1 GB/sec speeds on CAT5 cable

[raider1]

My brother in law asked me a question that I could not answer.

I am not a computer network expert and he asked me if you could get 1 gigabit transfer speeds using a CAT 5 cable or if you can only get that speed from using a CAT 6 cable.

Chris

 

[G._S._Ohm]

Try the second hit and those following
http://www.google.com/search?client...=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=ea2f9aa1ff7c4ad2
Faster speed = higher error rate, for a fixed signal to noise ratio.

 

[Dennis Alwon]

A gigabyte per sec is impossible in my mind.

 

[dbuckley]

A gigabyte per sec is impossible in my mind.

Yeah, its gigbit ethernet, so, best case about 100 megabytes per second.

We do have 10 gig, over fibre, and that can shift a gigabyte a second for real, but it's unlikely there are many devices out there that can sustain or even reach that trhoughput, though many aggregated devices can reach that in total.

 

[GeorgeB]

Chris, whether there is a problem reading your gigabit or is they are picking at your abbreviation ... who knows.

BUT, b is bit, B is byte in most terminology ... like m for milli, M for mega ...

 

[MisterCMK]

My brother in law asked me a question that I could not answer.

I am not a computer network expert and he asked me if you could get 1 gigabit transfer speeds using a CAT 5 cable or if you can only get that speed from using a CAT 6 cable.

Chris

Yes, Gigabit is certainly possible with Cat5e

 

[egnlsn]

CAT5e - yes; CAT5 - no

 

[Electric-Light]

Doesn't the distance play a role too? You can "overclock" the cable beyond the rated specs, but how far you can go reliably probably varies. Back when I had an older Mac with SCSI with Ultra SCSI, I do remember it was real picky about cable quality. You had to have a real good cable to push 20MB/s on 8 bit.

 

[esobocinski]

Yes, exactly. I would expect Cat5 to do 1 Gbps most of the time on runs that aren't horribly long, but I wouldn't guarantee it. I would even expect it to handle 10 Gbps over short distances: We use old Cat5 patch (15' or less) in the lab for 10 Gbps all the time, but I wouldn't settle for less than Cat6 for 10 Gbps in production service.