vendors to see which ones work best.

The key takeaway here is that a few minutes of research can save you a lot of headache. The less time (and money) you have to spend replacing your cables, the better.

Do ethernet cables degrade over time?

The actions listed above will help ensure that your ethernet cables last as long as possible.

A common follow up question I’ve seen about how long ethernet cables last is if they’ll wear out or degrade over time. In other words, even if you follow everything I detailed above, will your cables eventually wear out?

The simple answer here is no.

If you have an ethernet cable that supports the required speed of your network and it’s in a protected environment, it could theoretically last you forever.

If we think about what’s happening inside your ethernet cables, this might make more sense.

All that’s really happening is electricity is moving through copper wires. The wires won’t wear down if electricity is passed through them for a long time.

Imagine a situation where a copper cable is in a science lab where it’s in ideal conditions with a controlled climate and no humidity. You’d be able to pass electricity through it forever.

The same is true for your ethernet cables.

They could technically last forever. The truth is, however, that they won’t.

You’ll have to replace them because your network will outgrow them and you’ll need to support faster speeds. Another possibility is that the protective sheath around the copper wires in your cables will wear down depending upon the environment they’re in.

At some point, you’ll eventually have to replace your ethernet cables. It just won’t be because your cables have expired or worn out.

Wrap up

To make your ethernet cables last as long as possible, it takes a little bit of planning and effort. With that said, if you take the necessary steps and keep them in the right environment, you won’t have to worry about replacing your cables for a long time.

If you have any questions about the material above, or you’d like to share your experience with your ethernet cables lasting a long time, please leave a comment below.

If for some reason you liked this article or the way I explain topics about your home network, check out the following posts on related topics:

The Difference Between Cat5e and Cat6 Cables

What Does Cat Mean for Ethernet Cables?

Shielded vs Unshielded Cables: A Full Comparison

How to Tell What Type of Ethernet Cable You Have

Can an Ethernet Cable Slow Your Internet Speed?

When it comes to ethernet cables, you’ll find that there are many different words used to describe them.

If you jump on Amazon to buy an ethernet cable (like this one), you’ll likely see terms that describe the:

• Length of the cable (in feet)
• Bandwidth of the cable (in MHz)
• Type of connectors on the cable (e.g. RJ45)
• Configuration of the wires in the cable (unshielded twisted pair or shielded twisted pair)
• Size of the wires in the cable (e.g. AWG standard)

Not only is this confusing, but it can be overwhelming as well.

The good news is many of these specifications used to describe ethernet cables aren’t very important. They’re standard values that don’t really tell you how the cable will perform.

In addition to the list above, there’s one final term that’s used to describe ethernet cables. This is one you don’t want to ignore.

That term is “cat”.

What does cat mean? Are we talking about animals here?

When it comes to ethernet cables, the term “cat” is short for category. The category of an ethernet cable tells you the standard it was made to, which includes the speed (i.e. bandwidth) that the cable supports. This is one of the most important factors when choosing an ethernet cable.

In this post, I’ll break down why the category of an ethernet cable is important to pay attention to, as well as the most common categories of ethernet cables you’ll come across.

What Does Cat Stand For on an Ethernet Cable?

As I mentioned above, cat is short for category.

When it comes to ethernet cables, you’ll see “cat” all over the place. Not only will you see it in the product description when you’re buying them, but you’ll also see it on the side of the cables themselves.

Does this look familiar?

The category of an ethernet cable is probably the most common way to describe them. That’s because the category of a cable will give you the most important information about it.

Solid cliff hanger there. Let’s cut to the chase.

Why Is the Category of a Cable Important?

If you know the given category of an ethernet cable, you most likely don’t need to know anything else about it. The category of a cable essentially provides a summary of the cable’s performance.

This is why the cat of a cable is so important.

What about a cable’s performance do people care about?

A cable’s performance basically boils down to the one question that people are concerned with: what’s the maximum speed (i.e. bandwidth) the cable can support?

The category of a cable represents a certain manufacturing standard that it’s made to. If you took 100 cables of the same category, they’ll all have the same performance characteristics.

This is how you’ll know the speed a cable supports if you know what category it is. As you’ll find out later, different categories of cables will have different performance specifications.

So why do you need to know the maximum speed a cable supports?

The speed a cable supports can play an important role in your home network. If you’re using ethernet cables that can’t support the speed of your internet plan and devices, your cables can slow down the speed of your entire network.

Check out this other article I’ve written if you want more context on how ethernet cables can slow your network speed.

If you know the cat of a cable (and therefore the speed it supports), you can make sure you’re using cables that won’t slow down your network.

How Many Ethernet Cable Categories Are There?

