replace cat 5 with cat 5e?

[phoneguy422]

a customer of mine is taking over an empty office space with existing voice and data network. The voice looks ok but he is asking me ( a phone-guy) if he should replace the cat 5 cabling to the newer standards of 5e or cat 6? How do I explain to him in laymans terms what the difference is between the three?

 

[skip555]

for voice cat 5 is more than adequate

for data it depends hoo big is the network ?

peer to peer or server ?

what type of files ?

how long does he expect to be ion the space ?

if he has a small network , no need to transfer huge files or no need for heavy server use than the cat 5 will be just fine for the forseable future .

I would test all the conections pull a few jacks and look at how the cable was run and if everything looks ok advise him to stay with what he has . if they dont test out or if you see numeras examples of poor cabling practices I would point it out to him and suggest re cabling
this chart might help you explain the diffrences to him

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

 

[Grenage]

As skip555 says, 100Mb/s is usually more than enough. We have a fairly large network here and no 100Mb/s link has ever come close to being a bottleneck.

Network utilization on a workstation is rarely more than a few percent.


Carlsberg don't run I.T departments, but if they did they'd probably be more fun.

 

[oldtimerbob]

The exisiting cat5 should be OK to use if it is still in good condition and has been terminated correctly.

It all depends upon the applications the cable is being used for or maybe used for in the future.

The old cat5 is no longer being produced and has been replaced by cat5e of various grades as the basic data cable.

Cat6 is a higher speed cable with various grades also and is used for faster ethernet applications,cost a third more than Cat5e and has more critical termination requirements

NOTE: Since many companies are going VIOP,or think they will in the future,then data cabling should be used for your voice also.

Good Luck