Are Category 8 Ethernet Cables A Scam?

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Category 8 Ethernet cable is - at least theoretically - the highest-speed Ethernet cable out there. But are you just throwing your money away by buying it?
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[@nated4wgy]

The duality Riley in this is freaky but I kinda love it.

[@trickfilm400]

for me its confusing, the voice tone is a bit different (maybe a different day time of the recording)

[@bubbles581]

Riley and other Riley can double team me like this any time. ❤❤❤

[@donc-m4900]

Spy vs Spy Riley.

[@bubbles581]

@trickfilm400 I know I liked the different voices one sounded a bit like James

[@EhrenLoudermilk]

Took me a second to even see it. It was that smooth

[@DylanF]

I once found a E-Sports website selling a 'gaming ethernet cable'. It was Cat 6 at 15 metres for about £80. I'm surprised they didn't also mention its next generation RGB functions which lets it glow black. 'Gaming' is top tier performance, obviously!

[@freewayross4736]

Cat 6 and gaming lol. I don’t get why so many use cat 6 not cat 6 a it better tf

[@12thMandalorian]

But it is a “gaming Ethernet cable” compared to those lame “home office Ethernet cables” 😂

[@Innuya]

@freewayross4736 online games are limited by latency not bandwidth. You're exactly the kind of person being targeted by the cat8 vendors in this video...

[@Thor6398-jt4mb]

​@freewayross4736 6a only supports longer cables, and is a lot stiffer. No reason to use it for most people.

[@smalltime0]

@@12thMandalorian obviously the regular home office cables have higher latency, because ping isn't an issue when video conferencing or whatever.

[@KuruGDI]

*CONFIRMED: There is a good and a bad Riley working for LTT* This raises the question: Will they do a side by side co-host of TechLinked or Techquickie one day?

[@paulknight5018]

Is good Riley in Green or Cream T-shirt though?

[@greatwavefan397]

​@@paulknight5018 Green Shirt Riley is actually James

[@wilfridsetterfield-milln4910]

I bought a Cat 8 cable, and I knew it was likely never going to be fully utilised. I got it because: 1. It goes through my floor and I never want to move it. 2. I needed a sturdy cable that could survive being near where mains power comes into my house. 3. It connects my ONT and network and I would really not like it to be a problem. 4. It was funny.

[@lupinne3046]

Yeah I bought one bc I seen it at the same price of your average 6, its 50 feet and I only run 500mbps download and 20mbps upload (our plan is $90/month and we live in the countryside) so I can't really tell the difference and dont care

[@wilfridsetterfield-milln4910]

@@lupinne3046 Could have used Cat 5e lol. $90?! What a rip-off. Paying about $38/month for 200 Mbps both ways and it was about $25 for the first year.

[@rnci]

I had ISP technicians deny my mom (I wasn't home) to install the CAT7 cable I had free from work saying "oh this is too good a cable for it to be used from the main box to your house, don't worry use ours" 😂😂😂. The internet is 1Gbps both ways. In the end that roll of cable lays somewhere in her house or in a storage space we have and since then they installed fiber to the router in house. (Used to be my internet but have moved out since then and it only costs $10/month ❤)

[@nid274]

outdoor cat 6a cable would be just fine... anything above is currently intended for datacenters for patching..not long runs.

[@Daniel15au]

If you want something that's truly future proof, run conduit so you can easily change the cables in the future. The next upgrade worth doing after Cat6 is fiber.

[@LemarSullivan821]

the only thing I am being scammed from is the consistency of shirt color bro switching teams each camera shot

[@user-qu1xl3ee1d]

Probably went through different writing teams a lot of times but the comment is still funny af 🤣

[@nubcake7637]

I want to see an investigation on this and some cable tear downs.

[@Ken.H]

Yeah this would be great thing for the labs to do I think. I know I went for CAT8 for my short cables just for the added shielding. Was getting odd drops due to all the routing with the power cables I think. Regardless the cat 8 cable fixed it. Cat 6 or 6e probably would have worked as well.

[@holdenhodgdon3756]

I have a gigabit fiber connection & while using Cat 8 to go from my ISP's fiber modem to my router is overkill, it is quite useful for linking my various devices (living room TV, Bedroom TV, Gaming PC, ect...) on my LAN, as the massive throughput of Cat 8 allows me to stream media from one device to another without any bottle necks. I.E. I can Steam Link from my gaming PC to my living room PC without any sort of buffering, even if someone else is also doing a network intensive thing at the same time.

[@DanWalshTV]

@@holdenhodgdon3756Regardless of the cables throughput, your devices' NIC's and your networking equipment (router, switch, etc) are still going to be the limiting factor. Unless you have > 10 Gbps NICs in both your systems and switches that are capable of such throughput (both of which are expensive), there's zero benefit to going with Cat8 over Cat6/Cat6A in that scenario. Even then, once you surpass 10 Gbps, you're almost exclusively dealing with the SFP family of ports anyway, meaning you wouldn't be using Cat cables at all (unless you're using those horrid SFP copper modules). Also, latency is much more important than throughput for real-time applications like Steam Link. I have a 10 Gbps fibre connection between my desktop and server, but that's simply because one of the many functions the server is used for is as a NAS, and I need fast file transfers.

[@marcogenovesi8570]

@@holdenhodgdon3756 "massive througput"? They are still 1Gbit cables just like Cat6.

[@saulgoodman2018]

@@holdenhodgdon3756 Yup. It's about your internal network, not your internet speeds.

[@TheSeanUhTron]

It's worth mentioning that even proper CAT8 cables can make things worse if neither of the devices have grounded RJ45 ports. This is because shielded cables need to have at least one end connected to ground. Otherwise the shielding just turns into a giant interference antenna which essentially boosts the amount of interference the network cable receives. Most NIC's will have grounded ports, but cheap switchers and routers usually will not. It's easy to tell just by looking at the port, if it has metal cladding around it, it's grounded. If it's all plastic, it's not.

[@YaMoonSun]

So cat6a is even overkill?

[@tylersanders2388]

It’s not necessarily a scam, it’s just overkill. I personally use a cat 6a, but have several 1ft cat 8 patch cables in my server room going between PoE injectors and switches and the router. I consider it a $20 investment in bottleneck elimination

[@elaforma]

But do you really run 25Gbps on those links?