Ok we’ve established that the category of a cable is important to the performance of our networks. Now let’s talk about the different categories of ethernet cables.

One thing that’s important to understand up front is the fact that ethernet cables have evolved over time. The same can be said for your internet connections.

Who can forget connecting to the internet with a dial-up modem in the early days of the internet?

Enough of that. Let’s stay on topic here.

The bottom line is that internet connections have gotten faster over time. Ethernet cables have followed suit by supporting faster data transfer speeds with each new category that’s developed.

When it comes to ethernet cables, they’re more or less labeled in the order they were developed. The first ethernet cable category to be developed was cat 1.

Extra credit for originality there.

Following cat 1 was cat 2. Cat 2 was followed by cat 3, cat 4, and so on. This naming convention more-or-less followed the same pattern all the way up to the latest cable category, which is cat 8.2.

It’s important to note that some categories have multiple versions (e.g. cat 8.1 and cat 8.2). In other words, there are more than 8 categories of ethernet cables.

In fact, 12 ethernet cable categories exist today.

Although this may seem overwhelming, as we dive more into each category you’ll find that ethernet cables may not be as complicated as they seem.

What Are the Ethernet Cable Categories?

It’s helpful to take a minute to look at the big picture here.

To make things easy for you, here’s a list of all the ethernet cable categories and the year each category was developed:

As you can see, over time it looks like new ethernet cable categories have been developed every 3-5 years.

The key takeaway here is that although there are many different categories of cables, only a few will be applicable for your needs. For example, do you really think people are still using cat 1 ethernet cables that were developed in 1983?

I don’t think so.

Later in this post, I’ll talk about the cables that are most applicable to you today. Spoiler alert: there are only a couple categories you need to be familiar with.

In the meantime, let’s dive into what we really care about: the speeds that each of these categories supports.

What Is the Maximum Speed of the Ethernet Cable Categories?

Each time a new category of ethernet cable is developed, the new category is an improvement of the previous version.

Think about it like your iPhone.

Each time a new iPhone version is released, it has feature improvements that make it “better” than the previous version.

Ethernet cables are pretty similar. When a new category of cable is released, the new category usually supports a faster maximum speed than the previous version. In some cases, the category will support the same maximum data transfer speed, but over longer lengths of ethernet cable.

Here’s a good breakdown of the maximum speed that each ethernet cable can support.

It’s crazy to see how far ethernet cables have come over the years. They used to support 10 megabits per second (Mbps), which you wouldn’t even be able to use today with current internet speeds.

On the other hand, some of the newer categories (e.g. cat 7 and higher) of cable support speeds much faster than the everyday user would ever need. These cables are mostly used in datacenters where extremely high performance is needed.

One thing to note is that regardless of the category, ethernet cables won’t work properly if they’re over 328 feet long. Chances are you’ll never need a cable that long, but you should be aware of this nonetheless.

What Are the Most Common Ethernet Cable Categories?

I’ll start by saying this again: don’t be overwhelmed by the fact that there are currently 12 categories of ethernet cables.

As you can see from the diagram in the previous section, many of the categories support data transfer speeds that don’t apply to you. I’m talking about the categories on both sides of the spectrum here.

Some older cable categories support speeds that’re much slower than you’ll need for your network, while some of the newer categories are overkill.

In fact, we can ignore the majority of the cable categories because of the speeds they support. This is where it gets much easier.

For most home and office networks, the most commonly used cable categories are cat 5e and cat 6.

For your reference, I’ve written an article about the difference between cat 5e and cat 6 cables if you’re curious about this.

See? Ethernet cables aren’t as complicated as they seem.

Out of 12 categories of ethernet cables, only 2 are applicable to the “normal” home and office network.

Cat 5e and Cat 6 Cables

Cat 5e cables support data transfer speeds up to 1 gigabit per second (Gbps). 1 Gbps is generally sufficient for most networks.

With that said, we’re fast approaching the days where internet plans can provide speeds of 1 Gbps or faster. As a result, some networks will need ethernet cables that can support speeds faster than 1 Gbps.

That’s where cat 6 cables come in.

Cat 6 cables are interesting in that they support speeds up to 10 Gbps, but only for ethernet cables shorter than 180 feet. For cable lengths between 180 and 328 feet, they support speeds up to 1 Gbps (just like cat 5e cables).

Despite the unique characteristics of cat 6 cables, most people don’t need cables longer than 180 feet. To put it simply, cat 6 cables should be the next category of cable you get if cat 5e cables won’t suffice in your network.

So which of these cable categories should you be using?

If you aren’t sure what type of ethernet cable categories you have in your home network, check out this other article I’ve written. It’ll help you get this sorted out.

