How old is too old? Buildings Ethernet

[chazzy2501]

The Ethernet here was old when I joined 10 years ago, it's all CAT5e and has no issues. I was wondering does it have a shelf life? Should I factor in a replacement cycle? Will it degrade over extended time?

[featured_spectre]

When I worked in a school, we factored in cabling upgrades once every 10 years. However, I was there for 1 refresh when Cat5e between buildings got replaced with Fibre, and the core infrastructure got upgraded to 10GB and Cat6 respectively. I believe in 2020 they'll be refreshing again if they haven't closed down by that point.

[Michael]

So long as it's patched correctly, then no it shouldn't need replacing. CAT5e is capable of processing 1000Mbps, which is still more than most hard drives or SSDs can handle at over 100MB/s.

 

CAT6a is capable of 10Gbps up to 100 metres, but there are generally few applications/scenarios why you may require these speeds at the moment. Personally I'd say fibre is definitely the way to go for 10Gbps, for internal or external communications and doesn't suffer from interference like CAT5 or indeed CAT6.

[featured_spectre]

Do bare in mind, only the core got upgraded, curriculum rooms etc, stayed as they were on Cat5e.

[MatthewL]

If it was me I would leave it unless it started causing any issues. I would just look at my links to satellite areas and upgrade with fibre if they were not already.

 

Some of the stuff I used to have did have issues and we looked to rewire but the cost was so high we just replaced the points that needed it.