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Category 6 UTP Standard is (finally) Here
An anonymous reader writes "This is only important for the networkphiles out there, but the Category 6 UTP specification is finally here. The standard is the TIA/EIA-568-B.2-1. The significance of this is that now you can transmit at 250Mhz frequencies (vs 100Mhz of Cat 5/5e). So 1Gbps is easily achievable. Of course ther's still Category 7 (600Mhz) in development, but I guess we should eventually move to fiber." Who
hasn't crimped cat-5 before?
I was under the impression that the currently available solutions for 1000Mbit over copper worked just fine on Cat5 installations as long as the distance was kept short.
If that is the case, what benefit does Cat6 bring to the table? More distance? Lower bit-error-rates? Something else?
Free your mind!
"Plastic".
Sure, plastic fiber isn't optically as good as glass, but it's good enough for some things. The new 1394B spec, as I recall, goes to 3.2 Gbit over up to 50 meters of plastic fiber. And it's a lot less fragile than glass fiber.
Plastic fiber to the workstation seems eminently practical.
-- Alastair
I remember having to wire something up when the power went out (no, not network cabling, more mundane stuff). Well, when the soldering iron got too cold to work anymore (no, I didn't have a battery powered one -- they weren't decent in those days), you start stripping the cables as usual, twist them, wrap them in solder, and use a match to secure the connection. A temporary hack, to be sure, but it worked for as long as it had to.
I will say, that if you plan to do a lot of this, (and "a lot" can be "as little" as retrofitting structured wiring in a house"), get the proper tools: a Greenlee punch down tool for jacks and headend (usually comes with either a 66 or 110 blade -- you want the 110 but it's worth paying the US$15 or so for the other) at about US$45, a hand crimper for RJ45/RJ11/RJ14 (usually comes with a bunch of plugs) at about US$20, a coax wire stripper with RG6 and R59 settings at under US$10, and a decent RG6/RG59 coax crimper: around US$20. Surprisingly. Home Depot has all this stuff, including plugs, structured wallplates and jacks, Cat5e cable, etc. (Having the coax stuff is, less surprising). BTW, crimping cables, particularly RG6 coax connectors is hard on the hands -- do get a good tool.
I retrofitted structured wiring to a house I bought a year ago. (You don't want to do this: putzing around in the attic, drilling through non-load bearing top-plates is double plus not fun -- I hired a guy who had network experience and did residential "cable" and "phone" cabling, but only had him help tie-wrap and pull cable -- it was stilla lot of work and definately a two-person job.)
I pulled two Cat5e ant two RG6 cables to six drops, plus an attic "subdistribution area" (existing cable and telco drops terminated up there) from a headend which received the DSL line, POTS, dual LNBs pointed at two satellites, and a terrestrial SD/HD/analog TV antenna in the attic. There are breakout panels in the headend. So, that's 14 Cat5e jack terminations (headend side is punched down to 110 blocks), and 28 coax terminations, just for primary cabling. Then there's end-cables to crimp, terminating satellite lead-in (8 more coax connectors: one each end of four cables), satellite cross-connect cables (8 more!), and break-out panel to multiswitch cables (yet another 8). 7 cables (14 more coax connectors!) go from the multiswitch to the coax breakout panels. 7 Cat5E jumpers (14 RJ45 crimps) run from the firewall/router to the Cat5e breakout panel, and 7 punched down jacks on that panel to the 110 blocks. There are some odds and ends (line power inserters for the attic-located terrestrial antenna amp) as well. Oh, and if you do this, you will be making jack extention cables (two coax, two Cat5e, around 100 feet long), with four coax and four Cat5e crimps, for testing back to the headend when you suspect the cabling to a jack.
The bottom line is that if you wire, retrofit structured wiring in a home, you will crimp and punch down so much, by the time you're done, you will be an expert. One upside is that you will almost never buy pre-made cables again: you'll just make your own, to length, as required. Oh, and if you run two cables, do get two spools, or you will go crazy running a cable, going back, running another, and so on. Yes, this means you will have two spools of leftover. Save it to make patch cables.
In my case, I bought 2000 feet of Cat5e and 2000 feet of RG6 (the guys at Home Depot thought I was nuts, and BTW, RG6 on the spool gets heavy fast), and ended up using around 1500 feet of each in a 3200 square foot house. I got headend enclosures, patch panels, a multiswitch, diplexers, and misc. stuff from Home Tech and satellite gear from American Satellite.
You could've hired me.