Terminations on Cat5

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sdav

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#145457 18-May-2014 21:28

Hi,

How many terminations can you get from a single cat5 cable and are there any downsides to using all the available wires for multiple terminations? Are some of the wires you use to make a single termination used for something else (that I may want) when it's not split?

Sorry if the question is not clear. I'm not sure how to ask it!

Inphinity

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#1047644 18-May-2014 22:10

You need all four pairs for a single 1000BaseT. Of course, you should go for Cat5E or better for that.

If you're only after 100BaseTX, you can get away with 2 pairs, and thus run two connections over an 8-core cat5, but it's far from ideal imo.

sdav

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#1047663 18-May-2014 22:52

Thanks for your reply. So I want cat5e not cat5 and this will give me 2 1Gb ports in a wall plate? I'm at that annoying stage of knowing enough to get confused...

Basically I'm wondering how many cables are needed for 6 Ethernet ports in the lounge going back to the patch panel and was interested in the technical side.

PhantomNVD

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#1047665 18-May-2014 22:59

sdav: Thanks for your reply. So I want cat5e not cat5 and this will give me 2 1Gb ports in a wall plate? I'm at that annoying stage of knowing enough to get confused...

Basically I'm wondering how many cables are needed for 6 Ethernet ports in the lounge going back to the switch and was interested in the technical side.

Cat5e = gigabit, but can only service ONE connection at gigabit speed, what he said was that if you split the pairs and used 1 cable for two connections they'd each connect at 100Mb speeds.

if you want 6 gigabit connections, 6 wires are needed (and cat5e is the minimum wire spec for gigabit anyway)

I'd go Cat6 now as it's not much more expensive, and it won't be long and the 10Gb capability of Cat6 will kick in...

That said, did you read driller2000's post in in this thread too?

driller2000: we built 5 years ago - ran cat5 to most rooms and terminated them at a 7 way plate in the study wardrobe which houses the router, 8 port gigaswitch, unraid server and now master splitter for vdsl

so house is more or less fully cabled up

has worked well for last 5 years and when we have needed more lan ports because of multiple wired devices and/or wifi AP's eg. lounge and also family room - i have just thrown a giga switch or old router in and daisy chained off these - cheap and does the job with no throughput issues that i have noticed

not as tidy as 2 or 3 discrete cables + terminals - but that would be dearer then a switch i believe?

and in one location i now need 5 lan ports (xbox360/tv/freeviewbox/bluray/htpc) - and i would NEVER have run this many discrete cables (and it will likely end up being 7 soon with av receiver and xbone)

and finally, the clutter is hidden behind the av cabinet(s), so no one will ever see it

sdav

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#1047666 18-May-2014 23:09

No I didn't see that but thanks for pointing it out, I will have a read.

Reason I was confused is because I had an electrician over and he talked about running one cable (and I'm sure he said one because I had never heard of splitting cables like this) and he said cat5 carries 4 or 6 signals. Honestly it confused me and I have a feeling he does not know what I'm trying to do.

Is there a cable that you buy which is literally 4 normal cat cables in one that he intends to put in?

johny99

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#1047709 19-May-2014 05:57

your sparky is clueless when it comes to a LAN set up, he is thinking you can run four analogue devices as they only use one pair each, I.e. the are four single pairs in a single cat5/e cable.

sbiddle

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#1047710 19-May-2014 06:19

Your average electrician running data cable is like calling in a plumber to fix your TV aerial.

Get somebody who's actually upskilled in what they're doing. Your average electrician is still running looped cat5e cable and installing BT jacks.

sdav

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#1047818 19-May-2014 09:26

Cool, good to know! I thought something was wrong.