If you currently have cat 5e cables in your environment, you should be fine. You’ll only want to upgrade to cat 6 if your internet plan provides speeds faster than 1 Gbps.

If you’re looking to buy new cables, I suggest you buy cat 6 cables so you don’t have to worry about replacing your cat 5e cables in the future. If you get cat 6 cables now, they’ll be able to support your network for a long time without the risk of slowing it down.

Wrap Up

You’re now equipped with everything you need to know about ethernet cable categories. You can confidently make decisions about what cables you need without getting overwhelmed by a term that you don’t know.

Remember, if you focus on getting cables that are the right category for your network, you shouldn’t really have to worry about anything else (aside from the length of the cable).

If you have any questions about this material, please drop a line below in the comments section.

If you found this information helpful, here are some other posts that you might find useful as well:

How to Tell What Type of Ethernet Cable You Have

The Difference Between Cat5e and Cat6 Cables

How to Extend an Ethernet Cable

Does Ethernet Cable Length Affect Network Speed?

Can an Ethernet Cable Slow Your Internet Speed?

It’s never as easy as it should be, is it?

When setting up your home network, it doesn’t seem like it should be that hard.

Any devices you want to connect to each other (or to the internet) directly are connected with an ethernet cable, while your wireless devices just connect to your wireless network without a cable.

Sounds straightforward enough.

The obstacle here is that there are multiple terms that can be used to describe your home networking equipment.

For example, let’s take ethernet cables.

Ethernet cables can be referred to as straight through cables. They can also be identified by the category of cable they are, like “cat5e cables” or “cat6 cables”.

Another term that causes a lot of confusion during home network setup is “LAN cable”.

What does the term LAN cable refer to? Is a LAN cable the same thing as an ethernet cable?

The answer here is: sometimes.

A LAN cable is a term used to describe any cable used in a local area network. LAN cables can refer to ethernet cables, but not all LAN cables are ethernet cables. Depending upon the configuration of the network, coaxial or fiber optic cables can also be referred to as LAN cables as well.

You need to be careful with the term LAN cable because it’s a broad term. There are several different types of LAN cables, and you need to make sure you use the right ones in your home network.

In this post I’ll break down all you need to know about LAN cables, including where the term comes from and how they should be used in your home network.

What does LAN mean?

In order to understand what a LAN cable is and how it’s used, we need to know what a LAN is.

LAN is an abbreviation for “Local Area Network”.

How helpful is that?

Not especially.

Ok, so let’s break it down further. What’s a local area network?

A local area network refers to all the cables and devices that make up a network in a given area. For example, all the internet devices in your home that’re connected to the internet are part of the LAN in your home. Other examples of a LAN would be all the devices in an office or university building.

Using your home as an example, the LAN in your home would consist of your:

• Modem
• Router (if it’s a separate device from your modem)
• Laptop
• Smart phone
• Printer
• Ethernet/LAN cables
• Online gaming devices
• Smart TV
• Smart outlets

Any of the devices in your home that’re connected to the internet (or to each other) are part of your LAN. The LAN that makes up your home network will stop at the point where your modem connects all your devices to the internet. This connection to the internet is where you LAN ends and the wide area network (WAN) begins.

Here’s a visual for reference:

As you can see, your LAN can be made up of many different types of devices. It doesn’t matter if these devices are connected wirelessly or with ethernet cables. They’re all part of the same local area network.

On top of that, a LAN is not limited by a certain number of devices. Some LANs are made up of thousands of devices. Other LANs consist of just a few.

Ok, so we’ve got LANs covered. Now let’s dig into LAN cables.

What are LAN cables used for?

If a LAN is made up of every device on a given network, you don’t have to think to hard to identify what LAN cables are used for.

You guessed it. LAN cables are used to connect the devices that make up your local area network.

There are many different ways that LAN cables are used to connect devices. They can be used to connect your:

• Internet service provider (ISP) to your modem
• Laptop to your router
• Gaming console to your router
• Printer to a switch
• Security cameras to a server
• Smart speaker to your router

These are just a few examples. There are many different ways to use LAN cables in a given network.

All LANs will have at least one LAN cable

It’s safe to say that every LAN that’s connected to the internet will have at least one LAN cable.

After all, that’s how you connect your LAN to the internet in the first place. Regardless of the type of internet connection you have, your modem will need to connect to your ISP through a LAN cable.

Here’s an example of a LAN cable connecting a modem to an internet service provider.

You’d also need to use a LAN cable if your modem and router are separate devices. If your modem and router are separate devices, they have to be connected with a cable.

This picture below might look similar to something you have in your home. The yellow cable connecting the modem and router is a LAN cable:

So you see, most local area networks need LAN cables to work properly.

