Cable modem question

[JimL]

Will an ethernet cable do any better or worse than a USB connection in a
LinkSys cable modem?

 

[JimL]

If your modem supports both (my cable modem does) then performance will be
marginally better via ethernet, because your network card does the work
that your processor would otherwise need to do if you were using USB. I
think this is more a question of load on your PC rather than it making
much difference (if any) in tems of upload or download speeds.

In summary: use ethernet rather than USB.

Thanks. I'll be using USB for the time being, since the ethernet cable that
came with the modem is only a foot long. But I'll get that solved. Any
reason a cat 5 won't do? Better to go with 6 given it's cheap?

 

[JimL]

If it works then I wouldn't rush to change it.

Cat5 will do fine. Cat6 (or cat5e) is required for giga-bit networks,
which I doubt the modem will support. If your broadband connection were
ever to exceed 100mbps then you'd be looking at needing Cat 6.

http://everything.explained.at/Category_6_cable/
http://everything.explained.at/Category_5_cable/

Thanks

 

[pimpom]

If it works then I wouldn't rush to change it.

Cat5 will do fine. Cat6 (or cat5e) is required for giga-bit
networks, which I doubt the modem will support. If your
broadband connection were ever to exceed 100mbps then you'd be
looking at needing Cat 6.

Last month, I used a 100-ft length of ordinary CAT5 cable to set
up a temporary gigabit link between two of my computers at home.
I got 40-50 MB/s sustained transfer speed copying files between
the two computers. A 100 Mbps connection gives me about 8.5 MB/s.