What is involved when doing an upgrade from cat5e to cat7? or is it even worth it? Do I need to change my cables or just the jacks. I am currently paying for a 1.5 Gb internet speed and a device connected to a cat5e runs at around 550 - 650 Mb. My PC connected to a cat6 runs 950Mb max. Will changing to cat 7 make it close to what I am paying for or will my cable bottleneck it? Not sure if it is significant but the house is 20 years old and the cabling was done then, based on the original jacks it had, mainly for telephones.
My PC connected to a cat6 runs 950Mb max
Make sure both the routee and your PC have a port that supports more than 1gbps.
My router only has one 2.5gbps port, and not all MoBos (or NICs) support 2.5gbps.
Avoid at all costs.
Unless your Cat5e cables are running more than 40m long you should be able to do speeds over 1Gbps. Upgrading to Cat7 won’t bring any tangible benefit. However it is possible the cables in the walls are bent, damaged or absorbing interference from other nearby electrical cables.
If you want the full 1.5Gbps to your devices, both the router/modem AND the device must support this speed. Including the switches or similar on the way. Meaning if the ethernet port is only gigabit on either side, that’s as fast as it will go. (And upgrading everything to 2.5gbe will be expensive)
To diagnose the sub gigabit connection on your cat5e I’d recommend first making sure the jacks are terminated correctly and then testing maximum transfer speed with iPerf in UDP mode. If the connection speed doesn’t improve I’d look at upgrading cables. But only as a last resort.
Hope this helps.
I would avoid cat 7 and go with Cat 6A. If you need more bandwidth, use fiber. I would find a reputable low voltage/AV installer to run the cabling. Replace the jacks. Make sure it’s put bare copper and not CCA.
As for networking equipment, you will need something that minimally does 2.5gbps to achieve your 1.5gbps Wan speed. In addition, the connected device needs to be able to achieve those speeds. This you should be able to order yourself depending on what you go with. I personally like Ubiquiti, however there is a learning curve and there is basically the community here on Reddit, and their own forums for the majority of tech support.
Both options will likely be very expensive.