[Closed] 20m Ethernet cable

Cat5e will be fine. The regular stuff is not UV stable though so if it is going outside it will degrade over time (probably years so I wouldn't worry about getting external cable).

And you can get 15m cables easily so you don't need to spend more on a 20m cable.

Actually external cable is Waaaay cheaper than I thought so you might as well go for that if it is running outside

15m external cat5e patch lead

Magic, that'll do bentandbroken, much appreciated.

There is close to zero reason to ever use CAT6 in a domestic installation.

in before the Cougar 😉

I used cat 6 but I didn't know what I was doing. Think it was something to do with the cable I got having oil inside so I thought it would be suitable for running outside.
I managed to fit the ends with cheap Chinese pliers and it's been working fine for the last 2 years 😊

There is close to zero reason to ever use CAT6 in a domestic installation.

why dat den? 6(a) not THAT much more plus saves you rewiring your whole house in 5-10 years time? (Latest Macs already have 10Gb ports)

Latest Macs have 10Gbps network ports that you're plugging into a 1Gbps router port to use a 40Mbps DSL connection. In ten years' time you'll likely either be ripping it out to run fibre (100Gbps Ethernet was ratified a decade ago) or laughingly reminiscing about the time networks needed wires.

Regardless, if your argument is future-proofing it's not as simple as just laying expensive cable. CAT6 has to be CAT6 end-to-end: cables, faceplates, connectors, everything. It's harder to work with and the standard is considerably more stringent than CAT5e, you need to be mindful about things like the radius of bends in the cable and how much untwisted wire you've got exposed before the punchdowns.

If you desperately feel the need to run CAT6 I'd suggest also investing in a structured cabling engineer who can give you a Fluke report after installation. Otherwise what you have there is almost certainly not CAT6 (and might not even be CAT5e) regardless of what cables you've used.

@cougar fair enough, have googled & understand all your jargon, the internet seems broadly in agreement, there are vague "future-proofing" arguments for but like you say, who knows if things will have moved on even from 6a in 10 years time? Also prices of 10Gb switches pretty eye watering right now 😃 don't know if the install would be quite as difficult as that though, would you [I]really[/I] recommend hiring a consultant to test a home-network install? 😂

there are vague “future-proofing” arguments for but like you say, who knows if things will have moved on even from 6a in 10 years time? Also prices of 10Gb switches pretty eye watering right now

And it hasn't dropped the way some might have expected, technology hasn't managed to shrink, commodify(?) the technology which is why they have introduced an intermediate step of 2.5G which is showing up more and more on consumer hardware (motherboards mostly for now) and, happily, works just fine on Cat5e.

As was mentioned before, unless you are running some kind of multiuser, client/server infrastructure in your house there is little point in having your house wired to some standard that far exceeds your domestic internet connection, which, for the foreseeable future in this country, isn't likely to exceed 550mbps, possibly 1Gbps if you are willing to pay for it and have FTTP.

#EDIT: And bear in mind that the current 'superfast broadband for all' project that is being run nationwide in various guises has decreed that everyone should have at least 35mbps (I think that's the number anyway) which means if you are already covered by FTTC or are being upgraded using some other technology (Virgin, 4G, long range WiFi, satellite) to that speed, then the chances of getting FTTP without paying for it are pretty much zero in the next 10 years at least.

Latest Macs have 10Gbps network ports that you’re plugging into a 1Gbps router port to use a 40Mbps DSL connection.

All a bit academic when the OP is talking about plugging a BT wireless access point into the other end of the cable that's going to top out at maybe 200MB/s and likely operate far more slowly than that.

why dat den? 6(a) not THAT much more plus saves you rewiring your whole house in 5-10 years time? (Latest Macs already have 10Gb ports)

I'm fairly certain I remember people saying near enough exactly the same thing about 5 years ago.

would you really recommend hiring a consultant to test a home-network install?

Of course I'm not, that'd be bonkers. Rather I was holding up a mirror to the futility of running posh cabling just because the numbers are bigger, which was the question I was asked.

CAT6 has to be CAT6 end-to-end...
Otherwise what you have there is almost certainly not CAT6 (and might not even be CAT5e) regardless of what cables you’ve used.

Genuine question - so what happens? It's not like every part has a chip in it that's id'ing what it is that the network cards are checking. So long as theres a twisted pair making the connection you've got a network. Does the network speed get dialled down to whats' stable or is it just a case of error rate increasing and the effective speed dropping that way?

Does every little help? is using Cat6 cable but all cat5 connections going to give you a bit of a speed boost or nothing at all (or could it even be worse?).

From memory Cat6 has a plastic X piece that keeps the twisted pairs apart and a shield wire? Cat7 has a full metal shield.

Does the network speed get dialled down to whats’ stable or is it just a case of error rate increasing and the effective speed dropping that way?

The latter. The two endpoints will negotiate a common speed and then attempt to communicate at that speed, it's not clever enough to renegotiate different speeds like DSL does.

Does every little help? is using Cat6 cable but all cat5 connections going to give you a bit of a speed boost or nothing at all (or could it even be worse?).

As above. There's no such thing as "CAT5e and a bit," it's Gigabit Ethernet. You could hook up two gig NICs with bell wire and it'd try to run at 1Gbps, but you'd be picking 1s and 0s out of the carpet for days.

It technically could be worse, it's pretty unlikely but CAT6 cable is considered 'fragile' compared to CAT5e.

At the end of the day, CAT5e and CAT6 are standards. Your installation either meets that standard or it does not. The standard guarantees stable full-speed data transmission, the further you deviate from that standard then the less likely it becomes that you'll get a reliable connection. For instance, the maximum cable length for a single segment is 100m; is a 101m cable going to fail to work? Of course not, but you're outside of the standard. Then what about, 102m, 110m, 200m?

Are you going to lose anything by running CAT6? Probably not, aside from the contents of your wallet. Are you going to gain anything by running CAT6? Probably not either, which was the point I was making to start with.

Magic, cable bentandbroken linked to arrived and installed, now have full wireless signal in the summer house, bikeshed and indeed the whole garden.

Thanks guys.