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What is the difference between the two? Essentially both cable types are rated for distances up to 90M, but the difference lies in the data carrying capacity of each cable. Cat5e is a 100Mbit/s cable, and Cat6 is a gigabit cable standard. Gigabit = 1,000Mbit/s, or roughly ten times as fast at Cat5e.
Cat5e cable, or Category 5 cable, is a copper standard for 100Mbit/s transport speed. Cat5e (enhanced) replaced the old Cat5 standard. Each Cat5e cable actually can carry 100Mbit worth of data per second.
Is this adequate for your network? In order to answer this, it is good to know a few more details about your network. Do you use an internal server that hosts databases or bandwidth intense features? Do you only use the data connection in your office for internet browsing? Do you use a VOIP telephone system?
It is common for the average business to use a T-1 worth of bandwidth or greater. An average T-1 connection is 1.5Mbit/s, so if the main use of your data usage is browsing the internet, the 100Mbit/s connection with Cat5e cable will never be a cause for lack of network performance.
If you use very bandwidth intensive applications hosted on a common server, and you need real time performance internally, you may actually use a large portion of that available bandwidth.
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