Old Cat 5 cable for home network?

[Mssr. Eleganté]

I'm giving up on the wireless home network and going back to ethernet. I have a spool with a couple hundred feet of cat 5 cable that a client gave me for free about 12 years ago sitting down in the garage. Is this stuff still worth using? Is cat 5 still viable for home networks or should I buy the latest generation of cable (cat 5e, cat 6, cat ???)? I don't want to go through the trouble of running this cable through the walls and floors only to find out that Steve Jobs hates cat 5 and designs Macs to not network over it or something.

The markings on the cable are as follows...

HELIX/HITEMP CABLES P/N 703208 4/PR 24 AWG SCREENED TYPE CMR/MPR (UL) -- CSA TYPE PCC FT4 -- ETL VERIFIED TO TIA/EIA-568-A STP CATEGORY 5 022834

[Tripper]

I would use it, if i were doing the same thing.
yes there are enhanced cables, but unless your planning on utilizing the capabilities of the enhanced cables, why bother. what you have most likely still works with gigabit.
there's lots of companies out there that still have catr5 installed, they didnt all go out and have their buildings rewired for cat 5e or 6.

[odysseus]

If I was going through the trouble of running walls and putting in wall plates, I would go and get myself cat6 probably, though cat5e is fine. It's not much money for the average home.

[lazyworm]

It's fine. Use it.

For 99.99% of people, the speed/bandwidth bottle neck will be your
uplink connection (DSL, Cable etc) and usually less than ~20-30Mbps.

So cat5, which is rated for 100Mbps, is plenty, even if it's somehow degraded.

[DiscoBayJoe]

If I was buying cable, it would be Cat5e; however, if I had a spool of CAT5, i'd have no issues using it in a home application if the installation is fairly easy (under house, etc). As lazy worm says, it's rated for 100mb, which is 5x what even the better Cable Modems can drive.

[MA2]

Almost all network cards and even the latest mac's, are backward compatible to the 10/100 ethernet speeds.

Only if you need gigabit speeds in/around your home, than go Cat5e.
No reason to spend more money on cat6/7...imo: fiber will be the standard up at higher speeds.

[odysseus]

Yes, for example I run Gig-e through my home network. YMMV, especially if your only concern is your WAN speed.

[paul0660]

mssr, why give up on wireless?

[Rivers]

For the cost of a box of CAT 6, I wouldn't hesitate to use that instead of free CAT 5. By the time you factor in your labor (and the amount of pleasure you get from crawling under your house, pulling wire, etc., it's cheap and you'll know that you did the best you could have. Cutting corners on that type of project leaves a lot of room for regret later. Make sure you only use solid core, not strand wire.

You will not see any web surfing speed difference. If you file share with computers or other devices on your local (in-house) network, you WILL see a difference.

On a side note, if you plan on adding security cameras, CAT 5 is not suitable for megapixel cameras. 5E or 6 is required. That should tell you something. Same for using Ethernet cabling instead of HDMI for TV, DVD, etc. runs, plus it's a lot less $. Big quality drop. CAT 6 even supports runs up to 160 feet, way better than CAT 5E. This may not make any difference in your case but it's info I picked up for my own project.

[nightcrawler_23]

I experienced CAT 5 issues in a data center years ago for runs over 100 meters. If your goal is connect your PC to your router assuming the runs are no longer than 100 meters go for it.

[Cokebottle]

I experienced CAT 5 issues in a data center years ago for runs over 100 meters. If your goal is connect your PC to your router assuming the runs are no longer than 100 meters go for it.

Interesting.

I'm running cat-5 in traffic signal applications for well over that distance (nearly 300m in a couple of cases) and it's working fine. Granted, the data rate is limited by the ACIA ports to 19.2kbps, but the switches are running at 100m.

[nightcrawler_23]

I experienced CAT 5 issues in a data center years ago for runs over 100 meters. If your goal is connect your PC to your router assuming the runs are no longer than 100 meters go for it.

[Mssr. Eleganté]

Thanks for all of the replies.

So this stuff I have is shielded. Does that effect the installation process at all? I see mention on some web sites of having to ground the cable if it is shielded, but no mention of how to ground it.

mssr, why give up on wireless?

The connections between my Apple Airport Extreme and two Airport Expresses always cut out when trying to stream music around the house via Airtunes. I think it is caused by interference from neighboring wireless networks. My computer can see about 15 visible wireless networks within range and there must be a few hidden networks as well. When I connect the Extreme and the Expresses together with ethernet cable the music doesn't cut out at all.

[paul0660]

The connections between my Apple Airport Extreme and two Airport Expresses always cut out when trying to stream music around the house via Airtunes. I think it is caused by interference from neighboring wireless networks. My computer can see about 15 visible wireless networks within range and there must be a few hidden networks as well. When I connect the Extreme and the Expresses together with ethernet cable the music doesn't cut out at all.

Interesting. I can only see two here, on different channels, in the sticks (goes without saying I guess.) Good luck. Personally I believe in copper, but so far this wireless thing has worked well (100 ft through trees and stud walls @9mbps vs. 24mbps wired at the modem). That is with a netgear 54 router from newegg, cost $15. Possibly the only time going cheap worked. The only issue is sometimes the wireless password goes wonky......it remains the same, the clients don't recognize, but if you reset to the same password it works.

[Cokebottle]

Ground the shield at one end only. Insulate it at the other end.
What we do for traffic signal interconnect is to ground the shield at every other cabinet, that way there's no question of which cable goes which direction.
For a home network, I assume you're going to be running a "star" type layout with all of the drops in the house feeding back to a common point where you'll locate your router. Do the ground there.