# Forum More Stuff Go to Whoa!  Wired for Gigabit

## q9

Well not so much a Go to Whoa, as much as a "Whoa thank feck I'm finished!"  :Tongue:  
Laying conduit isn't particularly interesting, nor does feeding wire down it and punching the cables in make for interesting photo's or discussion.   
But attached is the end result, and a home made data cabinet (about $20 of materials from bunnys and stuff lying around the shed).  If you look closely at the second pic you can see there is a central splitter installed as well, which was good for an extra .7Mb/s download speed.  It terminates into the patch panel for the ultimate in flexibility.   
I used twin outlets everywhere so there should be very little need to have to get in the roof again, and there is enough for phone and data for each room - except the main bedroom which we refuse to let work intrude into. 
All up including specialist tools for the job (approx $200) it was around $800 for 10 outlets, and I've got HEAPS of cable left over (I already had the switch).  Trench to shed perhaps...?

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## Armers

Good work, looks sexy... i can't wait till mine is finished! 
Cheers

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## DenisPC9

Hmm, I aim to do an Owner Build later this year.  I hope my cabling will be as organised as yours.

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## q9

> Hmm, I aim to do an Owner Build later this year.  I hope my cabling will be as organised as yours.

  Just use conduit - it is easy to put up and the cable goes through easier.  Looks much neater than using cable clips (and saves heaps of time).  The flexy stuff is quite cheap too...

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## Armers

problem with flexy stuff is is useless to allow for more cable to be drawn through either via string or push rods. Conduit also lowers the ability to add future cabling if need be, unless you allow for it which makes conduit buying a little more expencive.  
It all looks good as i said... and each to his own  :Biggrin: .

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## m6sports

With everything going wireless these days is there an advantage doing what you have done 
Dont take it wrong Great WORK just everyone is always talking about wireless is the way to go

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## jago

> With everything going wireless these days is there an advantage doing what you have done

  Wireless is not as fast and reliable or as secure, as people think ...it has it uses but also its pain points.   A combination of both if budget and access allows is the way forward I have cat6 wall sockets TV's (stream video), cameras, printers, computer game consoles and wifi hot spots for phones, ipads etc.

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## q9

> With everything going wireless these days is there an advantage doing what you have done

  Absolutely! 
Security is number one, VOIP phones typically want POE, wired is more reliable, and there still isn't Gigabit wireless.  I should point out that I replaced a wireless setup to do this - and this alone removed 2 smaller switches and 2 WAPs.  Not sure what the power savings from that will be but it is probably noticeable - I estimate $7-10 /Q. 
Oh, and on the advice of the network techs here at work, I went Cat5e.  They advised strongly against Cat6.

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## jago

> Oh, and on the advice of the network techs here at work, I went Cat5e.  They advised strongly against Cat6.

  Where I come from this would start a punch up .... If my nerd told me that I would ask which cereal box he got his degree off :Sneaktongue:

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## Armers

> Where I come from this would start a punch up

   :Iagree:

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## president_ltd

> Where I come from this would start a punch up .... If my nerd told me that I would ask which cereal box he got his degree off

  i'm the 'nerd' that said it and i stand by it.  here's my credentials: lincoln dale cisco - Google Search
i design networking equipment for a living.  some say i'm rather good at it. 
now lets compare cereal boxes. 
why would YOU recommend cat6 cabling?
seriously.

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## jago

On know not you again me thinks ...nice credentials and I read you're a gun in your field.  :Biggrin:  
I do have to pull you on one thing Cisco didn't invent the Router (an earlier reference) surely like all big American companies you just marketed somebody's invention! :No:  
I hunt senior Nerds like you for other companies my cereal box says "Big Bolloxs " and in a previous life a proud Nerd myself. But I don't need to post credentials, I will unlike you make a point. 
Are you saying that as a engineer, designer and marketing person for Cisco  that cat6 is sub standard to cat5e how does that hold with company policy? Or are you saying all companies yours included the next product/standard to be upgraded is NO better than the last, just remarket of the old. Or is it because your primary focus(company) is FO and the domestic market just follows what we're told. 
Surely 5e is just re marketing of cat5 where they had no standards for PSNEXT, ELFEXT or PS-ELFEXT and Delay Skew they just re-marketed it (cat5) with published standards and called in enhanced (5e) what utter bolloxs. The gains to be had by using a correctly installed, terminated and matched cat6 over cat5e are like saying your Ford Mondeo is as good as a Lambo off the lights, it compares with my Lambo what for the first 2 meters.... :Doh:   I tried to play the ball but you put your nuts on the table first!

