Cat5, Cat6, Other?

[PartisanEntity]

Hi there, I would like to improve the internet and network signal in my home. I am going to be pulling a lan cable through a number of empty tubes in the walls.

I have both older and newer hardware in the home, computers, PS4, Roku, Fire TV, router etc.

The question is what type of lan cable to get. If I go ahead with cat6 is it backwards compatible with older hardware? Does it matter at all in home use?

If I understood correctly cat6 has a higher bandwidth. So instinctively I would go for that (provided it is not too expensive). I need about 10m of cable. Can I go ahead with that and not worry about any hardware not being compatible?

Or perhaps cat5e?

What would you guys advise?

Sent from my SM-G950F using Tapatalk

 

[Trip]

All 4-pair Cat cabling is compatible with the lowest negotiated link rate (typically 10Mb/s in rare instances in these days, usually 100Mb/s for Cat5 and the longest runs of Cat5e (or flaky terminations/cabling), and 1000Mb/s (gigabit) for most Cat6 or higher installs. 10Gb is usually achievable by shorter runs of Cat6, typically guaranteed by proper installation of shielded Cat6a and higher cabling. The highest-rated physical linkage will almost always negotiate downwards to support slower speeds if conditions cause that to happen, and/or it's required for whatever reason (rare these days).

If you just want to keep it simple and stay in the realm of copper cables, Cat6 will give you solid 1Gb speeds (standard these days) in almost all cases, and 10Gb on properly-installed and verified shorter links, without needing to monkey with shielded and grounded gear (usually). If you want 10Gb capability at longer lengths, shielded Cat6a (at minimum) would be the order of the day. And again, faster Cat standard cabling will be backward-compatible with any link speed standard below (1Gb, 100Mb and 10Mb).

That being understood, the primary question is really how much "backbone" speed are you looking for, and what price are you willing to pay to provide it now, and potentially scale up in speed without having to redo your structured cabling runs in the future?

If you have any earnest interest in likely going to 10Gb on your primary LAN links in the future, it may make more sense to run multi-mode fiber through the primary conduits, which could scale from 1Gb/s to 10Gb to 40Gb and even 100Gb for short runs (OM4 and up), no fussing with copper shielding and grounding necessary. You'd of course need to terminate your fiber runs to the proper SFP/SFP+ equipped switches, which then would distribute shorter Cat6 or Cat6a copper runs from those points to your wall jacks and endpoints. That could all seem like complete overkill, but just something to think about if you think you might like to enjoy truly non-blocking bandwidth for whatever you throw at your network over the next, say, 20 years or so...

Plenty of options, but rest assured it's all standards-based and there is usually a way to make almost anything you're thinking of inter-operate, at least at a reasonable level of speed, if not better.

 

[degrub]

Leave a pull chord in the tubing for the next time at the very least.
Btw, fiber should not be pulled and has minimum critical bend radii that should not be dropped below as you can damage/crack the glass fiber. So no tight bends like you can do with CAT5e . That being said there are pullable fiber bundles with a central pulling ‘wire’. Even wire cables have minimum radii with the more heavily shielded CAT7 an example.

 

[PartisanEntity]

Thanks for the feedback. Fiber won't be an option due to costs and physical conditions, there are tons of tight bends in the tubing.

Given the above, to make it more future proof, CAT7 sounds like a good option.

Sent from my SM-G950F using Tapatalk

 

[Trip]

I should have footnoted about bend radius and fiber. Yes, you would only want to push fiber through straight or minimally curved conduit, then ideally terminate those at switches and distribute access runs via copper. But if that's not possible and/or too costly, then Cat6a will do just fine. Best of luck with the project!

 

[degrub]

If you are dealing with short radius elbows, pulling through more than 4 is going to be very difficult if the tubing is less than 1.5 or 2 inch diameter due to the effective cross sectional area as it goes around the corner. The NEC recommended diameter and fill are based on no more than this number. You should get a length of cat 7 with a mock up of the number of bends to see if you can even do it. Don't forget that for cable without a central pulling wire, generally the more flexible the cable the less tension it can take.

 

[TheLostSwede]

Hmmm, very odd advice here from some people.

First of all, there's no such thing as Cat 7 for BASE-T Ethernet, there's also no such thing as Cat 6e.

The standard you want if you want to be truly future proof, in as much as it's possible over copper wires, is Cat 6A, as it's what's used for 10Gbps up to 100m/300ft. If your runs are all shorter than 50m/150ft, you're most likely good with Cat 6. Also, 2.5Gbps and 5Gbps BASE-T Ethernet will work fine over Cat 6 up to 100m/300ft. I'd suggest using STP cabling, at least if you don't know what's inside the walls, as it'll help with EMI shielding, whereas UTP cabling can be more sensitive to interference. That said, STP cabling is a lot stiffer and would be harder to get around the bends.

Most higher-end consumer grade hardware is likely to move to 2.5Gbps over the next few years, with higher-end motherboards for PCs already coming with it as standard. You can also get USB dongles that support 2.5Gbps as an easy, affordable ($50) upgrade option for both notebooks and desktops. 10Gbps copper network cards are sub $100 these days and 5Gbps cards are a bit less.

Keep in mind that you're going to need a matching switch for anything past 1Gbps, as these are so far not standards available in most switches, especially not consumer grade.

 

[degrub]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO/IEC_11801#CAT7

http://www.comnen.com/a-brief-introduction-of-category-7-cat7-and-category-7a-cat7a-cables/

 

[degrub]

Hi there, I would like to improve the internet and network signal in my home. I am going to be pulling a lan cable through a number of empty tubes in the walls.

