Stoopid Question

[rayward]

If I connect my Time Capsule and iMac using a Cat 6 ethernet cable, will I get a faster connection that using a Cat 5 cable?

[BaldiMac]

If I connect my Time Capsule and iMac using a Cat 6 ethernet cable, will I get a faster connection that using a Cat 5 cable?

Not necessarily, unless you were using a crappy Cat 5 cable. The router, ethernet ports, and switch have more to do with the speed. Cat 5e is capable of gigabit ethernet.

[Tallest Skil]

It all has to do with distance. For example, Cat7 supposedly won't get any better transfer rates than Cat6 under 100 meters.

[rayward]

I was using Wireless N, but I run Quicken for Windows on XP within Parallels and, as Time Machine treats the whole disk image as one file, back-ups were taking forever and slowing down other wireless-based activity. So I hooked-up the iMac via ethernet (relatively new Cat 5 cable) and that made things much better, but the cable I was using isn't long enough. So today I bought a longer cable (25'), which is Cat 6, and just wanted to make sure that there isn't a setting I could tweak to use the extra "space" on Cat 6.

FWIW, I've finally succumbed and bought Quicken for Mac, and will be cursing the Gods later while I convert. Quicken is the only reason I have XP on my Mac, and that's a 70GB image that drags down back-ups and takes up too much space on both my Mac and my TC. I downloaded the QFL Beta, but that cannot import from Quicken for Windows, only a Mac file will do. As Intuit are about to cut off online support for Quicken 2006, I had to buy a new version one way or the other.

This way, I will suffer Quicken for Mac until QFL is ready, and I will have a Mac-based Quicken file already for the upgrade. In the meantime, my Time Machine back-ups will be a lot smaller.