[@tylersanders2388]

@@elaforma definitely not, but even 10 years from now I’m not going to be worrying about a bottleneck

[@elaforma]

Like, don't get me wrong. I also tried to get Cat8 put into my walls when I had to rip out all the electrical wiring in my home. I thought that if anybody is ever going to run more than 10Gbps in their home it was gonna be me, so let's not save money on stuff that gets plastered into the wall. Also, they run parallel to the power cables for quite a couple of meters (with adequate distance, but you know how it is). I just think that for patch cables, it is pretty much useless, because if you ever upgrade your equipment to the point where Cat8 is necessary, you can also replace the patch cables.

[@tylersanders2388]

@@elaforma it was more like: I need to buy 6 patch cables. Should I spend a few more dollars and get cat 8? Sure. I ran Cat 6A in all of my walls

[@korbinianrottmair8189]

The main problem is, that you need GG45 or TERA plugs, to use the higher frequencies of cables better than CAT6. So every patchcable, with a RJ45 plug and a better cable than CAT 6 ist a scam, because you can't use the advantages you paid for.

[@R0D3R1CKV10L3NC3]

I can definitely tell this video is benefiting from the new processes after the issues last year. I'm guessing when the original cut was looked at there were some revisions that needed to be made and reshoots were done. I'm glad to see it!

[@WarrenGarabrandt]

Plot twist, they made him change the shirt a few times to give that impression.

[@R0D3R1CKV10L3NC3]

@@WarrenGarabrandt I mean, I'd be impressed if they did that, as well as changed the audio mixing to make it sound like it was done on a different day in slightly different settings or in a different room or whatever as well, since those sections seemed to sound different as well (I think they did it at the same time as they recorded the ad read most likely based on the shirt)

[@Ryzza5]

I mean it's a 4 minute script, why not re-record the whole thing again...

[@yazanalj1975]

What are you talking about

[@bananafoneable]

What gave it away

[@jampskan5690]

Bought cat7 for the shielding. Helps in an RF intense environment, such as my ham shack that is 3ft away from my PC. My situation is somewhat unique though, I needed to do part of the cable run very close to my radio's coax cable. The extra shielding helps keep the RF from messing with my PC, and contains my network traffic from interfering with my radio signal.

[@mizz1414]

CAT 7 is the way Used in pretty much all installations in the EU.

[@joshmaday1462]

@@mizz1414 CAT7 may be an even bigger scam than CAT8. The spec doesn't even allow it to be terminated with the RJ45/8P8C connectors that are on basically every piece of network gear in existence. Any CAT7 cable that will plug into your switch/computer isn't a CAT7 cable. CAT6A was created after CAT7, in order to give the benefits of CAT7, but in a form factor that would actually work with devices on the market.

[@Service_Member]

The cable yes, but the full run, can’t be CAT 7 if you are using rj45 connectors, as there is no cat 7 rj45 specification.

[@mizz1414]

@@Service_Member CAT7 isn't recognized by the IEEE, but the ISO/IEC recognize it as spec, and the connector doesn't really matter either, the main thing about CAT7 is the actual shielding (S/FTP) instead of the unshielded CAT6A or CAT6 UTP We've been installing CAT7 in europe for *a long* time.

[@4RILDIGITAL]

I was definitely considering buying one, thinking it would drastically improve my gaming and streaming experience. After watching your video, I realized I would be spending extra for virtually no noticeable improvement.

[@saulgoodman2018]

Really? Don't only take they word for it.

[@Evan-lg1xp]

It won't do shit. Get solid copper Ethernet and not CAT8 garbage. It's not even a standard.

[@adamgarlow5347]

Cable construction not being up to standard is cause for concern, but buying cables over spec is not. It just means that when standards evolve, you don't have to pull new cables or pay someone a kings ransom to do it (again) for you. When building our house in the 90's, my dad wanted RG6 cable put in, but the builders argued "that's' only for direct burial" and he relented. Of course later when we upgraded our TV (cable or satellite, I can't remember) we were told RG59 was under spec and couldn't be used so we ran RG6 quad shield despite protest that, you guessed it, "thats only for direct burial, its overkill." When finally running Ethernet, we used some pre-terminated Cat 8 to the pfsense box and bulk Cat 6a for most clients and for connecting the modem, my ISP recommends RG6 quad shield. Fool me once.

[@marcogenovesi8570]

contractors have some bias, strangely enough

[@Craft97pl]

Cat 8 is shielded only cable that CANNOT BE USED without shielded ethernets ports. This is number 1 and only reason cables dont work. You need almost serves infrastructure to use shielded cables. Even Netgear famous for their servers alike bproducts dont offer shielded ethernet port for home routers. You need server one. SO short nobody should buy cat 8 ethernet becouse they cant even use it.

[@marcogenovesi8570]

@@Craft97pl Netgear "famous for server-like products"? You mean very overpriced consumer stuff? Most switches and PC ethernet cards have shielded ports (and you can easily see it, the metal tabs on the sides, it's not "server grade".

[@adamgarlow5347]

I also want to follow up on the idea some cables are just relabeled cat 6 or some other type of actual scam. Didn't you guys buy a really fancy cable signal tester? It would be nice to have a longer video or even 30sec in a tech quickie from labs showing data that the cables are out of spec. Like is the copper too thin, the shielding insufficient, data rate or frequency too low? Like I want evidence not just a "well you don't need this anyways oh and btw they're also lying"

[@draconk]

​@@Craft97pl nah mate almost every ethernet port is shielded, Cat5e is shielded and has been common for 20 years, the only non shielded ports I have found are for pieces of crap equipment.

[@elchartps3]

cat 8 when you're renovating your house makes sense, but it also makes sense that you run conduit to replace those if necessary, maybe by fiber optic later. cat 6a might be great for the next 5-10 years, but who knows what the future is made of? (you will probably not touch your electric install for the next 30-40 years, so better be prepared)

[@itsmrpaddy]

Exactly! Every room we renovate in our house, we add conduits in the wall with the CA6A cables inside. So they can always be replaced if needed. It's not much extra hassle to add conduits, and who knows what it will be good for in the future.