Believe it or not, some people prefer using cables to connect the devices in their network. It isn’t just a requirement.

That’s because there are advantages to connecting devices through wires. By connecting devices with a cable, they can directly communicate with each other.

The benefit here is that LAN cables provide a more reliable connection than wireless connections. Not only that, but communication over an ethernet cable happens faster and with less delay as well.

This is especially helpful when online gaming, where every millisecond makes a difference.

Are all LAN cables ethernet cables?

Not all LAN cables are ethernet cables, but most of them are.

The term LAN cable can refer to several different types of cables. Depending upon the devices they’re connecting, LAN cables are usually:

• Fiber optic cables
• Coaxial cables
• Ethernet cables

With that said, most LAN cables are ethernet cables. You should only see a fiber optic or coaxial cable used as a LAN cable in a few cases.

In just about every other situation, LAN cables will be ethernet cables.

Let’s take a closer look at when each of these cables will be used.

Fiber optic cables

You’ll most likely only use a fiber optic cable in you local area network if you have fiber internet. With a fiber internet service, you’ll connect to the internet with a fiber optic cable.

Here’s an example of what a fiber optic cable looks like:

To connect to a fiber optic internet service, you’ll have to use a special modem that’s built specifically for fiber internet. This is where you’ll see a fiber optic cable used as a LAN cable.

One end of the fiber optic cable will connect to the back of your fiber modem. The other end will connect to the fiber connection that’s coming from the street.

In this case, the fiber cable connecting your modem to the fiber cable coming from the street will be a LAN cable.

In most homes and offices, this’ll be the only situation where a fiber optic cable will be a LAN cable. Datacenters often use fiber cables to connect different devices in the LAN, but this is overkill for most home and office applications.

Coaxial cables

Another common type of cable that can serve as a LAN cable is a coaxial cable. I’m sure this looks familiar to you:

Coaxial cables follow a similar pattern to fiber optic cables. There are only a few situations where a coaxial cable will be a LAN cable.

The most common case where a coaxial cable will be a LAN cable is when a house or office has cable internet service.

In this scenario, the coaxial cable is used to connect a cable modem to the internet service that’s wired to the house. Chances are, you’ll see the coaxial cable connected to a cable jack in the wall.

Here’s an example of what a coaxial cable jack looks like:

This coaxial cable jack connects your home to the internet service that’s wired from the street.

The only other time I’ve seen a coaxial cable used as a LAN cable is with a WiFi extender. In this case, the router and extender were connected with a coaxial cable to extend the range of WiFi in a home.

Ethernet cables

Ethernet cables are the most common type of LAN cable. This is because they can be used in a variety of applications.

I’m sure you’ve come across some of these in your travels:

They can be used to connect:

• Your modem to your internet provider
• A modem and router (if they’re separate devices)
• Two of the devices in your network (e.g. an ethernet switch to a computer)
• Any of your internet-connected devices to your router

While the other common types of LAN cables are mostly used to connect a modem to a certain type of internet service, ethernet cables can be used pretty much anywhere.

What you’ll also find is that more and more household devices are getting connected to the internet each year. Now you can buy dishwashers, refrigerators, washing machines, and home security cameras that connect to your LAN. Many of these devices offer ethernet ports so you can provide them with a wired connection to your network.

Why’s this important?

It’s important because you’ll only see more LAN cables that are ethernet cables moving forward. If ethernet cables are the most common type of LAN cable now, I can only imagine what it’ll look like in 10 more years. In other words, I envision the percentage of LAN cables that are ethernet cables only to increase moving forward.

What LAN cables should you use in your network?

When it comes to determining what type of LAN cable you should use in your network, you usually don’t have much choice.

What I mean by this is you should use the LAN cable that your devices require. For example, if you want to connect your laptop to your router with a wired connection, you’ll have to use an ethernet cable. Laptops don’t come with ports for fiber optic or coaxial cables.

As I mentioned previously, most of the devices in your LAN will require ethernet cables to connect them to each other.

So do yourself a favor, grab a few cat5e and cat6 ethernet cables so you have them on hand when you need a LAN cable for your network.

And remember, although not every LAN cable is an ethernet cable, most of them are.

Wrap up

Now you should have a good handle on the different types of cables that’re used as LAN cables. If you have any questions about this information, please drop a comment below. For other interesting reading on related topics, check out some of these other posts I’ve previously written:

The Difference Between Cat5e and Cat6 Cables

How to Extend an Ethernet Cable

Shielded vs Unshielded Cables: A Full Comparison

How to Tell What Type of Ethernet Cable You Have

Does Ethernet Cable Length Affect Network Speed?