Ethernet cables are fairly straightforward as far as consumer tech goes, so there aren’t a ton of different specs, variants, or subcategories to consider—cables do one thing. We’re looking for the ones that do it well. We combed through round-ups and reviews to see what other professionals recommended, but this isn’t a hardware category that lends itself particularly well to traditional criticism.
To make your setup as efficient as possible, you should plan out your setup and figure out how to route your cables before setting up a device with an Ethernet connection. Once you know where things will be, measure the distance that the cable will need to run and then purchase a cable as close to that length as possible . Ethernet cables are fairly cheap and the difference in price between the most and least expensive is especially small for short lengths of cable.
Cat6 supports a frequency of 250MHz, which translates to 1 Gbps over up to 100 meters of cable and 10 Gbps over up to 55 meters of cable. If you want to shoot for the moon, Cat7 runs at 600MHz, which translates to 10 Gbps over up to 100 meters of cable. It’s also more durable and features less signal distortion than lower categories.