[@Gerton999]

Let's be honest, there's a very good chance we'll never be needing more than 5 gigabit in a residential setting. Although I will admit I very recently wired up my home with cat6a despite not having fiber for future-proofing. Still, I don't see a future where 5 gigabit or more is necessary for a home.

[@Mrperson0]

@@Gerton999 Yep, 5 gigabit will be enough to transfer at SSD (SATA) speeds, which is probably the most that anyone will need for a while. That is why Cat 6 is more than enough for those types of transfers.

[@0bsmith0]

Except it does not make sense and serves no purpose.

[@DanWalshTV]

@@Mrperson0 NVMe storage has already become extremely commonplace, I wouldn't use SATA3 transfer speeds as a metric for even today let alone when discussing future-proofing. With that said, as mentioned by the OP, conduit solves this issue anyway.

[@Strykenine]

Who would have thought that network cables from renowned manufacturers such as Ciwoda, Yauhody and Dbillion Da could be actually just be...ya know...fancy 5e cables with different rubber grips. Who would have THOUGHT?

[@Bill_Woo]

But for outdoor or embedded indoor wiring, you want to overshoot. E.g. when you build a building and wire the walls, you don't want to just match the current consumer maximums; because inevitably, deliverable speeds will outrun them. Then you're tearing down walls and digging up yards. Even if that's 12 years from now, wouldn't overshooting make definite sense here?

[@mastenk2030]

True, but most people don't do their own in-wall cable runs, this video mainly focuses on Cat. 8 plug and play style cables for consumers (though I too think, this could've been stated more clearly). Also, technically Cat. 8 only supports it's full 40Gbit speed up to a cable length of 30m, which might be a problem for some in-wall runs.

[@scythelord]

Outdoor, you should be running fiber.

[@StickySli]

​@@scythelordDepending on the climate, you can go with UV resistant, S/FTP cable for outdoor use. It is super resistent to outdoor weather.

[@danieloberhofer9035]

True, indeed. But the level of overshoot needs to be reasonable, as has been pointed out. Cat.8 just doesn't make much sense in residential settings. First of all, it is very tricky to terminate, as Riley said in the video, as well. If you mess up the outlets you're lucky to even achieve Cat.5e performance. Then it's *really* stiff, not exactly fun to work around corners. Quite some other downsides, as well. In most cases, you'll be fine with a good cable of a lower rating. And for future-proofing, just plan your wiring accordingly and leave a pull cord, so you can add whatever cable you need (probably fiber) whenever the need arises.

[@ThePaulg123]

I'd wait for the cat8mouse revision for more consistent speeds over longer distances​@@mastenk2030

[@outpost42]

This video hosted by Riley, and Dark Riley, his evil twin from the parallel universe where Linus is very tall, and Luke never laughs.

[@Evanijoe]

The mislabeling is mostly an Amazon thing and not exclusive to ethernet cables, stay away from that website if you need anything with more than standard specifications.

[@Miner_Bob]

I buy CAT 8 cables for connecting my consoles and other stuff to the internet. It seems to work fine for me. I knew I’d never get close to the advertised speeds (thanks Australia) but the cables (from UGreen) were braided and I didn’t want to ever think about replacing them

[@scgaming9645]

ONLY 8Gigabit/s? 😭 In Germany the highest I have seen is 1Gigabit/s with most places only having 50 - 250 Megabit/s and many houses still have a maximum of 16 Megabit/s…I’m crying here 😭😭😭 0:54

[@kingzach74]

Most places in the USA don't have anywhere near 8Gbps speeds. Gigabit or 1200Mbps are the highest I've ever seen, and if you're any fair distance away from a city center, hah all bets are off, you're unlikely to get anything above 100Mbps.

[@DanWalshTV]

@@kingzach74It really varies depending on what area you're in tbh. I live in ON, Canada myself and being able to get a 3-8 Gbps connection here if you're within a greater metro area (which a huge percentage of our population is) isn't that unheard of. I recently moved to a somewhat rural-ish area and can still get 1000/50 Mbps cable connection here with fibre coming within the next year. Of course, if you're very rural, then yeah, you're kind of SOL, though we do have Starlink these days which I believe is capable of up to 300 Mbps now.

[@minecakechase20]

My house was limited to 25mbps down, 5mbps up dsl internet as the only option we had until our landlord fulfilled his promise to us and contracted a local isp to build a 1gbps fiber line to the house. Kinda overkill, but there’s 5 of us living here and we’re all gamers

[@bufalong]

in vietnam i got 1gbps with 11,50 usd

[@mniakan754]

I’m still going down the rabbit hole of usb and thunderbolt trying to figure out which ones work with each other even when it comes to TB3 to TB4 so thanks for giving me another rabbit hole to jump into head first

[@Mrperson0]

Had Cat 5e cables that were already run in my home when it was constructed back in 2003. After re-terminating them (they were used as phone jacks), turns out that they are able to auto-negotiate at 10 gigs, so I think I'm set for a long time!

[@Ryne785]

Does not mean they will run at 10Gbe. Mine only went up to 5Gbe, but speed tests are showing 3.1gbe down / 4.9gbe up on the LAN. Setting the link to 10Gbe causes the connection to fail

[@494166002]

I bought some cat8 cables recently on Amazon and there were the same price if not slightly cheaper than some cat6 or cat6a cables that I’ve seen at Best Buy

[@Aerogamer158]

I installed Cat7 in my house because during the start of COVID it was the cheapest riser cable in a 500’ wheel. Mostly due to the heavy demand for Cat6 and almost no demand for 7 in the US.

[@tyrannicpuppy]

After having a load of connection dropping, I replaced the basic Cat 5E cable I bought at work with a Cat 8 from Amazon for the lengthy run from the router (inside the front door where the phone line terminates) to the network switch living room at the back end of the house and the connection issues disappeared. So either I had a dodgy C5E cable that worked just fine for quite some time before the issue popped up, or the new cable did have some effect. And it is a nice flat cable, so it slips under the one door it needs to pass through a bit nicer than the old regular blue fella did. Do I need all the other benefits of C8? No, but it fixed the two problems I had nicely.

