Cat6 or Cat6a cables into existing 5e patch panel

[klop]

Hi, we've had a quote to run fibre between our comms cabinets but I've been told its too expensive.

 

Currently we have Cat5 cable between them so I would like to change this to Cat6 or perhaps Cat6a (runs are 50m+ so Cat6a may be good for a little future proofing?)

 

Thing is our comms cabinets are tight and I don't really want to add a new patch panel or swap over all the existing cables to a new one. Would terminating Cat6 or Cat6a into the older Cat5e patch panels cause any problems? I'm guessing actual thickness of cable may be an issue with Cat6a but would these 5e panels be a bottleneck?

 

Now, prob daft question(s) but...

 

Our office is all Cat5e after the comms cabinet. If I swap the Cat5 cable for Cat6a from cab to cab will i get the boost in performance I'm expecting - 100mb to 1gb?

In other areas of our wiring there will still be cat5 cabling. Lots of the classroom cabling is Cat5. Will this have an effect on devices connected via just cat5e / cat6 cabling?

If a switch has connections via all cabling, cat5, cat5e and cat6 will it still run gigabit speeds on the ports where only cat5e / cat6 is used?

 

Thanks

[VeryPC_Anthony_L]

Hi @klop

 

For most things Cat5e is a perfectly fine cable. Cat6 is better if you are going to want to run 10gb. Your speeds will have nothing to do with cables. If you have a 100mb switch and 100mb network card you will only be able to get 100mb. If you have 1gb nic and switch then you will get 1gb. Of course depending on how many people are using the internet/ resources / server shares this will impact on speed.

[plexer]

If you wish to go cat6 and have it all properly tested then unless you use cat6 patch panel it's unlikely to pass.

 

Ben

[ITGURU]

Tell them if it's too expensive and the network runs slow then it's their own fault! Fibre cable is cheap, your paying for the termination and testing equipment as not cheap.

How about running your own pre-terminated fibre? We did it once for a run as was cheaper - only issue was getting the patch panel gland through holes as had to be 20mm wide then fill in the holes afterwards.

[Kingstech]

Hi, we've had a quote to run fibre between our comms cabinets but I've been told its too expensive.

 

Currently we have Cat5 cable between them so I would like to change this to Cat6 or perhaps Cat6a (runs are 50m+ so Cat6a may be good for a little future proofing?)

 

Thing is our comms cabinets are tight and I don't really want to add a new patch panel or swap over all the existing cables to a new one. Would terminating Cat6 or Cat6a into the older Cat5e patch panels cause any problems? I'm guessing actual thickness of cable may be an issue with Cat6a but would these 5e panels be a bottleneck?

 

Now, prob daft question(s) but...

 

Our office is all Cat5e after the comms cabinet. If I swap the Cat5 cable for Cat6a from cab to cab will i get the boost in performance I'm expecting - 100mb to 1gb?

In other areas of our wiring there will still be cat5 cabling. Lots of the classroom cabling is Cat5. Will this have an effect on devices connected via just cat5e / cat6 cabling?

If a switch has connections via all cabling, cat5, cat5e and cat6 will it still run gigabit speeds on the ports where only cat5e / cat6 is used?

 

Thanks

 

Might be better working out the length between cabs and getting some pre terminated cable a little bit longer then it is needed. I know of a couple of company's that I have previously used for pre terminated cable.

 

Are the cabs in the same building? If so it will be fairly easy to run cables between the cabs.

 

Also Cat5e will run a 1Gb but if you don't have a gigabyte switch or network cards you won't get the speed your looking for.

[m25man]

Why do you think you need Fibre Inter cabinet links?

 

It doesn't sound like you've given enough solid reasons to justify it in the first place.

 

We use fibre for all inter cabinet links for the following reasons:-

 

Multi core fibre 8/16 core provides immunity from external interference allowing us to run it alongside 3 phase cables.

Same cable traverses Internal and external routes.

Allows multiple physical networks to be carried over common routes between cabs where VLANs are not viable.

Use OM3/4 allowing 10GBe backbones.

Allows Switch Stacking across cabinets via 10GBe uplinks.

Using multiple cores create High Speed LACP trunking between cabinets.

 

You only need to justify one real "need" and they have no option but to approve it.

 

Copper is fine for switch to node even in the server room @ 10GBase-T but in the long term, using Fibre between cabs gives you more flexibility than you may at first think.

 

Decent fibre installers will splice an 8 core at both ends in less than an hour it takes longer to pull the cable than terminate nowadays so it needn't be as expensive as you think get several quotes and try specialist installers not cable Cowboys.

 

Unless the Cabs are in the same room it's Fibre all the way as far as I'm concerned.

[DPrince]

Roughly how much was the quote? We use Black Box for cabling and found them very reasonable.

