Net Services

Net Services
We have been asked this question a lot from Clients: Which cable should I use in my network Cat 5, Cat 5e or Cat 6? Let’s get that answered once and for all in the NetService blog.  Here is what our many years of installing miles of Cat 5, Cat 5e and Cat 6 cables over the years. You can can find a lot of information on the web about cat 5, cat 5e and cat 6 but most of it doesn’t answer that one often time simple question for the end-user. Which  cable do I use for the job I have?

Case Study: High noise environment  with long cable runs

Solution: Cat 6 Cable

Netservices received a call from our friend Andy Ammann at Falcon Technologies, Inc. of St Louis to assist one of his client’s  with a network cable installation. Falcon is a leading distributor of Voice and Data products.  His client was in a time crunch since they were to go on line with a new ERP system within the week.

From our survey of the building we knew going in that we faced  two major concerns:  long cable runs that exceeded the 100m distance and a high noise environment . The distance problem was solved by installing intermediate equipment cabinets in the plant and by using uplink cables to the main computer room. To reserve Plant floor space the cabinets were suspended 24ft above the floor  with Unistrut.

The problem for the noise environment was resolved by using the right cost effective media (cable) for the uplinks and station runs. We chose the Landmark-1000 cat 6 cable by Berk-Tek.

The LANmark-1000 Cat 6 cable is capable of transmitting applications that extend to 250 MHz and with best of the breed crosstalk parameters at four DB it improves signal to strength which makes it less vulnerable to RF noise interference. This was the reason this Cat 6 cable was selected because the machinery in the manufacturing areas of the faculty when in operation would cause  interference to any electronic devises nearby. This played havoc with the old ERP system’s employee time clocks and computers.  This Cat 6 cable operates very well at long distances. Many of the cable runs in this 100,000 sq. ft. of building would exceed the 100m limited on the Ethernet runs.

Case Study: Commercial printing company needs to transmit large image files to printing presses.

Solution: Cat 5e Cable

This company was really looking for a cost effective gigabite network that would complement the Cisco SGE2010 Ethernet Switch they intended to bring on line.

The length of the cable runs on this project did not present a problem. The distance of  any of the cable runs on this network was less then 100m (325ft). The 100m ls the standard as defined in TIA/EIA-568-B.2-2001 which you have to adhere to when cabling for Ethernet networks, so don’t have cable runs over 100 m.  This also includes the patch cords, if they are used in the connection of hardware to the cable run. Cat 5e cable was an excellent choice for use because it is rated for 1000BASE-T (gigabit).

About the Author:

Mike Stephens is President of Net Services, Inc., I T support  firm specializing in IT solutions
for small to mid-size Business in St Louis MO.
 

Cat 5e cable

Don’t use cat 5 it’s outdated and only rated up to 100Mhz