CAT6 cable contains four pairs of copper wire and unlike CAT5, utilizes all four pairs. CAT6 supports Gigabit (1000 Mbps) Ethernet and supports communications at more than twice the speed of CAT5e, the other popular standard for Gigabit Ethernet cabling.

Taken from http://compnetworking.about.com/od/c...bldef_cat6.htm

This makes it sound like CAT5e just doesn't measure up to CAT6. So confused.