I spent ~$35 on new cables and my LAN speed increased 6x
After seeing that my wireless speeds were much faster than the speeds I was getting over Ethernet, I decided to invest in some new cables. I didn't know it before, but I saw while I was changing them out that my current cables were Cat 5e. While putting my network together, I had just been grabbing whatever cables I could find in my scrap drawers. Now I have Cat 8 cables and my speeds jumped from 7MB/s to an average of over 40MB/s. It's a much bigger improvement than I expected, especially for such a small investment.
Not all cat 5e is created equal...you can buy a good cat5e from a reputable supplier or a super shit one at the dollar store...they just stamp 5e on it even if it is under sized wire and not actually been tested to work
Yeah here dollar store purchases are final sale, no returns, and aliexpress really depends on the seller. Some good stuff there, some just scammy junk. And many manufacturers will skimp on purpose, and say they are certified without actually getting a certification or testing.
My favorite failure was when someone used solid-core cabling for all their patch cables instead of stranded and kept bitching about how unreliable everything was.
Which, of course, it is when you use the wrong cable and it keeps breaking as you move it around.