[@kenzieduckmoo]

I use a Shielded CAT6A thats rated for underground and outdoor to go between buildings and it works great. Pretty sure the difference between it and a Cat7 is just the label, since it has all the shielding and such already

[@skaiinyght8570]

I believe cat 6a that’s shielded is only wrapped in a single layer of shielding for the entire cable. Cat 7 each twisted pair itself is wrapped in a shield

[@MatiX222]

each pair of cat 6a can be shielded, even 5e can, it depends if you get a stp or utp cable. stp being a shielded one@@skaiinyght8570

[@Parmigiano1]

@@skaiinyght8570 Pretty sure outdoor cat 6a has individual pairs shielded too. Some are also thick gauge and hard to terminate similar to Cat 8.

[@Thats_Mr_Random_Person_to_you]

​@skaiinyght8570 any S/FTP cable is exactly that. The cat standards are all a bit mixed these days but its more down to tightening variables by like specifying more precisely the wire guage, twists per m etc.. aiming for higher bandwidth does mean tuning the awg and twists per m, and specifically stating a requirement for S/FTP makes the category 'unique' (per se). You can get U/FTP U/TP, S/TP, or S/FTP in cat6, but cat 7 cables can only be S/FTP for instance (thats an example, might not be true for cat 7 specifically but you get the point). Fo anyone deciphering the weird acronyms: The S before the / means the cable is screened (ie has a metal braid directly underneath the outer plastic sheath around all the conductors acting as a sheild conductor - or sheilded). A U before the / means unscreened/unshielded like cat5 The TP after the / just means Twisted Pair (as all cat cables are) So the TP can then be foil wraped as in FTP where each pair on conductors has its own mylar style foil wrapping them so each pair of conductors is sheilded from each other. So you have two different types of sheilding in the cable and the combination of letters tells you which is used and what combination. So U/TP would be like standard plain cat5e with nothing, whereas S/FTP has both the foil sheilding around each pair of conductors to protect each pair from EMI from the other pairs, but then also the metal braid around the who thing under the plastic outer sheath to shield the cores from EMI from other cables

[@kenzieduckmoo]

yeah thats how mine is. each pair is shielded, and the entire thing is shielded again. mostly because its gotta be able to deal with weather and heat cycling and all that from being outdoors. Probably wasnt worth it for the maker to get it tested for cat7 though

[@Nick-jf1il]

how far back do we have to go to find the tech experts saying "you'll never need another ethernet cable!" or "ho home needs anything faster that telephone line!"

[@markv9]

Somewhere in September 2023 in Thailand there was an argument called The Lan cable war It's between a Tech expert in the network side vs Audiophile. The issue came from discussing if the cable does have impact on Audio quality. Lots of discussion has gone on and They were supposed to have a blind test. However the blind test where both team agreed upon weren't successful but the Audiophile side response was having some random people to test it and they were able to show the difference in quality, however the setup for it wasn't shown properly and no middleman was there to check. I wish LTT team can help to demonstrate diff between 1 Lan cable from audiophile setup 2 check if there are any diff / lag of the data on lan and when it's converted 3 discussion if signal on lan cable and analog cable are different ie analog vs digital and how does it impact audio performance Thanks in advance if your team take interest in my comment

[@zeekjones1]

I'd prefer an above spec part over a below spec one that fails in some way. That said, there are plenty of parts that are scams, across the entire market of products.

[@user-vh8gs1sw1j]

Cat6a is already an above spec cable. Cable won't fail in some way unless the installer screws up.

[@Cyber_vir]

0:55 just a minor correction, there are some ISPs like Ziply that offer 10 gig, or even 50 gig residential connections

[@davidrobertson411]

Came here to say the samething. Love Ziply

[@AquaLady153]

what's that?

[@Cyber_vir]

@@AquaLady153 Ziply is a local ISP in the Pacific Northwest

[@MitgliedT5]

I bought a lot of cat 8 cables, but they are real ones (full metal keystonemodule like connector) and i had no issues just what so ever. But i know that a cat 5e would also do the trick, but i have the budget for future proofing and intranet-speeds also might play a role in my decision.

[@UrSoMeanBoss]

I'm currently using a 7' DAC between my 40G nics. If I need a longer run in the future, CAT8 may be my go-to if I can find affordable QSFP modules... It'll probably be cheaper than fiber.

[@StanislavNevyhosteny]

Its not often you come across a discussion about CAT8 for home use. Coincidentally, when we bought our apartment in 2022 and I spend the next 8 months renovating it, I wanted to build the networking resilient and futureproof. It is a reinforced concrete panel housing from 70s, so any change comes with a lot of dirty work. Sometimes, the network cables are run together with power and then they get buried into slits cut in the concrete. So yea, after a lot of thinking, I went with CAT8. Its pain in the ass to work with! Its a really thick cable with thick wires and a lot of shielding. I bought 100m of the cable (that was 200 EUR...) and then I had to get basically industrial keystones (4 EUR a piece...). Oh and then there is grounding of the shielding, which has to be done correctly and wiring the keystones in the sockets with the cable plastered in place is not fun, but im glad i went with cat8. I dont want to have to touch it for at least 20 years. And we actually have a NAS in the basement of the building, so we actually do utilise somewhat faster connection. I thought about running fiber, and if I just ran one line to main workstation and one to NAS, it would be probably fine, but i wanted to cover all the bases :D Ok, rant over. 9/10, would do it again :D

[@thecaptain5344]

The Category 8 cable standard was designed for 40Gbps, but there aren't any commercially available 40Gbps RJ45 Ethernet interfaces. Any interface requiring more bandwidth than 10G will typically use fibre anyway. The only two cables that should be used are Cat6 and Cat6a.

[@Vandelay666]

Out of all the LMG channels, this is the only one I am still subscribed to. *Loves Riley*

[@ohandanotheronebitesthedus6247]

Why are you another person who's offended that linus asked a well paid employee todo something 😂

[@joshua30069]

Riley threw me for a loop with the shirt change. I had to back up 10 seconds to see it again. 😂😂😂

[@manuper11]

Ryan changing shirts everytime looks cool lmao

[@memeheadroom]

I bought a spool of CAT8 to run wall drops across the house and wanted it to be "future proof," plus the prices were negligibly higher and this spool was rated for in-wall. Never terminated ethernet cable before, though I used to run fiber as a contractor; practiced on some old CAT5e, easily figured it out. Terminating the CAT8 was barely more difficult. Zero issues with speed/connection. I also got an assortment of pre-terminated male cables for networking everything, and while they are noticeably stiffer I haven't had issues with running them between devices & switches (though I also don't have any crazy bends I need to do). Well-aware that it's overkill, but I barely paid that much more for it, so I consider it a modest premium for peace of mind.

