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      01-01-2016, 11:11 AM   #1
carzaddict
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worth upgrading ethernet lines for home network?

I have verizon fios as my internet provider, using their provided wifi router/modem.

currently using cat5 ethernet lines for my laptop, ps4 and appleTV.

question is, should i upgrade the wires to cat6 or 7? would it make a big difference considering im using verizons router, which i am assuming isnt the best to begin with.

what do you guys think?
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      01-01-2016, 01:59 PM   #2
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If you've got the walls open for some other reason then it's worth considering. Otherwise it's way too much work for the benefit. Cat5 is fine for at least 1Gbps, which is sufficient for multiple 1080p streams.
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      01-01-2016, 02:46 PM   #3
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No, complete waste of money. You don't need Cat6 or 7 to run a gig-network. Cat5 can run at gig for 100 meters. The PS4 and apple TV couldn't max out a 100mb connection if the planets aligned.
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      01-01-2016, 04:29 PM   #4
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      01-01-2016, 06:16 PM   #5
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Cat5 should suffice. Anything beyond that will be for future proofing your house.
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      01-01-2016, 06:58 PM   #6
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Just keep an eye on any transmission errors. On a managed switch, it's pretty easy to see the stats on the port in question to see if there are any retransmits, CRC errors, etc.

Cat5e is really the official spec supporting GigE to the 100 meter standard. Cat5e had some tweaks in the construction to provide reliable GigE transport.

As far as going to Cat6 or above, it's definitely for future proofing. The official cable supporting 10GbaseT is Cat6a. While Cat6 will support 10GbaseT but at a reduced maximum distance. I installed a couple of Cat6 runs when I was doing some renovations to my home. Cat7 is so new I'm not sure if there is any practical application for it yet. Not sure if 25GigE will operate over it.
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      01-02-2016, 10:35 AM   #7
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thanks for the heads up guys, you confirmed my assumptions.

im just going to grab some cat5 cables and call it a day.
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      01-02-2016, 10:47 AM   #8
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OMG other people who think wired beats wireless. Is this heaven?
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      01-02-2016, 11:06 AM   #9
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OMG other people who think wired beats wireless. Is this heaven?
I love wires when static. Constantly changing setups suck for maintaining connectivity.
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      01-02-2016, 11:40 AM   #10
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thanks for the heads up guys, you confirmed my assumptions.

im just going to grab some cat5 cables and call it a day.
I don't think you can even find Cat5 cables in many places. Even if you can, the price differential between Cat5 and Cat5e should be nil to zero. Why would you want to buy a lesser spec cable? And there is a difference between 5 and 5e regardless of whether the differences are small.
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      01-02-2016, 11:46 AM   #11
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OMG other people who think wired beats wireless. Is this heaven?
Yes. I've always held steadfast on wired always being better. Even with 802.11ac bridging the gap with GigE, wired doesn't have to worry about RF interference, encryption overhead, and the number of wireless clients hanging off a single AP.

With that said, I do have an extensive wireless network deployed at my home. I do most of my casual usage over wireless. But when it comes to high performance needs, it's strictly over wired.
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      01-02-2016, 12:32 PM   #12
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Only reason to go cat 6 is of your transferring large files "inside" your home. And cat 5e is pretty much good for slightly less than GigE. If you're just using it to browse the internet, don't worry about upgrading the wiring. Just make sure to upgrade your router so it has enough CPU to handle the load.

Also to note, the link speed is only as fast as the slowest device in the chain. So if your wiring, switches, routers, etc are all rated for a GigE; but the device your plugging in is just 100base-t, then that whole link rating will just be 100base-t.
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      01-02-2016, 04:08 PM   #13
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      01-02-2016, 04:27 PM   #14
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Quote:
Originally Posted by zx10guy View Post
With that said, I do have an extensive wireless network deployed at my home. I do most of my casual usage over wireless. But when it comes to high performance needs, it's strictly over wired.
Can I get an amen?