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## president_ltd

> I do have to pull you on one thing Cisco didn't invent the Router (an earlier reference) surely like all big American companies you just marketed somebody's invention!

  suggest you look at Leonard Bosack - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia    

> I will unlike you make a point.

  m'kay.   

> Are you saying that as a engineer, designer and marketing person for Cisco  that cat6 is sub standard to cat5e how does that hold with company policy?

  first up, i talk for me. 
secondly, the title of this thread is "*Wired for Gigabit*" and the context is "what cabling should i use for home". 
that said as the context: 
cat5e does just fine with gigabit.  cat6 adds no value to gigabit.
does it extend the distance it can run?  no.
does it make it run faster?  no.
does it offer a reduced error rate?  no.
does it cost more to put in?  yes. 
sure, cat6 COULD be used for 10GBaseT in the future, however given the current power consumption of 10GbaseT PHYs (i talked about this at AusNOG-04 last year, see <ftp://ftp-eng.cisco.com/ltd/ausnog-04_standards_presentation(ltd6).pptx.pdf> ) this makes it neither suitable for 'home use' and pretty dubious even for company use. in all honesty if you really wanted to bother, you'd but Cat6A in rather than Cat6.  or Cat7.
or whatever comes in 12 months / 24 months / .... 
if you were to ask me "what would i RECOMMEND for 10GbE", i'd answer that for short runs (<10m) use CX1 (twinax), for anything longer, use SR optics with OM3 multi-mode fiber.   

> Surely 5e is just re marketing of cat5 [...]

  NFI what this rant is about.  now you're suggesting cat5 and cat5e are one and the same?   :Doh: 
WTF does this have to do with the topic above? 
regardless, i'll bite.  simple answer: cat5 has notionally 100MHz of 'bandwidth', cat5e has 350MHz.  the latter is good enough for gigabit, the former is not.   

> I tried to play the ball but you put your nuts on the table first!

  clueful response please.

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## jago

I can read ...wired for GB just not sure why you dangled your appendage in to the argument,  are you lacking?  
5e Rated at 100mhz cat6 250mhz its a bit like when you interloplate a picture it aint real 350mhz is a furffy with cat5e a standard thats what 12 years old, c'mon stop flogging dead horses. 
Wiki as a source of credible information again to quote the tennis player c'mon, I am not even going to look at the link ! Bill Yeager invented the router at Standford Uni any other claims I am sure could end in tears as your guy was an assistant who started a company that then bought the idea and developed it. 
You put your cock on the table about who your were at Cisco so your saying your an authority and you're using the company name to back this up, with the little check me out ...so far nothing you have said has impressed me, don't get you underlings to post on here if you cant take the flak.As somebody that is used to reading contracts ...you just made a claim to the companies IP to back an argument. 
Extra cost where on Uranus? I sourced all the cat 6 equipment and cable cheaper than Cat5e 
1/12 of the noise of Cat5e and you say no difference true gigabit is Cat6 +  you seem to like dead standards like your CFL arguments how are those dark cold mornings waiting for you lights too warm up? 
Enough of this anyway I need to go flog the cat. 
Ciao :2thumbsup:

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## Bloss

> suggest you look at Leonard Bosack - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia .

  mmm - _one_ of the pioneers no doubt, but not _the_ inventor of routers just as Cisco was one of the earlier LAN players. Zerox (from its PARC Labs) & DEC amongst others who developed Ethernet and the routers (and bridges) that enabled large LANs to be created. In an earlier life in ITC I was intrinsically involved in that field including IEEE and other work.  :Cool:

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## president_ltd

> I can read ...wired for GB just not sure why you dangled your appendage in to the argument,  are you lacking?

  as someone who posted in the thread "go for cat5e, cat6 is a waste of time", i'm more than happy to put my real name behind that statement. 
sorry if i offended you that i question your clue (or lack there of).   