[@el_quba]

Honestly, in my experience CAT5e is good only for temporary and short patchcords, not so much for (semi-)temporary wiring of the house. Because they weren't designed even for 1G, especially the lower quality ones will sometimes randomly and silently negotiate 100M. And at this point CAT6 and even CAT6A cost virtually the same as a good CAT5E. So if you're gonna spend more than a few bucks on your cables, buy CAT6 or higher.

[@korbinianrottmair8189]

CAT 5E is designed for 1GBit Ethernet. In fact: the "E" is an extension of the existing CAT 5 standard, which deals withe the requirements of Gigabit Ethernet.

[@Mrperson0]

@@korbinianrottmair8189 If you have short runs, they can auto-negotiate at 10 gig. My house that was already with cat5e in the walls is able to negotiate at that speed since the longest run is just under 100 feet.

[@memeheadroom]

Yeah, I've had plenty of 5e cables just die on me. It never felt like a big deal because they were always relatively cheap so I had tons of them to swap out, but it was such a pain and really annoying.

[@el_quba]

@@korbinianrottmair8189 Specs of the two are nearly identical. Cat5e indeed has a little bit better specs which allow to push 1GBit through the cable under ideal conditions. But in non-ideal conditions Cat5e unfortunately does not provide reliable 1Gbit connection

[@dtemp132]

@@korbinianrottmair8189 Thanks for putting the truth here. I remember holding my first Cat5e cable in my hands in 2001 and going "wow this is rated for gigabit!"

[@ocdtechtalk]

I just built my house and I wired everything with cat 55. Because I want a future-proof it and make sure I'm ready!

[@GuusKlaas]

Honestly, cat-stuff, UTP/FTP/SFTP, and all that aside, my main gripe at the moment is twofold: people buying solid cable that should use stranded for their use-case and vice-versa (or just not terminating right, buying RJ45 terminals for solid/stranded etc...), and people falling for CCA cables. Copper Clad Aluminium is by far the worst scam in the "cables forged by elves under moonlight"-market there is. WiFi is a whole rabbit hole on itself, and I'd still always recommend a wire when a device doesn't have to be portable all the time if reliability is required, but all this and how marketing scams people just goes to show that even in this day and age there's still a good value in having a good degree of knowledge about networking, and it's not walways layman accessible.

[@GhostyGoBoo]

Are there both Jedi and Sith Riley's in this video?

[@nathanielcutajar]

Huh... I wasn't the only one that spotted that then

[@Gerton999]

I just finished wiring up my house with shielded cat6a, actually! It works really well, too. Needless to say, anything past cat6a is absolute overkill for residential applications.

[@0bsmith0]

It's not just overkill, there is literally no purpose for it.

[@DanWalshTV]

@@0bsmith0 That's not necessarily true. For the vast, vast majority of people, sure, heck even 2.5 Gbps would be overkill for most homes today but you can't just blindly state "literally no purpose" as a factual statement for everyone when there ARE (albeit uncommon) use cases for it, even today. I know people with 25 Gbps and even 40 Gbps links in their homes that they do in fact utilize for legitimate purposes. It's also important to consider future-proofing when you're doing permanent installations in walls/ceilings that would be costly to replace down the road. I'm not recommending anyone put Cat8 over Cat6/Cat6A in their walls (I have a mixture of Cat6 and OM3 fibre myself), I'm simply saying there are reasons for some individuals to do so.

[@FAB1150]

​​@@DanWalshTVno there literally is no purpose for cat8 lol. If you need higher speeds than 10 gig, go with fiber. It's much cheaper than cat8 and allows you to even shoot for 100 gig or more if you really want to and have the right stuff. Of course once you get to ultra crazy speeds the "much cheaper" part falls

[@0bsmith0]

@@DanWalshTV It's 100% true. There is no purpose to anything beyond Cat6a other than for shielding, not data speeds. There is no standards beyond 10 Gbps that have actually been implemented. There is a spec for 25 Gbps over Cat8 and we're 9 years later with zero equipment, no one wants it. I'm fine with 25 Gbps / 40 Gbps, but you're using fiber.

[@user-vh8gs1sw1j]

@@DanWalshTVIt is necessarily true. You don't know what you're talking about.

[@jeffreyparker9396]

The speed is not the only reason for higher rated cables. The cat7 and cat8 cables that are properly rated are required to have shielding which makes them suitable for environments with a lot of electrical noise. There is also the idea of future proofing, but that is best done with fiber, or better yet, conduit.

[@Jesusls]

What happened with CAT 7? Did we just skip it?

[@ZachLDB]

Google Fiber isn’t the fastest in the US. Ziply Fiber in the PNW offers 1, 2, 5, 10, and 50 GB up/down plans starting at $50. 🙃

[@aml7399]

Sonic Fiber in California sells 10 Gbps to homes for $50/mo.

[@AdamSmith-gs2dv]

We have Ben Lomend Fiber in Tennessee and we pay $60 for 1Gbps. By far the best ISP we ever had was better than Spectrum and especially Comcast

[@j.d.martin6678]

Cat 7 and 8 are good for their shielding properties. I had several 30 foot runs of CAT5e shielded cable up on a tower with FM radio co-location and could never hold gigabit speeds. Swapping them out to a CAT7 cable sorted that problem out as it is triple shielded. Each pair, an outer foil, and an outer braid helps with interference rejection. I agree that these cables for 'gaming purposes' is misleading marketing though.

[@Stackali]

well you probably exceeded the length for CAT5e

[@j.d.martin6678]

@@Stackali 30 feet? really?

[@JackD0ff]

I bought 2 Cat8 cables a few months ago - one from the ethernet power outlet to the router amdllnd second from router to PC. Now I also have the Asus ROG Rapture GT-BE98, 1Gbit up/down and works very well.

[@tremelo8508]

Interesting. I replaced all the cables in my home with Cat 8.(I just figured why not, I knew I could never reach the theoretical speeds they claim they are capable of, but the prices weren't outrageous) But I bought flat ones, so the stiffness is not an issue for me. (Even the one 100ft cable is flat). Possible my cables are fake?