I have both older and newer hardware in the home, computers, PS4, Roku, Fire TV, router etc.

The question is what type of lan cable to get. If I go ahead with cat6 is it backwards compatible with older hardware? Does it matter at all in home use?

If I understood correctly cat6 has a higher bandwidth. So instinctively I would go for that (provided it is not too expensive). I need about 10m of cable. Can I go ahead with that and not worry about any hardware not being compatible?

Or perhaps cat5e?

What would you guys advise?

Sent from my SM-G950F using Tapatalk

When you say "tubes" what exactly are you referring to ?
Old PVC water pipe ?
Or actual wire conduit ?

 

[DonTC]

If you are dealing with short radius elbows, pulling through more than 4 is going to be very difficult if the tubing is less than 1.5 or 2 inch diameter due to the effective cross sectional area as it goes around the corner. The NEC recommended diameter and fill are based on no more than this number. You should get a length of cat 7 with a mock up of the number of bends to see if you can even do it. Don't forget that for cable without a central pulling wire, generally the more flexible the cable the less tension it can take.

There is a ANSI/TIA 568-C.2 guideline for cable bend radius when dealing with structure (solid copper) Ethernet cable. I wrote up a blog article about this, where I go into some detail with pictures: https://www.truecable.com/blogs/cable-academy/minimum-bend-radius.

If running shielded cable (F/UTP, F/FTP, S/FTP), then the guideline is 7X the OD of the cable jacket. U/UTP is capable of going tighter...4X the OD of the cable jacket.

 

[DonTC]

Hmmm, very odd advice here from some people.

First of all, there's no such thing as Cat 7 for BASE-T Ethernet, there's also no such thing as Cat 6e.

The standard you want if you want to be truly future proof, in as much as it's possible over copper wires, is Cat 6A, as it's what's used for 10Gbps up to 100m/300ft. If your runs are all shorter than 50m/150ft, you're most likely good with Cat 6. Also, 2.5Gbps and 5Gbps BASE-T Ethernet will work fine over Cat 6 up to 100m/300ft. I'd suggest using STP cabling, at least if you don't know what's inside the walls, as it'll help with EMI shielding, whereas UTP cabling can be more sensitive to interference. That said, STP cabling is a lot stiffer and would be harder to get around the bends.

Most higher-end consumer grade hardware is likely to move to 2.5Gbps over the next few years, with higher-end motherboards for PCs already coming with it as standard. You can also get USB dongles that support 2.5Gbps as an easy, affordable ($50) upgrade option for both notebooks and desktops. 10Gbps copper network cards are sub $100 these days and 5Gbps cards are a bit less.

Keep in mind that you're going to need a matching switch for anything past 1Gbps, as these are so far not standards available in most switches, especially not consumer grade.

Correct. There is no ratified Cat7 specification as of yet. There may be a international ISO standard, but that means nothing to the ANSI/TIA group here in America. There is a proposal, but no ratification. Right now a Cat7 anything is the best guess of the manufacturer. It should be noted that the ANSI/TIA specs in general don't get too deep into cable construction. What they really point out is cable performance, and how the manufacturer gets there is up to the manufacturer (within limits of course).

Good call on the NBASE-T stuff. That is the new kid on the block. Of course everything from the switches to Ethernet NICs need to support NBASE-T. I wrote up a pretty interesting blog about Cat6 vs. Cat6A here: https://www.truecable.com/blogs/cable-academy/cat6-vs-cat6a and also wrote up a blog about how Ethernet cable speed translates over to common shared devices in a LAN. That blog is here: https://www.truecable.com/blogs/cable-academy/the-need-for-speed.

Shielded cable has it's place, but imposes penalties around bend radius and the absolute requirement for proper grounding on the switch end. This is not trivial. Improperly installed shielded cabling will CAUSE problems as opposed to avoiding them.

 

[TheLostSwede]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO/IEC_11801#CAT7

http://www.comnen.com/a-brief-introduction-of-category-7-cat7-and-category-7a-cat7a-cables/

I think you misunderstood, I didn't say there wasn't a Cat 7 standards, what I said, is there's not Cat 7 standard for BASE-T Ethernet. Two different things. The next standard for BASE-T will be Cat 8.

 

[degrub]

I think you misunderstood, I didn't say there wasn't a Cat 7 standards, what I said, is there's not Cat 7 standard for BASE-T Ethernet. Two different things. The next standard for BASE-T will be Cat 8.

no worries.

for those wanting further clarification -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2.5GBASE-T_and_5GBASE-T

 

[follower]

Hi there, I would like to improve the internet and network signal in my home. I am going to be pulling a lan cable through a number of empty tubes in the walls.

I have both older and newer hardware in the home, computers, PS4, Roku, Fire TV, router etc.

The question is what type of lan cable to get. If I go ahead with cat6 is it backwards compatible with older hardware? Does it matter at all in home use?

If I understood correctly cat6 has a higher bandwidth. So instinctively I would go for that (provided it is not too expensive). I need about 10m of cable. Can I go ahead with that and not worry about any hardware not being compatible?

Or perhaps cat5e?

What would you guys advise?

Sent from my SM-G950F using Tapatalk

CAT5e is enough for you. I really hate CAT.7 termination because it takes time. I use CAT7 though.

 

[sfx2000]

Or perhaps cat5e?

CAT5 is good enough for most homes - even up to 10GB for short runs...

And more than good enough for N-Base-T, which is 2.5 and 5Gb

If you're pulling cable - always pull two - gives some redundancy - don't have to terminate the spare, but you'll know it's there.