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> You also want something better than cat5 for home wiring. For 25Gbps? Or are you meaning for the 1gbps you have? If the former, of course, but otherwise Cat5

> You also want something better than cat5 for home wiring. For 25Gbps? Or are you meaning for the 1gbps you have? If the former, of course, but otherwise Cat5e can handle 10GbE if you have good connections and the loop length isn’t too long.

mlyle 5y ago
Yup. My whole house has Cat5E and it all works at 10gbps; though I chose to run 5gbps just to have some margin. Most hard drives will keep up with a full gigabit pipe, too, on a sequential write. I think the poster is exaggerating a bit.
- jsjohnst 5y ago
  My home is a mix of topologies, but everything that is twisted pair copper that was pre-existing is Cat5e and has no trouble fully saturating 10gbps (30-40ft average loop length). I have cheap RG6 handling 2.5Gbps where I didn’t have an existing cable run and didn’t want to run new cable and it can fully max out the connection too based on iperf testing. In my basement, I also have fiber (for >2 meter spans) and twinax (for 1-2 meter spans) in 10Gbps and 40Gbps too.
AnotherGoodName 5y ago
Cat5 and cat5e are different though. Cat5 struggles with 1gbps.
- yuhong 5y ago
  The differences are minimal. There is a good article on this topic: https://www.flukenetworks.com/knowledge-base/application-or-standards-articles-copper/1000base-t-over-category-5 https://www.flukenetworks.com/knowledge-base/application-or-...
  - jsjohnst 5y ago
    The differences, while minimal, do make a big difference in certain environments. Long cable lengths (>70m) is the obvious one that might apply in a home environment theoretically. The more common case where it makes a difference is in very high density cable trays or other places where you have a lot of potential interference, which generally doesn’t apply as much in a home. P.S. - a lot of your recent comments are showing as dead, might want to email HN mods and see what’s up.
    - yuhong 5y ago
      A lot of the difference is in things like keystone jacks and patch panels, as this is where far end crosstalk is most likely.
      - jsjohnst 5y ago
        Agree!
- jsjohnst 5y ago
  > Cat5 and cat5e are different though. Yes, for sure. 99% of the time, based on personal experience, the person either doesn’t realize the difference or is just incorrectly using the term Cat5 to mean Cat5e. It’s pretty rare you’ll find the former even in older homes (again, my experience based on living in the US). This is why I intentionally used the term Cat5e in my reply. Cat5 was deprecated by Cat5e back 20+ years ago, long before the average US home began getting wired with Ethernet. Further, many (majority?) of Cat5 cables older than 10 years old actually meet the 5e requirements, just weren’t certified specifically. > Cat5 struggles with 1gbps. Like with my original point, that depends on the length and the quality of the connections. Inaccurate blanket statements mislead or worse, so I encourage you to avoid it.
- mlyle 5y ago
  > Cat5 struggles with 1gbps. 1000baseT requires plain old category 5 for distances of up to 100m. Most plain category 5 out there will have no problem with 2.5gbase-T at 30m and less. (And, of course, most "cat 5" is actually "cat 5e".

mlyle 5y ago

Yup. My whole house has Cat5E and it all works at 10gbps; though I chose to run 5gbps just to have some margin. Most hard drives will keep up with a full gigabit pipe, too, on a sequential write. I think the poster is exaggerating a bit.

jsjohnst 5y ago
My home is a mix of topologies, but everything that is twisted pair copper that was pre-existing is Cat5e and has no trouble fully saturating 10gbps (30-40ft average loop length). I have cheap RG6 handling 2.5Gbps where I didn’t have an existing cable run and didn’t want to run new cable and it can fully max out the connection too based on iperf testing. In my basement, I also have fiber (for >2 meter spans) and twinax (for 1-2 meter spans) in 10Gbps and 40Gbps too.

AnotherGoodName 5y ago

Cat5 and cat5e are different though. Cat5 struggles with 1gbps.

yuhong 5y ago
The differences are minimal. There is a good article on this topic: https://www.flukenetworks.com/knowledge-base/application-or-standards-articles-copper/1000base-t-over-category-5 https://www.flukenetworks.com/knowledge-base/application-or-...
- jsjohnst 5y ago
  The differences, while minimal, do make a big difference in certain environments. Long cable lengths (>70m) is the obvious one that might apply in a home environment theoretically. The more common case where it makes a difference is in very high density cable trays or other places where you have a lot of potential interference, which generally doesn’t apply as much in a home. P.S. - a lot of your recent comments are showing as dead, might want to email HN mods and see what’s up.
  - yuhong 5y ago
    A lot of the difference is in things like keystone jacks and patch panels, as this is where far end crosstalk is most likely.
    - jsjohnst 5y ago
      Agree!
jsjohnst 5y ago
> Cat5 and cat5e are different though. Yes, for sure. 99% of the time, based on personal experience, the person either doesn’t realize the difference or is just incorrectly using the term Cat5 to mean Cat5e. It’s pretty rare you’ll find the former even in older homes (again, my experience based on living in the US). This is why I intentionally used the term Cat5e in my reply. Cat5 was deprecated by Cat5e back 20+ years ago, long before the average US home began getting wired with Ethernet. Further, many (majority?) of Cat5 cables older than 10 years old actually meet the 5e requirements, just weren’t certified specifically. > Cat5 struggles with 1gbps. Like with my original point, that depends on the length and the quality of the connections. Inaccurate blanket statements mislead or worse, so I encourage you to avoid it.
mlyle 5y ago
> Cat5 struggles with 1gbps. 1000baseT requires plain old category 5 for distances of up to 100m. Most plain category 5 out there will have no problem with 2.5gbase-T at 30m and less. (And, of course, most "cat 5" is actually "cat 5e".