[sllorep]

A few years ago (when we actually had money to spend), we purchased the equipment to terminate and test fibre ourselves, I know it doesn't help you but it does show that fibre is important to use as a backbone rather than copper. We have since made the money back from buying the tools 10 fold after doing fibre work ourselves. The actual cable itself is reasonably cheap.

[klop]

Hi all, thanks for replies - I'd forgotten I'd even posted the thread!

 

 

When I started at this school we had just the one central cabinet. All cabling was (and still is) Cat5. For some daft reason I assumed (yes I know!!) that the cabling would be Cat5e

Since being here we have added three additional cabinets. All cabling FROM these cabinets is Cat5e, the problem is the cabling used to link them to the original central cabinet is the old Cat5 that was in place. Stupidly I never checked up on all of this at the time - you live and learn! Funkily the cabling to my room is all new, and is all Cat5e :-)

 

In the classrooms we have a mixture of original cabling from the central cabinet (Cat5) and new cabling from the new cabinets (Cat5e).

Some rooms have all new - so all Cat5e.

 

Our front of school, including Office, Staff Room, SLT Offices etc are all Cat5e cabling from their cabinet. The link back from that cabinet to the central one is Cat5 only.

 

Our ICT room currently has only 5 data sockets. These are all Cat5 cabling. We currently have a 10/100/1000 switch on a desk with cabling going to the 13 PCs. We are only a small SEN school!

Fortunately this room is quite close to the central cabinet so I am planning on adding an addition cabinet and new data points - cost allowing. This can be Cat5e or Cat6 as the run is short. There's not enough space in the central cabinet to run them direct to it. I believe we are purchasing 16 PCs for the ICT room - and I want better cabling for them. I shall do this myself hopefully with the help of out Site Manager.

 

 

Although much of the cabling here (along with quite a bit of the equipment!) is very old I at least wanted to get the cab to cab links sorted. I know I've not a hope in getting the old Cat5 cable running into classrooms replaced - not a chance!

 

My initial thought was Cat6 but I wanted to look into fibre. The one quote we have is around £1600 for a single Cab to Cab install or around £4k to run Cab to Cab three times - ie all our three cabinets linked back to our main central cab.

Quote was for external fibre as internally its a bit of a mess here with existing trunking everywhere.

They were supposed to give us an additional quote for Cat6 cable but didn't.

The run to each cabinet is probably around 60 or so meters.

 

Our switches are the same HP model, all 1gb, and have fibre ports too.

 

My understanding is Cat5e & Cat6 will both support 10gb but only up to 45 / 55 meters. All three of our runs are longer than that - hence the thought of using Cat6a.

Currently we are only at 1gb and it will be sometime before these switches are replaced - we certainly wouldn't see any need for a 10gb link at the moment. However I thought it would make sense to look into Cat6a for a little future proofing.

 

I do realise that those devices connected via Cat5 cabling will not ever achieve a 1gb connection. but the link from Cab to Cab would be, and those benefiting from current Cat5e cabling would. it would be a start.

 

So, I wondered if I have a mix of Cat5, Cat5e & Cat6 or Cat6a within our network, sometimes connected to the same switch would this bring the whole network down to 10/100? I'm assuming not - but would like some clarification.

 

 

 

@ VeryPC_Anthony_L

As above, my understanding is Cat6 and Cat5e both have a shorter than we need run for 10gb?

I'm please to say many of our nics are 1gb

 

@ Plexer

What are the downsides to not passing? I'm not sure we've ever had a certificate or anything when we have had previous cabling installed for us.

It's not going to pass anything if we do it ourselves either I guess so maybe not an issue?

 

@ ITGURU & Kingstech

Hi, I did look into the pricing of terminated fibre and it didn't seem to bad - external too. However that's not something I'd be great at installing myself (I'm no avid fan of DIY, did a little plumbing at the weekend and got wet!). Our Site Manager wasn't too keen, he didn't like the bend radius and the holes he/we would need to make. If he's not on board then I'm stumped - although he's happy for someone else to come in and do it for us!

Cabinets are all in the same building.

 

@ M25man

I'm not sure I need fibre - but I do need to improve the link we currently have. The switches we have in place have fibre ports - so it made sense to look into it - or so I thought!

It's hard to justify anything here that costs any money. Our teachers are currently only allowed free apps on the couple of iPads we have - they cannot even spend 99p!

 

@ sllorep

We're a very small school - we wouldn't make use of the tools.

But if you're local please drop in and give us a quote ;-)

 

 

Cheers guys, do appreciate your advice & comments.

 

Sadly I'm almost resigned to the fact that we'll be sticking with Cat5 cable for sometime though! I think eventually we'll be able to charge entry as a museum attraction!

Just mentioned for the umpteenth time this to the head as something we should address urgently and.... "everyone should have a dream, and yours is cabling" I'm told! If only a pupil had a pair of scissors and accidently snipped through a couple of cables!!!