CAT6 newbie. help

[DecoY]

so i bought a 50ft cat6 cable by accident to wire my home. i noticed it was cat6 when my wire wouldnt work (light is not up on the router). i have a basic netgear 802.11 rt-814.

my question is, what are my options. i read cat6 was backward compatible but does that mean i can use cat6 on my network?

or do i have to purchase a cat6 compatible router. if so, do the a/b/g's work ?

or is my best bet just returning the cat6 for a cat5

thanks

 

[kevnich2]

CAT6 and CAT5e will both work on switches/routers. If the CAT6 cable isn't working on your router, something is probably wrong with one or both devices on either ends of the cat6 cable. Another less likely possibility is that the cable is just bad (doubtful though)

 

[acemcmac]

Cat6 is just a hell of a lot harder to crimp with standard Cat 5 crimpers. Make sure you're using good quality jacks and that you're making contact on every pin. 80% of my cables are Cat 6 and I have a 1000 foot spool in the livingroom. Cat 6 is fully backwards compatible with Cat 5, it's just industrial grade for construction and stuff.... AFAIK.

 

[DecoY]

thanks for the info guys. i actually bought this cable pre-crimped. weird... only thing i can think of is that either the cable is bad or when the guy went under the house, he cut the wire by accident and didn't tell me.

 

[skyking]

you can get a cheap wiremap tester for around $20. they are nice to have around for simple continuity/switched pairs.