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I'm going to be wiring my home for ethernet soon, and I've already decided that I want to use Cat6 cable to do it (faster speeds, better performance, etc). During the installation, I'd like to add wall-plates to certain rooms in my house, and the keystone blocks look like the best option for me.

My question is: I've seen different keystone blocks on many cabling websites, some say Cat5e and some say Cat6. The Cat6 ones are slightly more expensive. Is there any noticeable performance gain from using a Cat6 keystone? To me, it just seems like the keystone really wouldn't matter, since it's basically like putting an RJ-45 end on a cable. Can I buy the cheaper Cat5e keystone blocks and still have the performance that Cat6 cable will give me?

Thanks!

Scott Arrington
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  • For home use? Sure, you'll be fine. Should be asked over on SU, though. – mfinni Mar 29 '12 at 15:02
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    Basically, I want a blazing fast gigabit LAN. I've already grabbed a 24-port gigabit smart switch (NetGear GS724Tv2), and I want to make sure that my performance is optimal. To me, the Cat5e vs Cat6 keystone blocks just seemed like clever marketing to make you think there is a difference when there probably really isn't. I'm asking here to see if my suspicions are correct :) – Scott Arrington Mar 29 '12 at 15:08
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    You can do GigE on Cat5e, you don't even need Cat6. – mfinni Mar 29 '12 at 15:36
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    Faster speeds and better performance? Not so much. Cat6 is/was one of the biggest shams perpetrated on the networking world. Cat5 and/or Cat5e is perfectly acceptable for ethernet up to GbE. – joeqwerty Mar 29 '12 at 16:22
  • What the crap is a "keystone block"? I've never heard them called that before, and google isn't turning up much. Is this a recent mistranslation from Chinese or something? – psusi Mar 29 '12 at 17:28
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    A Keystone block is the "jack" socket in a wall outlet, it snaps into the outlet after it's wired. – mfinni Mar 29 '12 at 18:13
  • It's typically called a keystone module: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystone_module – joeqwerty Mar 29 '12 at 20:04
  • There is no "noticeable performance gain" -- either the setup works at a given speed or it doesn't. But I cannot fathom how Cat6 keystones could have any practical effect on your network speed. – Daniel R Hicks Jan 28 '13 at 23:11

1 Answers1

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Cat3  = 10MbE (Telephone wire is Cat3)
Cat5  = 100MbE
Cat5e = 1GbE
Cat6a = 10GbE
CatFa = 40GbE (100GbE up to 15m)
Chris S
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