Cat5e vs Cat6(a) vs Fibre?

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dcole13

534 posts

Ultimate Geek

#150917 7-Aug-2014 16:59

Hi,

I am currently planning on wiring my house with some type of cable for internet. I would like to future proof it as I will be in this house for 4 years or more, and my parents won't be moving for 10 years+. I wanted to see what would be the best for wiring my house, Cat5e, Cat6, Cat6a or Fibre. I already have quite a bit of Cat5e, as my father is an electrician and has a lot of spare cable lying around. I would use this, but as it can only support up to 1Gbps and I want to do some network upgrades, such as moving all our data on to a NAS and running a media server, I don't think this will be enough as I also do high bitrate RAW video editing while other people watch movies, TV shows etc. so I am looking into 10Gbps in the future. I might also look into fibre, but since the switches, NICs, cable etc. are all quite expensive, I don't really see any benefit in using it over Cat6 or Cat6a.

What would you recommend I use for this setup?

Thanks

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#1104241 7-Aug-2014 17:00

Cat6 will be fine :)
the issue with 10Gb/s is that your hard disk IO or SSD IO will be slower than the network unless in raid.

Andib

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#1104242 7-Aug-2014 17:01

Wire the house up with plenty of Cat6 and you will be safe,

Fibre is a bit of a waste in a home environment considering you can go up to 10gbit on cat6

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dcole13

534 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1104246 7-Aug-2014 17:04

TimA: Cat6 will be fine :)
the issue with 10Gb/s is that your hard disk IO or SSD IO will be slower than the network unless in raid.

In the future when I do eventually upgrade the NAS etc I will set it up with a large RAID setup, just wanna make sure that in a couple years I run out of bandwidth, end up running more cables and using team aggregation etc. Much more eaisear to wire it for 10Gbps

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dcole13

534 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1104248 7-Aug-2014 17:05

Andib: Wire the house up with plenty of Cat6a and you will be safe,

Fibre is a bit of a waste in a home environment considering you can go up to 10gbit on cat6

Do you know where anyone sells Cat6a and the connectors for 10Gbps? If J A Russels does that would be greaaaat.

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chevrolux

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#1104251 7-Aug-2014 17:10

Don't even bother with Cat6a. Just a complete waste of money.

Cat6 is cheap and far easier to install than 6a.

J A Russell stock all the Dynamix stuff so could sort you out with either.

dcole13

534 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1104255 7-Aug-2014 17:12

chevrolux: Don't even bother with Cat6a. Just a complete waste of money.

Cat6 is cheap and far easier to install than 6a.

J A Russell stock all the Dynamix stuff so could sort you out with either.

I may look into using Cat6 for most stuff and Cat6a for the longer distance connections.

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InstallerUFB

840 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1104268 7-Aug-2014 17:31

dcole13:
chevrolux: Don't even bother with Cat6a. Just a complete waste of money.

Cat6 is cheap and far easier to install than 6a.

J A Russell stock all the Dynamix stuff so could sort you out with either.

I may look into using Cat6 for most stuff and Cat6a for the longer distance connections.

Unless you are wireing upfor a multi rack/multi server a Data Warehouse forget Cat6a you are wasteing money - for a domestic situation Cat6 will do absolutly fine - no matter how long yoour runs are or what you think you need to run over it

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cyril7

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#1104285 7-Aug-2014 18:23

Cat6 if under 37m and installed correctly will do 10Gig, infact in most instances its good for around 50m with 37m being a safe length.

That all said, I still struggle to understand what in your home is going to need more than a Gig its not like your running a data centre from your home.

Its still cheaper(10G nics arnt cheap) and prudent for links like between your AV area and hub to use 2 or 3 links for future aggregation options.

Cyril

dcole13

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#1104446 7-Aug-2014 21:37

I have heard that Cat5e can do 10 Gigabit, is this true?

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richms

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#1104474 7-Aug-2014 22:25

I will probably at some stage when I replace the switches get ones that can take a 10 gig gbic, but I have no real need for it immediatly.

I am lucky in that I will be able to re-pull anything thru the house as needed as upstairs is all thru the roof, and downstairs thru the basement, its the ones out to the shed and garage that are in counduit that would most be the targets for upgrading to 10G, but other than filling up a large raid I dont see it as ever needing the capacity in the near future.

I have the capability to pull fiber thru at a later stage if needed almost everywhere, I would work to ensuring that you have that as well rather than fuss over the cable right now. Gig works fine on 5e, 10gig should work on 6 in most domestic situations, but there are apparantly crosstalk issues between bundles and the latency on 10GBase is worse than the fiber options and the power consumption is higher on the interfaces. That will probably drop over time so when you are ready to go 10 gig it might not be a problem to worry about.

Richard rich.ms

ubergeeknz

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#1104480 7-Aug-2014 22:29

dcole13: I have heard that Cat5e can do 10 Gigabit, is this true?

Maybe over a very short distance. Cat6 has more twists, better pair separation, and heavier copper. So it is really quite different electrically at those high frequencies.

coffeebaron

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#1104483 7-Aug-2014 22:37

What will the bandwidth requirement of our future Holodecks be?

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Coil

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#1104484 7-Aug-2014 22:37

ubergeeknz:
dcole13: I have heard that Cat5e can do 10 Gigabit, is this true?

Maybe over a very short distance. Cat6 has more twists, better pair separation, and heavier copper. So it is really quite different electrically at those high frequencies.

Plus that long shaft in the middle :)

(Core/Separator)

ubergeeknz

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#1104508 7-Aug-2014 22:58

TimA:
ubergeeknz:
dcole13: I have heard that Cat5e can do 10 Gigabit, is this true?

Maybe over a very short distance. Cat6 has more twists, better pair separation, and heavier copper. So it is really quite different electrically at those high frequencies.

Plus that long shaft in the middle :)

(Core/Separator)

dcole13

534 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1104510 7-Aug-2014 23:02

TimA:
ubergeeknz:
dcole13: I have heard that Cat5e can do 10 Gigabit, is this true?

Maybe over a very short distance. Cat6 has more twists, better pair separation, and heavier copper. So it is really quite different electrically at those high frequencies.

Plus that long shaft in the middle :)

(Core/Separator)

Not sure if sex joke or just saying that

Also, Tim what do you do at voda?

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