cat 5 & electrical

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 04:00:57PM -0400, Chris Aitken wrote:
> Also, should it really matter to me whether the cable is cat 5 or cat 
> 5e? I have one of each in the wall. If it's really going to make any 
> discernable difference then now is the time I should replace it (we're 
> drywalling tomorrow).

Gigabit Ethernet (which is becoming standard on most systems, and
switches are getting cheap) probably won't work (or at least not
reliably) using cat 5.  Cat 5e is good enough for Gigabit Ethernet.

A coworker also recently noticed some cat5 cable he had bought had a
strange feature.  The two pairs of wires used for 10/100Mbit Ethernet
were the expected resistance, while the other two pairs were much lower
grade wire with double the resistance.  It seems whoever made the cable
went cheap on the wires most people don't use anyhow.  Of course Gigabit
Ethernet uses all 4 pairs, so suddenly such tricks would matter.

--
Len Sorensen
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