If you have a slower connection perhaps 10 or 20 megabits per second you re good with anything cat 5 or newer.
Cat 5 cable gigabit speed.
Cat 5 is also used to carry other signals such as telephony and video.
If you have gigabit internet 1gbps an old ethernet cable will hold you back.
Cat 5e cable is enhanced to reduce interference so that it can reliably.
Cat 6 and cat 6a cables are more interesting.
Cat7 ethernet cable 20 ft rj45 connector cat 7 double shielded stp 10 gigabit 600mhz premium high speed 6m network wire patch lan cord 20 feet 4 8 out of 5 stars 199 13 89 13.
For most purposes gigabit ethernet works well using a regular ethernet cable specifically the cat5e and cat6 cabling standards.
The old fashioned cat 5 cable is no longer a recognized standard but it technically supports gigabit speeds just not well.
Cat 6 supports 10 gigabit ethernet only up to 164 feet of cable length.
The new 2ghz speed limit finally category 8 is the new.
If you are having problems achieving gigabit speeds and you have cat 5e cables in the mix then it is safe to assume that those specific cat 5e cables are not gigabit capable.
If you have a modern router and modern ethernet enabled devices you can get faster speeds 10 gb s for cat 6a instead of the 1 gb s for cat 6.
More recently the introduction of cat 7a cable increases the speed to 1ghz and throughput to 40gbps but tops out at 165 feet.
This is almost certainly the issue.
The category 6 augmented cable standard or cat 6a was created to further improve the performance of cat 6 ethernet cables using cat 6a enables 10 gigabit ethernet data rates over a single cable run up to 328 feet.
If you have only tried a cat 5e cable you owe it to yourself to try a cat 6 cable.
In other words only some of those old cat 5 cables are good enough to be cat 5e cables.