Cat 6 anyone?

[tarquel]

Hey peeps

Anyone have any experience with Cat6 cabling?

Can someone list the pro / cons regarding it?

---[the http://www.lanshack.com/cat5e-tutorial.asp link i mentioned in a different post says the pro / cons for cat5e but not really on cat 6]---

I'm just wondering whether you need to get all the kit again i.e. £20 cable tester [if the cat5e one wont do] etc.

Any thoughts would be useful thanks

Regards
Nath

[Ric_]

IIRC don't the cable runs have to be shorter (<20m) and it's more finikity about being near power sources and the like.

Not sure of the advantages over well installed CAT5e though.

[tarquel]

the spec comparison table on lanshack is good (dunno what it means mainly tho lol)

I thought it was designed that you could run Gb links longer than before - well, one thing that is.

If you can only run it at under 20M, then whats the point lol? minus the small patch cables for servers to switches within the server room, etc.

Just a ramble here really
N.

[russdev]

i think also cat6 makes it future proof as well also betca are starting to say all new installs should be cat6...

russ

[E1uSiV3]

cat6 will run gbit to 100m, it doesnt bend very well because most of the older cable has a + shaped separator for each pair (some of the newer cables do not have this), also, the testers available wont be 20 quid(!). Basically its a pain in the rear end, the hardest bit is trying to follow the standards because testing is so tight in comparison.

For all the info on the spec and a nice FAQ check out the TIA Website

[tarquel]

Righty-ho then - one to leave for the future then

Thanks for the info guys.

Regards
Nath

[StewartKnight]

Aside from the previous mentioned stuff, you have to avoid taking the twists out of the cable when terminating, and the unused pair in CAT5 is used in CAT6

[russdev]

but then if having new install might as well go with cat6......

We are looking at cat6 for new admin build they are doing..

Russ

[spc-rocket]

We installed some CAT6 cabling over the summer holidays and connected the servers to the CAT6 cables from core switch. Certified by IEEE to run ayt gibabit speed and we haven't had any problems.

We had fibre connections to the servers but due to a lot of expansions i had to save the precious fibre ports on the core and connect up the distribution switches using fibre.

Since our servers are not more than 100m away from the core i decide to use the dual gigabit cards from intel (£100) each but well worth the buy. We are using these dual cards to team the two connections so each servers has true 2Gb (4Gb if you want to be flash) connection back to core. The cards has the intel ANS sofctware running which teams the connections which also does redudancy as well.

I have mixed view about cat 6 on normal deployment - for workstations (unless you got a lot of cash) because remember Cat5e is also certified for up to gigabit speed as well.

We don't do the cabling ourselves because we don't have time to be honest. Also cat 6 has termination is slighly different to cat 5e - i don't know if you guys notice that on cat 6 cables the each wire is slighly upper or below the other cables when you look at the RJ45 connection from front on.

All depends on the budget!

Ashok.