This is why some Ethernet cables are faster than others

After discovering that a single Cat5 cable was bottlenecking some devices on my network to 90 Mbps while the rest of my setup ran at gigabit speeds, I went deep into learning what actually makes one Ethernet cable faster than another. The CAT rating printed on the jacket turned out to be only part of the story. It turns out the build quality, which pairs are actually wired up, and whether whoever crimped the ends knew what they were doing matter just as much as the category. Some Cat5 cables can pull gigabit speeds on short runs, and I’ve seen brand-new Cat6 cables that couldn’t keep a stable connection because someone botched the termination.