sundance-communications.com/forum Forums Wiring - Telecom Carriers - Trunks & Services Cabling Telephones Systems Wiring Cat5e vs. Cat5e+ Question

Hello all.

I was wondering if someone can explain or reflect on their "field experience" regarding the Cat5e @ 100Mhz AND Cat5e @ 350Mhz differences.

What is that I may be enhancing in my premise infrastructure if high-end Cat5e is used? Both for application perspective and cable pull/terminate/certify.

Most of our jobs we've done with your typical Cat5e ( 100Mhz), recently we've received a bid and we needed to quote the CAT5e ( 350Mhz).
When we asked the customer why and what is the specific application? The answer was simple, because another vendor spec-up this way, and they just copied it.

We've done some small and large networks, running anything from basic networking, to data intense applications and voice/poe.

Thanks!!!

Right now is hard to find any CAT5E 100 Mhz. Almost all CAT5E cable is 300MHz. The differences are: CAT5E 300MHz you can use for 1Gbite Network by using all 4 pairs but you cann't do that with CAT5E that only up to 100MHz of its speed. There is no price difference in between both of them anyway.

Category 5 is the old standard, and it went as high as 100Mhz. That stanard was replaced by Category 5e, which goes up to 300Mhz, which supports 1Gbs.

Category 5e+ is not an official standard. The + is just marketing to show that a particular cable exceeds the Cat5e standards, in some cases going as high as 350Mhz.

Personally I don't think it makes any sense to specify 5e+. The client is straying from real standards into marketing territory, and not all manufacturers will have equal Cat5e+ cables. Maybe you can educate them about what they are including in their specifications and why. It sounds like the client doesn't really know what they need.

We have been installing 5e/350 for two years now. I can even remember the schlub I dumped my last box(es) of Min Com 5e on :-). Of course he's the one that wanted to run Gig ethernet :-(

We just finished a job in December with 5e/350 coupled to 5G108 Leviton jacks and the customer was amazed that he could run Gig ethernet. He, on purpose didn't spring for Cat-6 because of price and we got the cable from Black Box at a really good price.

In today's market, it doesn't make any sense to NOT specify 350 since that's about all the major manufacturers sell in 5e.

Carl

You just proved my point then Carl. If everyone is making 5e good to 350Mhz (which is 100Mhz faster than we need for gigabit), there's no point in specifying 5e+ or 5e-plus. Stick to the standards and ignore the marketing hype.

The schlub you dumped your old boxes of cable on could pair that cable up with cheapo jacks from a hardware store and still run gigabit.

MASSTECH,

The difference between those two cables is "headroom." That is, the margin by which the cable exceeds the specification for the cable category. A higher performing cable will run a given protocol (1000Base-T in this instance) with greater efficiency and will be less prone to bit errors (BE).

Regarding the frequencies you listed... they will both operate at 100MHz since that is the GbE frequency. The "350MHz" number is really just marketing fluff saying that they swept-tested to that frequency. No mention is really given to whether or not the cable had a positive attenuation to crosstalk ratio (ACR) which is the main benchmark for performance.

If you give more info on what the application is I can try and steer you towards your best bet.

~Hans

All - Thanks for the input!

The application is rather simple, voice/data on the same network, POE switches. Customer wants to push Gig as both the IP phones and switches are Gig.

We do it all the time, this is the first time I came across a specific request for 350Mhz. (once again not customer driven, but competition suggested)

The cables that we usually use is Supperior-Essex Cat5e. The minimum compliance cable is 6 cents less per foot, than the "high-end" stuff from the same manufacturer.

I think you need a missing decimal point. 6 cents a foot is $60/thousand. I doubt that even Essex is that much different :-)

Now, at $6/per thousand difference you can understand why MinCom cable is history.


(Post fixed this is not wholesale pricing)

(Post doesn't apply)