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Seems fine? Our house has Cat5e going back to ~2008 (before we owned the house). It supports my 2.5Gbps PoE AP uplinks. We're about to remodel and this has me

by rconti 3y ago

Seems fine? Our house has Cat5e going back to ~2008 (before we owned the house). It supports my 2.5Gbps PoE AP uplinks. We're about to remodel and this has me thinking I should go to Cat8.2. Maybe a thousand bucks in cable? If that? I'll also add fiber for the furthest reach of the house for "future-proofing" but fiber is the tech that keeps being promised Real Soon Like Now but nobody's using it for their devices.

toast0 3y ago
If you have drops where you want them, test what you've got installed. Cabling that only hits the minimums of Cat5e doesn't meet the specs for 10GbaseT, but the specs for 10G are for cabling in a dense conduit with a total run of 100m. In a residential setting, you likely don't have dense conduit or there's only a small section with dense cabling, where it leaves the patch panel. Additionally, cables are often exceed the spec they claim on their jacket, especially when there were not higher specs defined when made. My house was cabled with cat5e in 2003 or so, and I run 10g along one segment joining two buildings without significant error counts. My systems lack the tuning to really use that bandwidth, and I don't have a real usecase, but I wanted to see if it works, and it does. I've also run gigE over a segment with a mix of cat5e and cat3 at my previous residence, because pulling a new cable would have been onerous; and 100M would have been acceptable if gigE didn't work. I'm not sure that cat5e will work beyond 10G, but 10G seems likely to be good enough for a long time. As of right now, used 10g fiber equipment is significantly less expensive than used 10GbaseT equipment, and there's power/heat savings too, 40GbaseT is going to run really hot.
- rconti 3y ago
  Good point -- I actually have tested and can only manage a 2.5Gbps link between the 2 devices and two drops I have to test with. I also agree 10Gbps is likely to be good enough for quite some time. Running fiber across the house to my office at the far corner gives me the option of future-proofing a potentially higher speed link then offloading to usable copper closer to the point of usage.
  - toast0 3y ago
    In that case, definitely may as well recable during a remodel. Good luck with your project!
demurgos 3y ago
Do you know if cat 8.2 is backwards compatible with cat 5/cat 6. In particular, can I use cat 8.2 with older devices (albeit at lower speeds)?
- toast0 3y ago
  Wikipedia says Cat 8.2 comes with different jacks, potentially. If you have enough pairs (2 for 10/100, 4 for 1G), and the connector is rj45 or compatible, higher spec wiring won't hurt you. Depending on details that I don't know, you may not be able to use a cat5 patch panel or cat5 wall jacks with cat8.2 cable, if the wire sizes changed or the insulation won't be cut properly, and using underspeced terminations may mean your install doesn't test as cat8, but you can reterminate later if it matters.

by rconti 3y ago

toast0 3y ago

If you have drops where you want them, test what you've got installed. Cabling that only hits the minimums of Cat5e doesn't meet the specs for 10GbaseT, but the specs for 10G are for cabling in a dense conduit with a total run of 100m. In a residential setting, you likely don't have dense conduit or there's only a small section with dense cabling, where it leaves the patch panel. Additionally, cables are often exceed the spec they claim on their jacket, especially when there were not higher specs defined when made. My house was cabled with cat5e in 2003 or so, and I run 10g along one segment joining two buildings without significant error counts. My systems lack the tuning to really use that bandwidth, and I don't have a real usecase, but I wanted to see if it works, and it does. I've also run gigE over a segment with a mix of cat5e and cat3 at my previous residence, because pulling a new cable would have been onerous; and 100M would have been acceptable if gigE didn't work. I'm not sure that cat5e will work beyond 10G, but 10G seems likely to be good enough for a long time. As of right now, used 10g fiber equipment is significantly less expensive than used 10GbaseT equipment, and there's power/heat savings too, 40GbaseT is going to run really hot.

rconti 3y ago
Good point -- I actually have tested and can only manage a 2.5Gbps link between the 2 devices and two drops I have to test with. I also agree 10Gbps is likely to be good enough for quite some time. Running fiber across the house to my office at the far corner gives me the option of future-proofing a potentially higher speed link then offloading to usable copper closer to the point of usage.
- toast0 3y ago
  In that case, definitely may as well recable during a remodel. Good luck with your project!

demurgos 3y ago

Do you know if cat 8.2 is backwards compatible with cat 5/cat 6. In particular, can I use cat 8.2 with older devices (albeit at lower speeds)?

toast0 3y ago
Wikipedia says Cat 8.2 comes with different jacks, potentially. If you have enough pairs (2 for 10/100, 4 for 1G), and the connector is rj45 or compatible, higher spec wiring won't hurt you. Depending on details that I don't know, you may not be able to use a cat5 patch panel or cat5 wall jacks with cat8.2 cable, if the wire sizes changed or the insulation won't be cut properly, and using underspeced terminations may mean your install doesn't test as cat8, but you can reterminate later if it matters.