[@junkerzn7312]

Generally speaking you want to go with Cat6A for permanent in-house wiring, mostly because it more or less mandates 23 AWG whereas most other CAT standards allow up to 26 AWG. You'll thank me later as POE+ (60W) and POE++ (100W) power delivery starts getting used for more and more things. Relatively short cabling can use Cat5e or Cat6 with 2.5 Gbe no problem but use Cat6 if you have a choice here. Don't bother with Cat8. The biggest problem with home internet is power consumption, particularly because all the switches and devices are turned on 24x7. And that means the vast, vast majority of things you interconnect should probably just use standard-fare 1Gbe switches that burn only 2W each. -Matt

[@TylerFurrison]

Been running Cat5e with an SG108E for a long time, still works for my needs until I upgrade my server

[@Mrperson0]

Heck, cat 5e can work for 10 gig as long as the run is short enough.

[@0bsmith0]

@@Mrperson0Personally I wouldn't rely on that to work consistently and reliably even over shorter distances. Cat6 sure. 2.5 and 5 GbE no problem for full length runs.

[@TylerFurrison]

My runs are NOT short enough lmao@@Mrperson0

[@Mrperson0]

@@0bsmith0 Except there are people who have shown that 10 gig transfer speed has worked out well over cat 5e. Cat 6 is perfect, but cat 5e can be good enough if you already have it running inside your house.

[@qfurgie]

did James pop in for the voiceover at 1:15??

[@cromefire_]

If you need more one can get Cat 6A or Cat 7A on a spool for cheap (because it's widely used by professionals for company networks) and just get some decent, toolless Cat 6A plugs, for an okay price. It's too expensive and bulky for short runs, but it's way easier for long runs (10m+), if you already have tubes for cable runs in the wall and with all the shielding it's not an issue at all from my experience to run it alongside live wire, even at 230 or ~400V. Just follow the instructions for the plugs and definitely use ones that have proper shielding, I have some intermittent issues some time back of not getting 1Gbit and when I inspected the cable I saw someone terminated it with cheap plug out of plastic, once I replaced those, with ones that are grounded in the switch, it never had an issue again.

[@tarodchaoslord]

Tried to explain this to a client recently, i didnt get the job which is fine i still get plenty of other work from them, but they ran cat 8 too every floor with 3 floors and 10 offices per floor i dont even want to know how much they ended up spending on supply alone

[@StinkyManWasTaken]

As an Australian seeing 1gbs as the lowest and worst option hurts. Why must our government do this to us

[@L70ECT]

Just want to point out that my ISP just started doing 50gb home internet here in WA so technically and they've been doing 10gb for the last few months. Sorry Riley you're technically wrong this time. 😢

[@tronosgamingwizard]

and what's the price, something like 500$ / month?

[@user-vh8gs1sw1j]

@@tronosgamingwizard Sounds good. Cheap.

[@RudeRecording]

There are analog audio applications for Cat 8 the cable has individually shielded pairs suitable for 4 channels of analog microphone use and is cheaper than 4 pair shielded audio cable. It is true that It's just not necessary for the average home network, like a lot of marketing.

[@budakPancing]

I upgrade my home network from cat 5e to cat 8 recently since the older cable is 20yrs old. I also ran in parallel fibre cable, both for future proofing for the next 20yrs. Since the availability of routers with SFP+ and 10gbe ports now it make sense. My local ISPs are also starting to offer 10gb plans. 2.5gbe switches are relatively cheap and 10gbe switches prices are also affordable now. If 25Gbe - 100Gbe devices prices becomes affordable, of course another round of upgrades.

[@Ageing_Golem]

Sees internet prices in US, cries in Canadian…

[@grumpyragdoll2640]

I use CAT8 just so I can tell my ISP my cables aren’t causing my internet problems.

[@TakticalTekniq]

So they can then tell you to reboot your computer.

[@user-vh8gs1sw1j]

But they still serve no purpose and you could do so even without Cat8 cables.

[@CobaltFoxPlays]

I use a cat7 because of the extra shielding. I got it during college for Network Administrator, part of test using the ethernet crimper

[@kuhrd]

The main thing i would point out is that not all cables within a category are even the same or similar quality. I have some Category 5 cable (not 5e) that is more than capable of delivering 250 and 550Mhz signals up to 50 feet without any noticeable problems even though it is technically way out of spec. While I also have some Category 6a cables that are either junk or counterfeit that will attempt to link at 10G but then often drop out during a large file transfer. Most quality Cat 5 cable will easily test at Cat 5e speeds because gigabit was originally designed to work with regular Category 5 cable before the makers realized that most Category 5 cable was already being produced at tight enough tolerances to pass the 5e and 6 standards. The important thing about digital to always remember, If the link establishes at a specific speed and doesn't drop out or have packet loss when transferring large files then its likely good enough for the average home user. Another crazy rabbithole to go down is using category 3 4p cable at gigabit and higher speeds.

[@DrJams]

You may want to run HDMI over Ethernet which will mean you need the best cables you can get. Or maybe look into fiber optic cables

[@MrRedstonefreedom]

CAT 7a, yea. So may as well get 8 for avoiding annoyance.

[@theandren85]

I upgraded my come cables from 5e to 6a, I would like to say I noticed a stability improvement and not only placebo... I chose 6a because it has twice as high mhz than regular 6

[@DILFDylF]

"I upgraded my come cables" Creep.

[@user-vh8gs1sw1j]

Ya, that's a lie and not a thing.

[@WarrenGarabrandt]

Thanks for making this video. I've been telling people the exact same thing, but nobody believes a random commenter on the Internet. Now I can point them to this so they can get it from a trusted source.

[@Thor6398-jt4mb]

When I installed the network in my house 5 years ago I went with cat 6a to be future proof. Not sure what the practical difference is compared to cat 6, the only thing is that 6a supports 500 MHz instead of 250 MHz, but both support the same speed, IIRC. I kinda regret my choice since the cable was so stiff. Edit: after watching the whole video I got the anser, 6a supports longer cables. Pretty sure I will never go past 55 meters in one single cable though.

[@Stefano236]

I used CAT8 for future proof, because change the cables is mess and by doing CAT 8, you safe from that mess for a long time. Even if the speed goes up and the equipment hold more speed.

