Can You Do 10 Gigabit Over Regular Cat 5e Ethernet? (The Results Will Shock You)

Do you REALLY need to upgrade your cabling to get 10 Gigabit LAN?

I recently bought a bunch of Cat 6 cabling and tools to rewire my place with 10 gigabit. But soon discovered that would be impossible, and I would have to live with the existing Cat 5e. But would that be good enough? Both Cat 5e and Cat 6 use the same RJ45 connector and cable pairs, they are just constructed differently. So how fast CAN you get with Cat 5e, and would it still allow me to get multiple-gigabit speeds without doing anything?

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[repeatrepeatrepeat]

Cable: Cat6 10Gb
PC: Gigabit Ethernet
Router: 100 Meg Ethernet
ISP: 5 Mbps

[archietheproto]

The reason for the shielding in the cable is not necessarily for outside interference, it's for reducing crosstalk between the cables inside the wire caused by electromagnetic fields generated by the current running through the wire. Running at higher frequencies (200mhz vs 750mhz) causes more cross talk, resulting in worse data integrity

[amurtigress_mobile]

You also have to take into consideration that such standards are also taking into consideration how much shielding is needed when a lot of such cables are squeezed into a cable canal for dozens of meters, to avoid crosstalk and have the right impedance. Basically, for a worst case scenario. At a home such worst cases almost never occur so you'd certainly have more slack with a cat 5e cable alone.

[juise]

I have a 100' run of 20 year old solid copper core CAT 5 (note not even CAT 5e and yes it is from 1999), the same Asus 10g NICs, and the 8 port version of that switch (XS708E) and I get between 766 and 852 MB/s.

[ThioJoe]

10 Gigabit allows you to transfer memes at warp speed

[ContinualImprovement]

I’m already shocked so this will be interesting.

[Equiluxe]

I came to the same conclusion a few years ago that it was not worth my while ripping out the cat5e in order to replace with cat6 as nothing ran fast enough to warrant it, perhaps in a graphics office with several computers sharing a switch but for the home no.

[malcolmrains]

When is linus coming over to give you of storage?

[PoeLemic]

I like these newer type of videos where ThioJoe is honest, instead of Pranking people. Seems like he is growing up now. Also, I wish he'd done RAM to RAM, then we would know actual max speed.

[mrteausaable]

What is the connection from your Synology NAS to the Switch? Do you get additional card for the NAS to get 10G cat-6?

[rxse]

A lot depends on how well the CAT 5 was installed. No kinks, no staples, properly punched down on the wall jacks and the quality of the cable. Factory ends on the cables connecting each device are also preferred over hand crimped ends. Also your computer will have a big affect on data transfer speed. The faster the hard drive and the more RAM your computer has, the faster your data rate will be. And some Antivirus programs scan files as you copy them and that can affect your speeds.

[dixonbg]

You are using multigig switch with multigig NIC over cat5e which is the whole purpose of 802.3bz standard. The 2006 standard 802.3an require higher rates cables and plugs. Are you sure you are not connected at 5gbps over the cat5e cables?

[llynellyn]

Great video, I switched to 10G last month, works fine on my 5e home network at full speed. Worth noting that if you have high quality 5e (In my case Molex Powercat) it will usually be overspecified to begin with which helps your chances of having it work. By contrast you'll never get 10G using those fake fake Cat6/7 flat cables off Amazon lol.

[Jeromesg]

i have a question if i have a 2gigabit internet download speed do i need a 10gigabit lan port? or my regular 1gigabit lan from motherboard is enough?

[helloman]

You covered all the bases, thought of everything and all the information you'd want to know in order to present to us an amazing, and informative, presentation. Well done! You helped me out tremendously!

[goosemeister]

Have you tried taping the cat6 cable to the old one and then pull it through the wall or would`nt that work?

[MrJerryjam]

Good to know. I have not purchased any 10Gig hardware yet and my older NAS equipment is powered off for several years now. I have been running my LAN since Cat5 was the new tech and before 1gig the norm. I built out LAN IN A STAR configuration and have added more managed and un-managed switches using them as hubs. Everything works great so I wonder if considering 10Gig is even worth the expense and effort. My only issue is with 5gig wireless occasional buffering of video (at outer edges of distance limits). Question: Is it possible to put a router behind a managed switch in a location about 100' from the cable modem and still let the router function properly? I ask this because my cable company installed a MOCA in front of my cable modem and ran a length of Cat5 to my router. He did this to get two TIVO Mini receivers to function better over my old Coax6. He disconnected the Cat5 connector from the control TIVO DVR after he had isolated all three TIVO devices and then installed a four set coax splitter and connected the fourth splitter port to the remaining (existing) coax runs. My network scanning software showed the three tivo devices assigned to the among the first twenty devices. I set the router to static ip addresses for the three tivo devices and had no more tivo problems for over two years now. The coax cable from the wall is attached to the input port of the MOCA and the MOCA output port is attached to the input port of the cable modem. The Cat5 wire from the MOCA is attached to the router and the Cat5 port of the cable modem is empty.??

[TimVK]

Very informative, I was looking at doing 10 gig for a future home server project, now it's looking more enticing.

[chookchack]

will this reflect on internet speeds? i have gigabit internet and the house is prewired with 5e. i dont think its wise to upgrade the ethernet cables.

[tezcanergene]

I worked at Teranetcs, PLX and Aquantia pioneering 10GBase-T and NBase-T. 10G will work up to ~55 meters with CAT5E and CAT6... for 100 meters you will need CAT6A or CAT7. It is the PHY layer and regardless of the cable, if you get a link it will run at line rate (10G, 5G, 2.5G, 1G, 100M). However, with bad/long cables or with many connectors (spec is up to 4) you will see the BER (bit error rate) increase. By spec you are allowed about one error every 100 seconds. But if you see that it's really rare and bad... If you want to test it hard use longer cables and wrap 6 around 1 cable all with active traffic...

Makers of the spec said an analogy of the SNR (signal to noise ratio) of the worst cable length, connector model, and noise (cross talk + alien cross talk) is equivalent to trying to catch a frisby during an atomic bomb explosion. Hats of to all the engineers and companies that worked on 10GBase-T. More than half never even could get it to work.