[mojo]

Originally Posted by maddogatc Will I will have to upgrade to cat 6 cable, get a gigabyte router and switch to take advantage of of the gigabyte transfer rate?

You will not have to upgrade to cat 6 cable. Though cat 6 is electrically better to cat 5 and if you were doing it in the first place I would go with cat 6, gigabit was made to run just fine on cat 5 and I do it every day with no problems. You will also not need a gigabit router, just a switch. As long as all computers are plugged into the switch and the only thing plugged into the router is the switch, you'll be fine. If you have anything plugged directly into the router, either that device will not get gigabit speeds or you will have to get a gigabit router.

Originally Posted by maddogatc Will my internet service be any faster (download upload speed)?

No, your internet speed will not change at all. This will only affect local file transfers. Consumer internet speeds are generally slower than 10 Mbps, maybe around 30 if you're really lucky and have Verizon Fios. This is much slower than the 100 Mbps network you already have, so the bottleneck is your internet connection, not your network.

Originally Posted by maddogatc It will cost a couple hundred bucks+ to buy the equipment and cable plus my time to install. Is the cost of upgrading my network worth the increase in speed?

It will not cost a couple hundred bucks, more like about $50 to buy a gigabit switch, which is the only thing you should need. Is it worth it? That depends. For me I do large file transfers between computers on a daily basis, so it's definitely worth it to me. If you do not transfer files (big ones) between computers very often and you just use your network to share the internet, you will notice no difference at all.