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Gigabit ethernet cable
hi, we’re about to upgrade our network to gigabit ethernet and need to buy cable. would anybody have any good advice on that matter? i gathered cat 5e is the way to go (or cat 6) but what about quality, brands etc? around here, you can find 100m installation cable for anything between 15 to 150 euros.
bob mentioned belden in some article, and found some for around 45 euros. but they seem to have a lots of different 5e cables, too. seems like a jungle.
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8 Replies
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Rikard,
If you can, spec in CAT6a (Different from CAT6) –
Cat6a meets the 10Gb specification which will be being used for such things as Fibre Channel over Ethernet, and likely more things in the future.
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I have only used Belden 1583A (CAT 5e cable) for all of my installations. I own all the tooling for CAT 6, and specialty CAT 6e (like Belden 1872A), but I have found that for these applications (and virtually everything else I do that requires ethernet cable), Belden 1583A (and 1585A for plenum requirements) has suited me perfectly. I have never installed CAT 6 cable in these SAN installations, and have never seen performance issues because of it.
You will find that there are MILLIONS of cables that each of these manufactures make, but you will also find that your local cable reseller (or even the big catalog companies like Markertek), only carry a couple of numbers of each type of cable. This applies to CAT 5, CAT 6, audio, and video as well. so the millions of choices come down to only a few that are actually available to you. You can go to a trade show, speak to Belden, Gepco, Canare, etc. and find this great cable, with a specific part number, and then find that you can’t actually order it (or only a custom order), while the distributor has MILES of another similar part number with similar specs. You will then find that all of this distributors competitors also carries the same part number – they ALL carry the same few part numbers. This is the way you make your decisions most of the time on what cable to use – what is readily available to you.
Belden 1583A is the most common CAT 5e cable. There are cheaper cables (and I have tried plenty) that do the same job -but you are on your own choosing those.
Bob Zelin
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CAT 6a is Belden 10GX cable. NO ONE has the ability to terminate these cables, NO ONE has the crimp connectors for these, and only Belden is selling the punch blocks to terminate these. If you ask Belden where to get these “patch cords”, they will respond – “oh, from us, we make them”. This makes it currently very difficult for custom installers and integrators to work with. If you are serious about 10GX, I urge you to contact Belden directly, as they have very few reps that actually know this product line.
CAT 6e (which is not rated for 10Gig ethernet) is Belden 1872 A (again – there are LOTS of CAT 6e cables, but this is one that is in stock everywhere). This is a BONDED cable, so it requires special tooling to work with it, and yes, bonded cable (and all 10GX cable) is a nightmare to work with compared to regular ethernet cable.
But compared to fibre, its a “walk in the park”.Bob Zelin
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We run Gig-E shared storage and all of ours are CAT 5e as well. No problems whatsoever and we even bought a couple CAT6 to see if there was any performance improvement and it tests exactly the same as
CAT 5e.Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Hey Bob,
I’ll make a slight adjustment to my statement from before –
10GBASE-T will work up to 55 m (180 ft) with existing Cat 6 cabling. In order to allow deployment at the usual 100 m (328 ft), the standard uses a new partitioned Category 6a (a.k.a “augmented Cat6”) cable specification, designed to reduce crosstalk between UTP cables, known as alien crosstalk. Some manufacturers of cable have released “Cat7” cable which is specifically marketed for 10GBASE-T compatibility and claims greater shielding beyond cat6a specifications.
Hope this sheds some light on why I was referring to specifying CAT6a for future 10Gb use.
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thanks guys for your very informative answers. i gather there’s nothing in the specs that is different for a 13 euro or 130 euro cat 5e cable? just the quality of materials and such.
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in the US, Belden is the most well known of all the cable manufacturers. When you look at connectors for cables (like video BNC connectors), everyone references Belden as the cable type, with Belden numbers. This does not mean that other companies (like Gepco, Clark, WestPenn, Canare, and others) do not make identical good cable. I have recently started to use “no name” chinese CAT 5e cable, and it works fine. I have not been this brave with HD Coax, however.
Bob Zelin
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For the record, 10Gb is being supported on cat6A. (it’ll run over other qualities, but the distance will be shorter. I think it’s 55m for cat6).
Anyhow, if you are plumbing the building with this stuff, you should consider putting in cat6a so you can plug in those new mac pros with the 10Gb Lan on Motherboard that people are spreading rumors about 🙂
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