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rayward

macrumors 68000
Original poster
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?
 
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.
 
It all has to do with distance. For example, Cat7 supposedly won't get any better transfer rates than Cat6 under 100 meters.
 
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.
 
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