Cat 6 v Cat 5e cabling

Jim Jensen · September 26, 2012, 02:39:06 PM

We're looking at re-cabling a church office network. The cost differences between cat 6 and cat 5e aren't so much these days. Isn't it more finicky about installation though? For someone that has installed cable, but doesn't do it all the time, is installing cat 5 safer than cat 6 for not creating problems with the install. I seem to remember that bending radius is much more important with 6.

Jeff Zylstra · September 26, 2012, 02:46:28 PM

I'm interested to hear what others have to say here too. My understanding is that the differences are in the number of twists in the wires and the shielding, and that CAT 6 has more twists to help it ward off interference. Don't know if that affects the turning radius of the wire or not.

Bloody Jack Kidd · September 26, 2012, 02:48:48 PM

Don't think there is any point on using Cat5 these days. Go with 6 if you can.

Jim Jensen · September 26, 2012, 03:00:09 PM

Well, I priced them and the price difference is bigger than I thought. Cat 6 is still almost double the cost of cat 5e. One paper I read showed the same bending radius for cat 5 and cat 6, 1" radius minimum. Now remind me of the difference in plenum v. non. I know if it's running through any area that moves air, like a ceiling area used as a cold-air return, it requires plenum because of low-smoke insulation. Any other reasons? I thought they used to say plenum was better in ceiling when you have fluorescent lighting, but I don't know if that's true.

Billy Welsh · September 26, 2012, 03:01:57 PM

My understanding has always been plenum is strictly a fire code issue, to reduce the smoke as you mentioned.

Bloody Jack Kidd · September 26, 2012, 03:16:51 PM

I agree with Billy on plenum.

Jeff Golas · September 26, 2012, 03:50:55 PM

Agree on plenum.

I also will say that unless this church office needs solid 1 gigabit or faster (and if so I'd be curious why), you'd be fine with Cat 5e.

Jim Jensen · September 26, 2012, 04:08:31 PM

Quote from: Jeff Golas on September 26, 2012, 03:50:55 PM
Agree on plenum.

I also will say that unless this church office needs solid 1 gigabit or faster (and if so I'd be curious why), you'd be fine with Cat 5e.

Thanks Gents - on the Cat 6 - was just planning ahead for maximum life of networking materials. We're replacing the existing network because of speed mostly - it's from 1995 and is cat 3 - back when we just called it 10Base-T.

Jeff Golas · September 26, 2012, 04:12:55 PM

If you wanna get technical...10base-T is the coax/BNC wire I believe. Thats what I was messing with when I first got into this networking stuff..I wanted a 2 player Doom setup :-)

Bloody Jack Kidd · September 26, 2012, 07:34:32 PM

Quote from: Jeff Golas on September 26, 2012, 04:12:55 PM
If you wanna get technical...10base-T is the coax/BNC wire I believe. Thats what I was messing with when I first got into this networking stuff..I wanted a 2 player Doom setup :-)

ZOMG! I'm pretty sure Doom was the impetus for my initial dive into networking - also with coax (which is 10Base2, Jim was correct with 10Base-T being early Ethernet - just think T for Twisted Pair).

We did try serial / parallel connections for Doom, but they were not nearly as good as coax.

Jeff Zylstra · September 27, 2012, 09:15:58 AM

Holy cow. This sounds like an old farts convention!

This talk reminds me of our first "pc" based system. It was an Agena system that used Wyse 60 terminals connected to ALLOY board CPUs via RS-232 connections. Not sure what kind of operating system it had, but I remember that the thing was down more than it was up the last year we had it, and was the reason we switched to Applied.

Billy Welsh · September 27, 2012, 10:16:35 AM

When I walked in the door here, the Novel server for AMS was tied in to the LAN via coax, even though there was CAT3 in the walls for the PC's. There was a hub with a coax port and 10 mbit ethernets.

Never did learn why we had the odd combination - anyone with any clue was gone when I got here.

Hans Manhave · September 27, 2012, 10:47:11 AM

I have a nice Cabletron MR-9000C repeater if anyone wants to put in an offer. Coax at its best! I think it was about 2000 semolians when I installed it.

Bloody Jack Kidd · September 27, 2012, 11:51:18 AM

Back when I was employed for self I put together numerous small 10Base2 P2P networks - man could they be a bitch to troubleshoot!

Gene Foraker · September 28, 2012, 12:13:29 PM

As long as the old farts are gathering around....

I first bought TAM when they were selling it on alloy cards. I insisted on buying it on one of the first Novel installations. They sent out several high level techs from the HO to install it and they were still reading manuals. I had it on Arcnet, I think that was coax.

They called the network ASLAN. Applied Systems LAN. I guess no one had read The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.