[@jonathanbuzzard1376]

Future proof for what exactly? Nothing is the answer. Oh and Cat8 without CG45 or Terra connectors which you do t have because there is no equipment for it makes things worse. Might be why Cat8 is not certified by the IEEE for structured cabling.

[@user-vh8gs1sw1j]

But there is nothing to future proof for. There is nothing beyond 10 Gbps.

[@Waffls]

I recall Cat 6A being better protected against lightning so that's something to consider if you live in an area that gets stormy.

[@LIVEWIREMEDIAENT]

Please cover the different connectors that go with network cable types . thanks

[@TechySpeaking]

0:55 $150 for 8 Gbps internet? Jesus, I wish I had Google Fiber...

[@lottie-bu2jn]

just run fiber everywhere

[@TheAmazingDolph]

Just using more than a gig on most home networks is a pain in the ass

[@Poverty_Welder]

How and or why.

[@gondo2k2]

Why

[@siedenburg1]

2.5g nowadays isn't that hard, newer pcs got it built in, switches cost 100€ or less (tax included) and many nas systems can be upgraded with an usb to 2.5g dongle (for synology there is a github repo) or also come with built in 2.5g. 10g on the other hand is only a bit more compicated, but costs way more. also if you only use a hdd based nas it's to slow to saturate 10g fully.

[@riongronberg1435]

​@@Poverty_Weldermost consumer facing network infrastructure is all one gig. I have 10 gig service at home, and spent quite a bit of money on routers, switches and network cards to be able to utilize that level of service

[@gondo2k2]

Ok but again for the end user how is it hard or a pain when all you have to do is plug something in, how is it a pain? Also most home users have no real use for that kind of speed. (assuming you own the equipment)

[@BinkyBorky]

I have been running flat six for about 5 years now before then it was 5. I terminate them myself so the connection is at the highest speed. Good luck with your endeavors and I hope you don't get scammed anymore

[@fridaycaliforniaa236]

Riley was totally bursting in laugh for no reason and I love those short videos just for this ^^

[@OriginalRaveParty]

Techquickie is now the only LTT channel that I'm subscribed to. I like the informational shorter to-the-point style of videos. I also often spend 4 hours watching the LAN show for it's unfiltered nature. It's the middle length fluff content that I just don't have time for anymore. Some honest feedback. I'm not sure if it's useful to LTT but I want to be at least constructive. Perhaps I'm in a strange segment of viewership on a venn diagram 😂

[@OriginalRaveParty]

*WAN show 😂

[@Kahnanesgi]

I bought a C8 cable for the simple reason that finding a single 1.5 foot cable in 5E or 6 was near on impossible. For those cable, they are almost always bundled in lots o 5, 10, or sometime 20. and while the price per cable was reasonable, buying it in a bundle meant that the overall out of pocket was higher. I only needed the one cable and so didn't want a bunch of extras just cluttering up the space and so was willing to pay the marginally higher per cable price for an overall realized savings. I also didn't want/need anything longer. Just a short jump from my router/gateway to my computer. and even if it's a C5E or C6 in disguise, I still saved money and my up/down speeds according to speedtest are right at what I'm paying my ISP for, so that sparks joy. So, for me, it's been a reasonably good idea to buy the short, claims to be, C8 cable :)

[@SamPhoenix_]

Thats because 1.5ft runs are primarily patching cables for server racks and not worth selling a single cable bc of how cheap they are. You say that you saved money overall, but that is likely a false economy as a 3ft cable of 5e is dirt cheap. You probably paid 3x-5x more for a 1.5ft of Cat 8 than just buying a 3ft cat 5e cable and hiding the extra - Hell, you probably could've bought a 3ft 5e able and cheap crimper and halved the cable into two 1.5m runs for the same price (plus you'd have a crimper for the next time you wanted to do a short run). Glad it worked for you, but as Riley said, its not just about being Cat 5e/6 in disguise; due to the stiffness of the cable, its a lot harder to crimp cat 8 properly, so had you got an actual Cat 8 cable, it may not have worked properly at all.

[@psychochef05]

The fact that his shirt kept changing every other jump cut made my eye start twitching.

[@jeremylindemann5117]

What most people are still unaware of is that there is no regulation for selling ethernet cables. So anyone can make a cable and call it cat 5e, cat 6 or whatever they want and the consumer can't tell it what it actually is without buying it and testing it themselves. Some manufacturers/sellers are good and some are liars.

[@PitboyHarmony1]

Not entirely true. I bought a bunch of custom length professionally terminated Cat 8 cabling to run behind the walls of my house everywhere, from a local cable shop, and glad I did. Its not about killer speed, its about durability. Being behind Gyproc and flooring, replacing bad cables is not an option, and properly planned and run you dont get kinks or tight bends in the stiffer cable. All about planning. Reality is now, I have 10-15+ years use out of a cable system, and one day when speed is an issue ... then I'll worry about it. The usual issue with mass manufactured Cat5+ cables is that the termination job is handled by a sloppy machine, thats why these cables fail all the time. Once you get to Cat7 and 8 and the manufacturer is honest, the terminating is done by hand, guaranteeing a better job. If you go custom like I did, then that only increases. Techquickie is not always correct.

[@Mrperson0]

Unfortunately, you got scammed/overpaid for that. Cat 6 would have been more than enough since in 10-15+ years, going past 10 gigs for local networking will be unlikely.

[@Stackali]

i remember when CAT6 came out and everyone that knew, said there was no point in going from 5E to 6. same when 7 came out, no need to go from 5E to 7 and its the same this time with 8, 5E will be just fine for basically everyone.

[@AdamSmith-gs2dv]

Not really anymore, more and more internet providers are providing plans that are 1Gbs or higher.

[@dupajasio4801]

I've read somewhere that 90+ percent of patch cords or network cabling don't meet stated specs.

[@Tock46]

The AI voice over is a bit creepy because its quite close to the real one. What I noticed is that "dark grey shirt Riley" does not emphasize the words like normal Riley would.

