Home network - Mix and match cat 5e / cat6

[paulg1]

Hi,

I'm building a home network in my house and I'm curious as to whether I can/should replace certain cables with cat 6 and see a benefit.

My planned setup is in the attached picture, but basically my modem (with three spare ports) lives in my living room, it is connected to a switch under the stairs. All other rooms would be connected directly to the switch (including a NAS connected directly to the switch with a run of less than a meter).

In the picture all circled numbers will be solid core Cat 5e sent between rooms.

By instinct, I'm not much of an early-adopter, and reading around, I probably tend to the "cat 5e is fine for home networks" side of the debate. Plus I already have a load of good cat 5e to use! However, runs 1 (switch to study) and 2 (switch to living room) in my diagram are the easiest runs to implement, also these rooms will be consuming the most bandwidth by far. So I'm thinking should I could put cat 6 or 6a here. (I'm more concerned by bandwidth to the NAS than to the router/internet)

What do you think? Is there any benefit to such a mixed network? or does Cat 6 have to be all or nothing?

Thanks

P.S The network use is primarily:
- General web browsing
- Working from home (i.e. Remote desktops)
- Streaming HD video from the NAS (no more than well-compressed 1080p - not Bluray quality)
- The occasional big download

 

[Gryz]

The quality/category of the cable is a limitation of the maximum speed you can get over that cable.

Cat-5e is maximum 1 Gbps.
Cat-6 is maximum 10 Gbps.

However, that doesn't mean you will achieve those speeds. If one of the devices on the two ends of the cable can only do a lower speed, than the link will run at the lower speed. So suppose you have 2 devices that can do 1 Gbps each, and you have them connected via a cat-6 cable, that part of the network will run only at 1 Gbps. There will be zero speed improvement over a situation where you would have had those 2 devices hooked up via cat-5e.

I assume all your devices are currently 1 Gbps or slower (100 Mbps, there are not a lot of 10 Mbps devices still around). That means that it won't make a difference if you put in cat-5e or cat-6 today. Cat-5 is cheaper.

It is important to understand that Ethernet-networks run at fixed speeds. Either 10 Mbps, 100 Mbps, 1 Gbps or 10 Gbps. The speed is determined by both ends of the cable. There are no "in-between" speeds. In DSL and even in WiFi, the actual speed is changing all the time, determined by the quality of the link. So better copper-wires (with DSL) or better reception (with WiFi) has an impact on the actual speed. With Ethernet that is not the case. It's either 10, 100, 1000 or 10000 Mbps.

The only difference is the future. Currently 10Gbps interfaces are still relatively expensive. If you have them, you most likely will only put one in your PC, maybe your NAS. And switches are even more expensive. But that might change in a few years. So if you put in cat-6 today, you might only see the benefit in a few years. But if you put in cables now, you should just as well put in cat-6. The extra cost today is probably nothing compared to the effort to replace them later.

About bandwidth requirements.
Very few people have 1 Gbps Internet-connections. And for the ones that do, it doesn't matter if they have a 1Gbps or a 10Gbps network at home. Your web-surfing won't notice the difference, and 1 Gbps is overkill for websurfing. As you say, 1080p video-streaming doesn't require those high speeds (10-20 Mbps per stream is already enough for 4k-streaming). Remote Desktop doesn't need Gigabit-speeds either. Even the occasional download won't need more than the speed of your Internet-connection. The only reason to need 10Gbps in stead of 1Gbps is if you do backups over your home-network (to your NAS), and you want to speed it up from taking 2 hours to 15 minutes.

My recommendation:
- if you can afford it, put cat-6 wherever you put in new cables.
- if you have older cat-5e cables in place, don't bother to replace them now if you don't want to
- run your network at 1 Gbps-speeds
- a few years from now, you might wanna think about 10Gbps.

I put in cat-5e in my home over a decade ago. I think there was no cat-6 back then (2003). So my home-network is limited to 1 Gbps. I don't care. 1 Gbps is gonna be enough for me for another decade at least.

 

[JackMDS]

Using CAT 6 is stop being "Early adopter" long time ago. Going with CAT5e these days is Literally "penny pinching".

What ever goes into the walls or other runs that are hard to replace should be CAT 6.

 

[mxnerd]

I really don't see the need for cat 6 like Grzy said unless you do huge cross net backup.

Remote desktop speed is limited by your cable/fios upload speed, no where near 100M bps, let alone 1 Gbps.

 

[sdifox]

Won't make a diff. No one is going to pony up for a 10gbps switch for their house.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Won't make a diff. No one is going to pony up for a 10gbps switch for their house.

Really? No one? It's like you're new here... ()

 

[mxnerd]

No one means very few people.

It cost an arm & leg to have 10G bps switch & adapters for most people.

 

[nk215]

I have a 10gbit network but using fiber instead of copper. I only notice the speed increase when backing up VMs (which I can't do delta backup). For everything else, including backing 1TB worth of pics, it makes little different thanks to delta backup method.

I would run cat6 cable if possible. In a few years 10gb maybe much more reasonable for home use.

 

[sdifox]

Really? No one? It's like you're new here... ()

Not even backblaze uses 10gbe to each of their pods.

 

[rchunter]

If I was running behind drywall i'd sure as hell use cat6. 5 years from now 10GB switches will probably be common and fairly reasonable. Skylake-E/EP might even bring onboard 10GbE. Once more motherboards start supporting it switches will come down in price fast.

 

[sdifox]

He can replace the existing 5e at that point.


Edit: For some reason I thought he already has cat.5e drops in place. Turns out it is a new installation. I would go with cat. 6 then.

 

[matricks]

Won't make a diff. No one is going to pony up for a 10gbps switch for their house.

Today, no. But if you wire up a home today, how long do you expect to leave the cables in the walls without touching them? Twelve years ago, Netgear claimed to have launched the lowest price-per-port GbE switch, at a neat $145 per port.