Earthnet cable upgrade#
Earthnet cable full#

The facts show that an inferior cabling system can cause up to 70 percent of network downtime even though it usually represents only 5 percent of an initial network investment. The most important consideration however, regardless of your choice for CAT5e or CAT6, is that you always opt for a 100% copper quality cable. The price difference between CAT5e and CAT6 is not high and it is usually a good idea to opt for the better quality cable, thus preparing the network infrastructure and performance for the near future.

Earthnet cable upgrade#

But hardware gets upgraded over time it is much easier to upgrade hardware than to lay in new cables. It is often argued that it is not worth investing in cables with a higher performance, such as CAT6, since the current hardware in the network infrastructure does not require 10 Gbps speeds. In the end, the choice comes down to your application. Is the cable for indoor or outdoor use? Does the cable have to be rigid or flexible? Are there possible sources of interference? And so on. What is the required network speed: 100 Mbps, 1000 Mbps or 10 Gbps? What is the amount of users? With a large amount of users, the frequency of the cable (MHz) becomes important. There are numerous considerations when choosing the right cable. In general, you will find that CAT6 cables are priced 10-20% above CAT5e cables. Multiple characteristics have an influence on the cost of Ethernet cables, the main elements being length, quality, copper content and manufacturer. If not, you won’t be able to identify the cable category by colour or RJ45 connector, but CAT6 cables are often thicker than CAT5e cables because it uses thicker copper wires. Most of the times, the cable category is printed on the cable.

Earthnet cable full#

To be able to run 10GBASE-T over the full 100 m, it is advised to use CAT6A also called Augmented Category 6 cable. After this distance the rate drops to 1GBASE-T. When used for 10GBASE-T, the maximum length of a CAT6 cable reduces to 55 m. If it is required to cover distances longer than 100 m, the signal can be amplified with repeaters or switches. This can result in a slow or failing connection, or even no connection at all. The maximum achievable speeds will never be met beyond this length. CAT6 Maximum Lengthīoth CAT5e and CAT6 offer lengths of up to 100 m per network segment. The result is less system noise, fewer errors and higher data transmission rates. Not only does CAT6 provide significantly lower interference or Near-End Crosstalk ( NEXT) in the transmission compared to CAT5e, it also improves Equal-Level Far-End Crosstalk ( ELFEXT), Return Loss (RL) and Insertion Loss (IL). Regardless of whether a spline is used, CAT6 features more stringent specifications for crosstalk and system noise. Nowadays, CAT6 cables are more flexible, using other methods to reduce noise. In the past, the 250 MHz performance provided by CAT6 was often achieved by using a nylon spline in the wiring, which isolated each of the four twisted pairs, making the cable rigid. Both use copper wires, with typically 4 twisted pairs (8 wires) per cable. CAT6 CrosstalkĬAT5e and CAT6 are both twisted pair cables. CAT6 Speedīecause CAT6 cables perform up to 250 MHz which is more than twice that of CAT5e cables (100 Mhz), they offer speeds up to 10GBASE-T or 10-Gigabit Ethernet, whereas CAT5e cables can support up to 1GBASE-T or 1-Gigabit Ethernet. On both you can drive the same speed, but a 4-lane highway can handle much more traffic at the same time. Think of it as the difference between a 2- and a 4-lane highway.

This means that a CAT6 cable can process more data at the same time. CAT6 cables are designed for operating frequencies up to 250 MHz, compared to 100 Mhz for CAT5e. The main difference between CAT5e and CAT6 cable lies within the bandwidth, the cable can support for data transfer. The chance is small that you currently have an internet connection with which you can achieve up to 500 Mbps speed. This is more than sufficient for the speed of by far the most internet connections. CAT6 Bandwidthīoth CAT5e and CAT6 can handle speeds of up to 1000 Mbps, or a Gigabit per second.