> 5e Rated at 100mhz cat6 250mhz its a bit like when you interloplate a picture it aint real 350mhz is a furffy with cat5e a standard thats what 12 years old, c'mon stop flogging dead horses.

  tell ya what.  how about you get a 90m length of cat5 and plug it into a gigabit ethernet switch and see how well it works.
suggest you run a random data pattern for an extended time period and how about you report back the error rate you get?   

> Wiki as a source of credible information again to quote the tennis player c'mon, I am not even going to look at the link ! Bill Yeager invented the router at Standford Uni any other claims I am sure could end in tears as your guy was an assistant who started a company that then bought the idea and developed it.

  indeed, Bill Yeager invented the packet switched router.
the founders of Cisco invented the "multi protocol" packet switch router.
what cisco did was *successfully commercialize* the router.  what's your point? 
its all a bit academic. the whole concept of what a router is really just an extension of what a semaphore tower from circa 17th century.   

> You put your cock on the table about who your were at Cisco so your saying your an authority and you're using the company name to back this up, with the little check me out ...so far nothing you have said has impressed me, don't get you underlings to post on here if you cant take the flak.As somebody that is used to reading contracts ...you just made a claim to the companies IP to back an argument.

  i've made a claim that i know a thing or two about networking.  no more no less.
forgive me for expressing an opinion here, i will bow to your superior knowledge in future.    

> I sourced all the cat 6 equipment and cable cheaper than Cat5e

  good for you!

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## q9

Settle fellas!  :Pash:  
The pros and cons were discussed and they recommended 6 was not worth the extra cost and hassle for what I was doing.  These guys know their stuff and I trust their judgement.

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## wozzzzza

nice debate but i still got no idea what to use, i just figure i dont need some mega gigabit network at home and that what i got is fast enough and all i ever use is what is cheapest at the time, either 5e or 6, i cant remember what i used a couple of years ago, it was what ever was cheaper. i also used my $5 chinese network tester to test it after i hooked everything up, it maybe $5 but it works and does what i want it to and was no use spending $550 for a fluke tester or what ever they cost.

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## president_ltd

either of cat5e, cat6 or cat6a will do the job. 
cat5e is good enough for gigabit ethernet (100MB/s) at up to 100m.
cat6 (with the appropriate 8p8c connectors) is futureproof for 10GbaseT (1000MB/s) at up to 30m, or gigabit for 100m.
cat6A (with the appropriate 8p8c connectors) is futureproof for 10GbaseT (1000MB/s) and gigabit both for up to 100m. 
at this point in time (2011), 10GbaseT is a waste of time both because of the power it consumes and the cost of it.
both may be resolved over time to lower numbers. 
but reality of a "home network" is most folks don't push gigabit to the limit let alone require faster-than-gigabit. 
there will be a non trivial price difference between cat5e and cat6/cat6A if only because of how the cable is made & the cost of the 8p8c connectors on the end.
if you really wanted to know/see the differences in the cable choices, the presentation at ftp://ftp-eng.cisco.com/ltd/ausnog-0...ltd6).pptx.pdf is something i presented last year at a conference. slides 9 & 10 cover the permutations.

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## binda

That was brilliant, really funny stuff. I think someone got pwned. 
I'm an IT guy and been working in the industry for 15 years. I wired my house in cat5e for one simple reason, cost. A box of good quality cat5e with length markings on the sheath cost me $70 for 300+ metres.
I also hate making cables in cat6. Cat5e is bad enough.
All these ratings and and speeds and blah blah blah are meaningless in the home. None of us are probably running a data centre in our homes so whats the point? VoIP, video streaming, gaming and porno will happily travel the cat5 pipes together unhindered.
Unless you have a complete gigabit network through all the interfaces, you will have a bottleneck to deal with, and thats just internal, your router connecting to the interwebs will not be using a gigabit connection, unless you are running a data centre in which case you will just use fibre anyway. 
Summery: It's your money, spend it as you which but no one is going to walk into your home and go "Look at all that sexy cat6 cable"
BTW I use some of my unused wall sockets as a means to pipe my surround sound in the lounge room. If you have multiple sockets on different walls and a nice patch field, anything is possible.

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## golfcore

I have no idea what you geeks are talking about.

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