Cable question

I'm having problems with my internet. Specifically I have no problem connecting with my laptop wirelessly while at the same time, my wired connection works intermittently. In other words it'll work for a while and then give out for a bit. Someone suggested to me that the CAT5 cable I'm using is going and I need a new one. This person also suggested that I need a network cable and not a patch cable.

So my questions are could a bad cable be the problem and which kind of cable do I need to use?

you need a generic CAT5 cable (ethernet) and yes a bad cable could be the reason, and is the easiest/cheapest thing to try to fix the problem as well.

I'm glad it's the cheapest solution.

I wanted to use this however I was told it was the wrong thing because it is a patch cable and I need a network cable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patch_cable

as you can see the term is primarily a reference to the length of the cable.

you can use either cat 5 or cat 6 - the latter is newer and offers more bandwidth, but for nearly any home useage they are equal, get whichever is cheaper.

CAT6 is also higher quality transmission. I'd highly recommend getting a CAT6 these days, as data integrity is maintained a bit more, thanks to a stricter bill of materials.

Ah, thanks Elder and Rahja. I went with the cat 6 since it was only about 50 cents more or so.