Is It Safe To Hook Up A Hub With A Router?

[Somebody1234]

Can you not see the cable rating printed on the cable itself?

[james_bond_rulez]

no, it's got serial codes and monbo jonbo on it. but on my cat5 cable it clearlly says cat 5

[lynx]

Network cabling normally has 8 connectors (4 pairs), but only 4 of them (2 pairs) are used for data transmission. The other two pairs were sometimes used for noise elimination (one pair at each end) but I don't think any of the more recent network cards bother. So you can get away with cable with only 2 pairs, which in high volumes reduces costs.

Cat 5 is actually the rating of the cable (250MHz up to 100m), it does not directly affect the speed of transmission. The network would still run at 100MHz even if you used lower quality cable. However, it does affect signal quality, so if you get signal loss, this could cause errors and therefore repeated transmissions, which would slow the network.

Edit: I believe the network cable has to have all 4 pairs to be elligible for cat5 classification, so your 4 wire cable can't get cat5, but that doesn't necessarilly mean that it is poorer quality.

Edit: typo

[james_bond_rulez]

ok i got it thx guys for the help