cat5e question

Stephen · 2012-05-17T09:49:12+00:00

Hello,I am interested in running some cable around my house. One day I hopeto use it to stream music and possibly DVDs or blurays.I read the wikipedia page about gigabit ethernet and it says:"IEEE 802.3ab, ratified in 1999, defines gigabit Ethernet transmissionover unshielded twisted pair (UTP) category 5, 5e, or 6 cabling andbecame known as 1000BASE-T. With the ratification of 802.3ab, gigabitEthernet became a desktop technology as organizations could use theirexisting copper cabling infrastructure."Implying that cat5e can be used at gigabit speeds. However, all thecat5e cable I can see in CPC says for 100MHz use only.Is all cat5e cable suitable for gigabit speeds and if it is, whydoesn't the CPC web site say so?Or should I install cat6 instead?Thanks,Stephen.

cat5e question

May 17, 2012 24 Replies

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Dave Liquorice 14 years ago

Depends if those three conections share a link anywhere. Assuming three seperate players, each would have their own 100Mbps ethernet to the switch and from the switch to each client. Provided the switch can keep up no problem.

Now if the three "players" are three streams from a single media server then yes the single 100Mbps ethernet from server to switch wouldn't be able to cope. But I'd expect a server capable of serving three simultaneous Blu-ray streams to have gigabit ethernet, so gigabit switch and 100Mbps to clients would still be OK.

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John Rumm 14 years ago

Executive summary: Due to some clever design, gigabit ethernet does not make life noticeably more difficult for a cable than 100Mb/sec ethernet!

That better?

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John Rumm 14 years ago

More the latter.

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Andy Burns 14 years ago

They'll be connected to a switch, so they each have an individual

100Mbps, so long as you have e.g. a 1Gbps connection to the device serving out the media ..

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Stephen 14 years ago

Thanks to this group, the question has been answered already but FWIW here is the reply from CPC technical:

"Cat5e is only rated to 100Mbps so we cannot claim higher speeds though they are often used with gigabit. Cat6 would be even better."

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