Cat5e vs Cat6

TriedandTested · 30 Mar 2006 at 10:01

Realistically, do you think that heading down the Cat6 route is a sensible option at a school? We're about to start quite a large building/refurbishment project at the school and i'm wondering whether Cat5e or Cat6 would be the better option for us? It's not that big a site and would have around 150 workstations connected at any one time, and with the ~20% additional cost of Cat6...is it worth it?

I'm not sure it is but thought i'd ask for other opinions.

scott.holmes · 30 Mar 2006 at 11:20

If it was me personally, and i was doing a new install and i could afford it id put Cat6 in. Purely because if you decide or need to go Gigabit at a later date, its easy done with the main infrastructure done and inplace.

20% now might sound a lot, but think of of the later rewiring it ALL for cat6?

V-Spec · 30 Mar 2006 at 12:31

scott.holmes said:
If it was me personally, and i was doing a new install and i could afford it id put Cat6 in. Purely because if you decide or need to go Gigabit at a later date, its easy done with the main infrastructure done and inplace.

20% now might sound a lot, but think of of the later rewiring it ALL for cat6?

Gigabit will happily run on Cat5e you only need cat6 to run 10Gb Ethernet, I suppose for the sake of 150 machines you won't even come close to using the bandwidth offered by 1Gb ethernet, let alone 10Gb, also the cost of cat6 cabling is minimal compared to the cost of switches which operate at 10Gb.. Of course if you can afford cat6, put it in for sake of the future but I highly doubt you'll ever come clost to using it.
Cat6 is also harder to work with, its stiffer than normal cat5e..

Blackstar_solar · 30 Mar 2006 at 12:32

scott.holmes said:
If it was me personally, and i was doing a new install and i could afford it id put Cat6 in. Purely because if you decide or need to go Gigabit at a later date, its easy done with the main infrastructure done and inplace.

20% now might sound a lot, but think of of the later rewiring it ALL for cat6?

I could be wrong as I'm not 100% what the diff between cat5e and cat6 is but if it's just that cat6 supports 1000mb I probably wouldn't bother, in a school with only 150 work stations, isn't 100mb going to be enough? I worked in the IT dept. of my secondary school for a while and we had 10mb, we convinced them to upgrade to 100 and everything was fine then...they're still using it now 7 years later

Sone · 30 Mar 2006 at 12:49

you can do 10gb over copper now???

Burbleflop · 30 Mar 2006 at 13:54

Blackstar_solar said:
I could be wrong as I'm not 100% what the diff between cat5e and cat6 is but if it's just that cat6 supports 1000mb

As has already been said 5e will happily run gigabit. The main difference between 6 and 5e is the frequency (250Mhz in 6, 100Mhz in 5e) and that 6 will usually give lower attenuation then 5e.

From speaking to an installer yesterday in Paris, cat 6 is a bit of a pig to install and get it to pass the tests - things like the bend radius are quite important with cat6 whereas 5e is less particular.

Burbleflop · 30 Mar 2006 at 13:55

Sone said:
you can do 10gb over copper now???

You have been able to for about a year. I believe you need cat7 for 10Gig though.

Edit - No, cat 6e or above is needed

V-Spec · 30 Mar 2006 at 13:59

Sone said:
you can do 10gb over copper now???

indeed, only with cat6 cable. I installed part of a backbone for BP in canary wharf not long ago, the 10Gb copper Xenpak modules were about £600 each, just looks like a big heatsink with an rj45 connector in the middle..

V-Spec · 30 Mar 2006 at 14:01

Burbleflop said:
You have been able to for about a year. I believe you need cat7 for 10Gig though.

You can happily run 10Gb over cat6 for short distances, forgot what the actual distance was but its less than 50 Meters, obviously designed for shorthaul data centre stuff etc.... cat 7 is barely in infancy but one think I do know is that cat7 will allow you to run 10Gb ethernet up to 100 meters.. the future of desktop bandwidth

Burbleflop · 30 Mar 2006 at 14:17

V-Spec said:
You can happily run 10Gb over cat6 for short distances, forgot what the actual distance was but its less than 50 Meters, obviously designed for shorthaul data centre stuff etc.... cat 7 is barely in infancy but one think I do know is that cat7 will allow you to run 10Gb ethernet up to 100 meters.. the future of desktop bandwidth

Cat7 is definately still in infancy, cat 7 certified patch panels and sockets are like hens teeth at the moment.

Sone · 30 Mar 2006 at 14:36

can you 10gb over coax? (couldent believe you could it 1gbit, 1000-base-cx, for 30m)

Burbleflop · 30 Mar 2006 at 14:40

Sone said:
can you 10gb over coax? (couldent believe you could it 1gbit, 1000-base-cx, for 30m)

1000-Base-CX only works for runs upto 25m I think. No, 10Gig over coax doesn't exist.

Skilldibop · 30 Mar 2006 at 16:57

Even if it did it's half as fast as standard 1gig and ten gig as they are natively Full duplex, which Coax can't do in a single run.

You can actually run 10 gig over cat5e. But you need to terminate it properly whereas 100meg and 1 gig are a lot more tolerant.
Though for enterprise purposes you'd be off your nut to do that. It's a bodge only scenario