[@BurntFaceMan]

I just spent about 5 hours rerunning the entire of my house with Cat6. Someone years ago when the house was built was kind enough to run Cat5 cables (not 5e) around the house fairly a nice feature to have. So I figured it would be easy to just swap those out with newer better "future proofing" ones... yea-nah it really wasn't. If anything I feel it would have been easier if they hadn't already done it given the bodge job they'd done to run things. Thank fully I got the cable through the walls easy enough, only to find most of the the wall sockets were in a bad state. I ordered more of those, but for now I figured I'd just run the cable and use that as is with connectors on both ends (like a savage!). this was a bad descision The RJ45 heads I'd ordered previously were apparently of the cheapest quality and didn't have pass-through setups I"m used to (that help let you confirm seating and colouring is correct before crimping and wasting a head), these only "poke it in, crimp and hope its correct". So I had to manually re-crimp about 30 cables, some of which multiple times as they were mis-jumpered, or the damn wire didn't seat properly. NIGHTMARE of a job that should have been nice and easy. At least afterwards i ran nice clean raceways for the things going to where the sockets will go once they come in. Moral of the story, if you're going to do a job, do it right and put a bit more money into components that make life easier. money is cheap, time is not.

[@Mortisnp]

Strange coincidence!! I was planning on redoing my house next year and was stongly considering Cat8 cables for embedded connections between my router and Mesh Network hubs for future proofing cos I won't be able to touch them for the next 10 years. My previous networking stuff that I did fell WAY short so I don't plan on having the same thing happen again. I did consider fiber optic but there are different types of cables and that could lead to compatibility issues and also not many consumer products have SFPs so it doesn't seem like a good bet

[@tylermason6924]

I just built my house and wired it with CAT 8, no issues for me. bought everything from lanshack and the electrician took care of terminations

[@Nesetalis]

don't forget... some times your situation just needs a little grounded shielding... had to replace a drop recently at work due to way too much electrical noise.

[@davidhays2913]

On one hand, yes I agree. On the other hand in my personal experience I use the exact same reasoning to only install CAT5 e in my home. Now I'm wishing I had used cat6 because most modern motherboards now support 2.5 GB transfer rates and the switches are coming down in price. And the spec sheet says that you can transfer at 2.5 GB on cat 5e but I'm here to tell you that unless conditions are absolutely perfect you will not transfer it those rates on those cables. So if you're not worried about the money and you are interested in future-proving because I believe 10 gigabit adoption and 40 gigabit adoption will come a lot sooner than we all think, then it might be wise to use a much higher standard than what you currently need. Because rewiring is expensive very very expensive...

[@kenhuffmanjr9919]

"QSFP+" and similar designations do not specifically speak to the cable medium material. Its an interface converter slot. It allows you to install an interface converter that can do copper or optical transmission of the communication protocol. Saying a card with SFP slots can't do ethernet on copper is silly...of course it can, with the right SFP/+/28/whatever converter. Yes, vendor locks can complicate things, but the tech is in place already.

[@kencomber]

Buying Cat8 for a home PC connection to an existing home router is an example of just jumping on the 'new' thing and not doing a little bit of research for what one might actually need. Buyer beware comes to mind.

[@o0shad0oo]

I had some issues with PoE-powered devices and, in all my random testing, cat7-8 cables worked where standard cat6 did not. I'm still not sure why; it was gigabit and only a foot or so long. Might've been the shielded connectors solved a grounding issue?

[@HermitsLair]

You can get 10 gig for 300$ a month in Chattanooga TN and 25 gig if you want to pay 5x that. EPB is the ISP that supports that. Who needs that at home? Almost nobody but it’s sick!

[@AdamSmith-gs2dv]

Tennessee has surprisingly good Internet service for a flyover state

[@B.D.F.]

I remember back in 2006 I got both an Xbox 360 and a PS3. The 360 came with a 3-foot 4-wire not-even-Cat5 cable while the PS3 came with a 6-foot super-shielded Cat6 cable. And now there’s Amazon scams that can’t even match that PS3 cable.

[@unkchaos2007]

Good to know about the CAT8.... thanks for the vids.

[@TolarRay]

I bought cat 7 cables from Amazon and they were flatly rolled up ☠️

[@genejones7902]

Commenting to confirm Nippon Labs cat 8 cables I bought 3 years ago, are in fact a good brand? Imo, I think so. I bought about $100 worth of the stuff and it works flawlessly. The only thing I'll say is, the connectors are a very tight fit into anything you plug it into, and as mentioned the cables are super rigid, so you cannot bend them that much.

[@darkceptor44]

My friend got a really short (less than a meter) Cat 8 cable one day just to put it from the modem/fiber-box to his router, I think it's silly and it feels like breaking an unwritten rule or something, even if it was only slightly more expensive than Cat 6. He bought it because he liked the brand (Vention) and always assumes bigger number and bigger price is better quality, for every type of product. He has it pretty bent though since the box and the router are kinda back-to-back and I warned him but he insists it's fine.

[@BuzStringer]

Thanks for the traffic bump on my CAT7 video. :)

[@charackthe]

Just when I needed to buy a new cable for the 1gbit (100mbits in practice currently) connection I recently got!

[@TheXev]

I wish I could change my shirt as fast as Riley can deliver the tech news.

[@E92M3]

I did my whole house with CAT 6A only for future proofing. In theory, no one in the next 10 / 15 years will be running more than 10gigabit connections at home (here in Australia at least). Saves me having to re route cables through my wall cavities again. each to their own though.

[@byrey3]

I used recently Cat8 to make a permanent conection from a switch to the router. It should last way beyond those walls

[@7wingsaseagles89]

The major difference between CAT6a and cat7 and 8 cabling is in the shielding. Cat6a cable they have a shield around all the pairs but that is actually screening. Cat7 and Cat8 are true shielded cables each individual pair is shielded. This is to prevent reflection higher frequencies tend to reflect off a shield instead of being absorbed. Which means it can induce itself on an adjacent pair. The development behind cat6a cable and the 10 gig application it is designed to prevent alien crosstalk interference from an adjacent cable it is available in screened or unscreened. In the United States screen cable is generally not necessary for data cabling. This is in large part to the FCC having the part 15 rule which requires all electronic equipment to be tested for excessive RF. However in many European countries there is no part 15 rule which means equipment is generally not checked for RF levels.

[@honkai6374]

i use Cat8 to send signal to LED walls on shows, the 40gb speed is really needed but can also be switched to a fiber cable.