I ran ethernet (a mix of old Cat5e I had leftover from wiring the house and newer Cat6 for the short bits) to my recent home theater redo. Bought another gigabit switch dedicated to all of the devices in that location. Most certainly overkill, especially so seeing as 3 of the gizmos have built-in wifi. But I could so I did.
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      01-02-2016, 04:47 PM   #15
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BLuRRYM3 View Post
Only reason to go cat 6 is of your transferring large files "inside" your home. And cat 5e is pretty much good for slightly less than GigE. If you're just using it to browse the internet, don't worry about upgrading the wiring. Just make sure to upgrade your router so it has enough CPU to handle the load.

Also to note, the link speed is only as fast as the slowest device in the chain. So if your wiring, switches, routers, etc are all rated for a GigE; but the device your plugging in is just 100base-t, then that whole link rating will just be 100base-t.
The bolded statement is blatantly wrong. Cat5e IS good enough for GigE. It's Cat5 which may be slightly questionable depending on the build quality of the cable.
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      01-02-2016, 04:57 PM   #16
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Quote:
Originally Posted by wdb View Post
Can I get an amen?

I ran ethernet (a mix of old Cat5e I had leftover from wiring the house and newer Cat6 for the short bits) to my recent home theater redo. Bought another gigabit switch dedicated to all of the devices in that location. Most certainly overkill, especially so seeing as 3 of the gizmos have built-in wifi. But I could so I did.
I've given advice on here and on another forum concerning wiring up their homes. I've always advocated if you're going to pull cabling and have drops installed to always double up on the runs as a minimum.

Also, if one wants to be really forward thinking, you can have drops installed in the ceiling at a central location in your home on each floor. This will facilitate the ability to install proper wireless access points which will provide both coverage and performance.

Something else to think about. If one wants to do some self teaching, you can look up the IEEE802.3ad protocol. This protocol is referred to as channel bonding, port channel, link aggregation, or etherchannel. It allows you to group two or more physical links together to act like one big virtual link. While the speed of transmission per link doesn't go up, the overall bandwidth does. So if you group two 1 GigE links together in a LAG, the overall bandwidth you have is 2 Gigs split over two 1 Gig pipes.

I have this set up at various points on my home network and do this all the time for work with my clients.
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      01-02-2016, 05:16 PM   #17
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Quote:
Originally Posted by zx10guy View Post
The bolded statement is blatantly wrong. Cat5e IS good enough for GigE. It's Cat5 which may be slightly questionable depending on the build quality of the cable.
Dude cat5e is good for 1000Mbps. A full 1 Gigabit per second is 1024Mbps. That's why I put "slightly less".
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      01-02-2016, 05:26 PM   #18
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Dude cat5e is good for 1000Mbps. A full 1 Gigabit per second is 1024Mbps. That's why I put "slightly less".
What the hell are you talking about? Gigabit is 1000Mbps. The Mbps stands for Megabit per second. There's no byte in that descriptor which connotes anything about bit to byte math.

Maybe you need to educate Cisco....

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk38...a.html#wp15960

"Gigabit Ethernet builds on top of the Ethernet protocol, but increases speed tenfold over Fast Ethernet to 1000 Mbps, or 1 gigabit per second (Gbps)."
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      01-02-2016, 09:01 PM   #19
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What the hell are you talking about? Gigabit is 1000Mbps. The Mbps stands for Megabit per second. There's no byte in that descriptor which connotes anything about bit to byte math.

Maybe you need to educate Cisco....

