Old Cat 5 cable for home network?

[Rob454]

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

Unless you need some ludicrous speeds out of your home network the cat5 will be more than adequate. There are plenty of houses i wired with Cat5 as far back as 12 years ago and i never had anyone complain
I had one customer who requires cat6 wire but its a school district. The other is a crazy guy who does a lot of network stuff and I do all his wiring for his customers. Dude is nuts but he likes my work.

[stix213]

Even gigabit ethernet is spec'd for standard Cat 5. You're fine. If you were planning very long runs, or had an expectation of above average interference, then I'd upgrade, but that's unlikely your situation. Just make sure you use the correct pair wiring (there's a specific sequence)

[DVSmith]

If you are planning to spend the money to buy Cat6 then read up on proper installation standards. If you are not that anal, run the cat5. Most residences are not long or wide enough to have any runs that would even give you transmission problems at gigabit unless there is some strong noise source nearby, florescent lights for example. As mentioned above, stay away from electrical wiring, phone wiring, alarm system wiring and I can not imagine how you won't be perfectly happy with the cat5.

Some decent resources for info:

http://www.expresscomputeronline.com/20031124/technology01.shtml

http://www.lanshack.com/cat5e-tutorial.aspx

ETA: I did run cat6 when we remodeled our house. I had to buy cable anyway and decided to spring for it over 5e. I didn't have to pull any runs, they were all laid in to uncovered walls and ceilings and I could make sure I avoided tight bends, kinks, and noise sources. I used Velcro ties where I felt I needed cable support and bought appropriate termination hardware. But I was being totally type A about it. Then the cabinet guys came in and in one room nailed a cable run with a drywall screw. Oh well. Best laid plans. Do yourself a favor and run two lines to every termination point. If you do you will never use the second one. If you don't you will be sorry.

[blakdawg]

Given the time and effort and money (for termination hardware) I'd put in 5e instead - it's pretty cheap now, and while it'll probably be a long time before 100mb is an obstacle to your upstream connection, you may want to move video around on your home network, and speed matters for that application.

When I paid for my office to be wired recently I went with Cat 6 - the downside to Cat 6 is that they wire is physically different enough that it needs special Cat 6 connectors/jacks/etc, which can be a little harder to find or a little more expensive than 5e, which you can almost get at 7-11 these days. The Cat 6 cable tends to be a little less flexible, too, so it's a little tougher to use for wiring in tight areas.

I would use the Cat 5 for running phone/alarm cabling - it's not going to be the end of the world if you use it for network cabling, but a new spool of 5e ought to be $60 or so, which isn't much in the big picture.

[five.five-six]

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.

300M is way outside the specification, are you sure it is Ethernet and not rs485?

[IntoForever]

I have a 100' spool of cat5 running to a 4 channel router then another 10' cat5 to the computer (all were Fry's cheapest I could find parts) and here's a link showing my connection speeds with a FIOS 30/20 connection.

[WTSGDYBBR]

You will have no such issue. I ran cat 6e at my house because the cost was $130 a box for pvc and $60 a box of cat5e. I ran cat 5/6 for about 7 years from a company I use to work for its all the same unless you switch out every pc Ethernet card to gigabit and every switch/ router eternal speeds will be faster from pc to pc with cat 6.

[Cokebottle]

300M is way outside the specification, are you sure it is Ethernet and not rs485?

It's ethernet, but like I said, we're not pushing data higher than 19.2kbps. We're only doing that for spread spectrum wireless ethernet radios (I'm glad we're no longer having to pull the LMR400 up to the antennae!)

[devilinblack]

He's running like 3 drops for a home network, you guys are way, way overthinking this. I have Cat 6 at home, but I got that from work, no way I'd toss out some perfectly good Cat 5 to buy a roll of Cat 6. Hell, if you were closer I've got several partial boxes collecting dust out in the garage.

[tools2teach]

Cat 5 is fine as long as you don't run it over 100ft or be using a 10 gig switch which I doubt

[meaty-btz]

Cat 5 is fine as long as you don't run it over 100ft or be using a 10 gig switch which I doubt

That's 100 METERS not feet.

[orchard]

If you plan on being there a while, I'd wire with Cat6 - especially if later you want several video systems, etc. You can make plenty of patch cables with the cat5.

[TWoods450]

Id go 5e or 6, 5 is NOT rated for gig, max run length should be 100m port the specs.

Sure your dsl isn't gig, but transfers on your lan could be. For example, I have a tivo in my living room, and another in my bedroom, both ran with 5e, hooked to my a gb switch, transfer from one tivo to the next takes no time, wouldn't be the case if I had 100mb speed limitations

Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk

[loose_electron]

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.

Good call agreed!

100T ethernet is fine for pretty much all home applications.

Streaming high def video is the one place you will get bitten IMHO.

[Akers]

Stick with what you got. Unless your running Cisco Nexus at your home (which if you are we need to hang out) your going to be fine.