using tel cable in lieu of native cat5e 1

[jpadie]

hi

i am in the process of converting a wireless environment into a wired. examining the cabling and sockets in my house i see that all current telephone points are wired with 8 core twisted pair cable (2 cores used). the cable has no cat5e markings but then neither does my cat5e cable).

is there any way to tell whether this is adequate cable for ethernet?

separately the sockets i have are designed for isdn and have inputs for all 8 cores. although designed for a ring installation i am planning to string cable for a full star alternative. the inputs on the isdn socket are slightly farther spaced than the average native ethernet socket. is this likely to cause problems? average length of run is between 15m and 40m. i'm looking for gigabit speeds.

many thanks for your expertise.

 

[cajuntank]

What colors do you see on 4 pairs?
Normal CAT5 and better cable has white stripe and solid color for orange, green, blue, and brown (so white stripe orange, orange, white stripe green, green, and so on). If you see wire colors like red, green, yellow, black, etc... then it's going to be multi-pair phone grade cable. Using phone grade cable will allow you to get 10Mb.
You have to have CAT5 to get 100Mb (due to the twists on the pairs), and you really want to have CAT5e or better to get 1Gb (stricter performance specs). As you see, I don't say "have to have" CAT5e for 1Gb since IEEE802.3ab defines standards for 1000BASE-T (Gigabit Ethernet) over category 5 cable, but again, the enhanced specs of CAT5e make it a better medium to carry 1Gb transmission speeds.

 

[jpadie]

hi
the colours are solids for each pair:i guess it's multi-pair phone grade cable as you say. that's annoying.

so ... i guess i'll rethread the conduits with some UTP cat5e.

many thanks.
justin

 

[VinceWhirlwind]

Nothing wrong with 10Mb/s - what speed is your internet connection?

 

[jpadie]

I'm not worried about the Internet backhaul ( I only get 18Mb downlink ) The gigabit networking is to increase the throughput within the network. We regularly have 100gb transfers and with 10Mbit it would not be workable (hardly is with 100mb)

 

[VinceWhirlwind]

Sorry, when you said "in my house", I was imagining a person sitting at home downloading a few iTunes.

If throughput is important to you, you must get brand new Cat6 put through everywhere.

 

[jimbopalmer]

Cat 5, Cat 5e, Cat 6 and Cat 6A all do gigabit equally well. Cat 6A would only be 'necessary' if you want 10 gig ethernet. (Short runs of 10 gig ethernet can use Cat 6, but no one can afford 10 gig ethernet yet)

It is not clear you even have Cat 3 currently. Perhaps you can use it to pull the new cable.



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