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk38...a.html#wp15960

"Gigabit Ethernet builds on top of the Ethernet protocol, but increases speed tenfold over Fast Ethernet to 1000 Mbps, or 1 gigabit per second (Gbps)."
Dude you can have it. You win. I'm counting in binary you in decimal. I guess the world is going to accept it as decimal.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabit
In binary, the next bit placeholder after 512 is 1024. (1,2,4,8,16,32,64,128,256,512,1024) so in binary: 1 KB = 1024 bits, 1 MB = 1024 KB, 1 GB = 1024 MB

Sorry for the OP. But bottom line, I think everyone can agree that you're good with cat 5e.
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      01-02-2016, 11:35 PM   #20
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BLuRRYM3 View Post
Dude you can have it. You win. I'm counting in binary you in decimal. I guess the world is going to accept it as decimal.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabit
In binary, the next bit placeholder after 512 is 1024. (1,2,4,8,16,32,64,128,256,512,1024) so in binary: 1 KB = 1024 bits, 1 MB = 1024 KB, 1 GB = 1024 MB

Sorry for the OP. But bottom line, I think everyone can agree that you're good with cat 5e.
Since you went to Wikipedia...your source not mine....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabit_Ethernet

"History[edit]
Ethernet was the result of the research done at Xerox PARC in the early 1970s. Ethernet later evolved into a widely implemented physical and link layer protocol. Fast Ethernet increased speed from 10 to 100 megabits per second (Mbit/s). Gigabit Ethernet was the next iteration, increasing the speed to 1000 Mbit/s."

"IEEE 802.3ab, ratified in 1999, defines Gigabit Ethernet transmission over unshielded twisted pair (UTP) category 5, 5e, or 6 cabling and became known as 1000BASE-T. With the ratification of 802.3ab, Gigabit Ethernet became a desktop technology as organizations could use their existing copper cabling infrastructure."

So I don't see anywhere, that it states 1 Gbps being equal to 1024 Mbps. And your source also clearly states Category 5e as appropriate for Gigabit transmission.

It's not about winning or losing. It's about what's right or wrong. You can throw all the binary math up you want to try to save face and divert people's attention. You're still wrong. You're the only one who looks at the math your way concerning Mbps to Gbps. Just because the Mega is being converted to Giga doesn't mean there's a bit to byte conversion.

Again, your source:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_prefix

I suggest you review your math skills about what prefixes mean and how they affect the decimal point.

ETA:

In the networking world, data transmission speeds have always been quantified in bits. Never bytes. The only time bytes are used in network discussions is over frame and packet sizes.

Here's also a little food for thought for anyone interested. With the advent of Gigabit Ethernet, there was the wide spread adoption of a feature which allowed more data to be pushed through Gigabit and above Ethernet networks. This features is called jumbo frames. The standard Ethernet frame size is 1500 bytes. By increasing the standard Ethernet frame size above 1500 bytes, network administrators can push more data through per frame transmission thus increasing the overall rate of data transmission and efficiency of their networks. Ethernet jumbo frames have been typically set at either 9000 or 9216 bytes with some switches supporting as high as 12000bytes. The use of jumbo frames can be found in network implementations such as iSCSI.

And one last thing. Here's my source for 1 Gigabit Ethernet being equal to 1000 Mbps:

http://people.ee.duke.edu/~mbrooke/E...files/8023.pdf

It's the IEEE. The people that set the standards for Ethernet protocols. Go to Section Three in that document.

Last edited by zx10guy; 01-03-2016 at 12:03 AM..
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      01-03-2016, 04:34 AM   #21
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Who cares? CAT5 will work perfect for any home network.
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      01-03-2016, 10:41 AM   #22
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BLuRRYM3 View Post
Dude you can have it. You win. I'm counting in binary you in decimal. I guess the world is going to accept it as decimal.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabit
In binary, the next bit placeholder after 512 is 1024. (1,2,4,8,16,32,64,128,256,512,1024) so in binary: 1 KB = 1024 bits, 1 MB = 1024 KB, 1 GB = 1024 MB

Sorry for the OP. But bottom line, I think everyone can agree that you're good with cat 5e.

zx10guy is correct. Transmission rates are always measured in bits. Storage gets the 1024MB (not 1024Mb) =Gig because these are measured in bytes.

I'm a Cisco guy.
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