Cat 5E means no 10G?

My LAN is Cat 5E Ethernet, it's in the walls. I think that means I'm limited to gigabit Ethernet, if I wanted 10G I'd need Cat 6 cables (and switches etc).

Is that right, I don't need to bother myself about XGS-PON cos my LAN ain't fat enough?

You can get 2.5Gb on Cat 5e

Depends how long the runs are. There's no reason why a quality Cat5e run of say 20m won't get to 10Gb.

In reply to a post by Woolwich:

Is that right, I don't need to bother myself about XGS-PON cos my LAN ain't fat enough?

Don’t align the WAN technology with your LAN.

My local alt-net is installing XGS-PON but only providing a 900/900 service, using Adtran ONTs with 1GbE ports. So there is little point me bothering with anything above 2.5 GbE in my home.

In reply to a post by jpm:

Depends how long the runs are. There's no reason why a quality Cat5e run of say 20m won't get to 10Gb.

Cross talk is the problem, so I have read, that is what may stop it getting up to that speed.

My partner had a pretty long run of cat 5e, about 25 meters, and that did 2.5Gb/s ok.

No: Cat5e is *certified* for 2.5Gbps at 100m. This is one of the reasons the 2.5G-baseT standard exists.

In short, Cat5e will be good for a long time yet, so don't fret.

Even if one day you decide you *must* have an Internet service faster than 2.5G, you can still run separate 2.5G connections to each wired device and each wireless access point, and the aggregate traffic can exceed 2.5G.

Unless the cable is poop and has been installed poorly it'll almost certainly be fine for 10GbE across the kinds of cable lengths you'll have at home.

If it's problematic the first thing to do is recrimp the connectors. That'll probably sort it.

You don't have to bother overly with XGSPON right now as Openreach, the folks bringing you FTTP, don't offer it. They offer GPON and a 2.5GbE ONT which your cabling will do easily as long as it isn't broken.

Edited by XGS_Is_On (Thu 04-Apr-24 10:58:29)

In reply to a post by XGS_Is_On:

You don't have to bother overly with XGSPON right now as Openreach, the folks bringing you FTTP, don't offer it. They offer GPON and a 2.5GbE ONT which your cabling will do easily as long as it isn't broken.

To be honest I shouldn't have said XGS-PON but 10G in general. Before I get XGS-PON (still on FTTC!) I might want to get a new NAS and the question is should I look at 10G capable ones. The general answer (thanks all) is maybe that won't be a total waste of cash. I'm going to assume if the cable run will max out a 2.5G that wouldn't worry a 10G NAS.

The cable is whatever the builders put in. I can see it says it's Cat 5E but can't pull enough though to see a manufacturer. It won't be any old cheap [censored] from Amazon though. I fitted my own Ethernet sockets so I know they're all properly punched down and in Cat 6 sockets. I think my longest runs won't be more than 10 or 20 metres (I saw the cables before the plasterboard went on), well within any limits anyway. I don't live in a castle!

As the others have said, 2.5Gb is there and pretty cheap, I just upgraded my entire setup at home, installed 4 2.5Gb switches in various locations and swapped out the NIC on my NAS for a 2.5 PCI-E Card.

All my cabling is cat5e and some of the runs are pretty long going through a few terminations, either at a wall socket or RJ45 end. The switches I have also have 10Gb SFP ports and I managed to get 10Gb working using 30m Transceivers, I was able to uplink two switches together using 10Gb, however it was kinda pointless and the transceivers were generating a crazy amount of heat.

I wasnt able to get 10Gbit though on one cat5e run because the feed was going from the switch via one cat5e cable, into a female wallsocket which is linked to another female wall socket, the two are linked with cat5e and then finally out of that socket into the switch.

As much as it will do 10Gb over a given length the conditions have to be optimal, so millage may vary but its definitely possible

Dont sweat it though, 2.5Gb is quite the upgrade over 1Gb and cost waaaay less to get up and running.

In reply to a post by Woolwich:

To be honest I shouldn't have said XGS-PON but 10G in general. Before I get XGS-PON (still on FTTC!) I might want to get a new NAS and the question is should I look at 10G capable ones. The general answer (thanks all) is maybe that won't be a total waste of cash. I'm going to assume if the cable run will max out a 2.5G that wouldn't worry a 10G NAS.

I'd be inclined to place your NAS and 10G switch next to the router, or wherever the central point is that all the Cat5e cables congregate.

2.5Gbps is 300MB/sec. Unless you're doing editing of lots of raw videos, that's likely to be plenty (and it's hard to tune a PC or laptop to copy files any faster than that anyway)