this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2024
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After seeing that my wireless speeds were much faster than the speeds I was getting over Ethernet, I decided to invest in some new cables. I didn't know it before, but I saw while I was changing them out that my current cables were Cat 5e. While putting my network together, I had just been grabbing whatever cables I could find in my scrap drawers. Now I have Cat 8 cables and my speeds jumped from 7MB/s to an average of over 40MB/s. It's a much bigger improvement than I expected, especially for such a small investment.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago

I have stable ~950 MBit/s to the NAS with Cat5e. That's ~115 MB/s. If that 40 is to a machine on the LAN, either there is some bottle neck at one of the ends, or there's some problem with the cable to the RJ-45 jacks.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

Fewer Letters More Letters
IP Internet Protocol
NAS Network-Attached Storage
PoE Power over Ethernet
TCP Transmission Control Protocol, most often over IP

[Thread #915 for this sub, first seen 10th Aug 2024, 16:35] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 months ago

You can get gigabit over 5e, you don’t need super expensive cables. That said I ran cat 6 through my whole house and am able to fully saturate the bus, about 115 MBps (920 Mbps) which accounts for the TCP overhead. I haven’t tried 2/5/10G on it bull I’ll probably upgrade in a few years, I don't expect to have much trouble getting good speeds. Your biggest issue was you might not have had all the cable pairs in your wire, or your cables ends might have been crusty, or you could have had bad kinks in the wire causing packet loss, or some real absolute trash quality wire. In general, 5e and 6 are plenty for most people/situations to get good speeds (1Gb+)

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago

I'd be interested to see if you swapped the cables back if your local interface negotiated to FE instead of GE. I wouldn't be surprised to find that you've got a pair that's not properly terminated or broken and dropping you down to 100Mbps.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 2 months ago

My guess you had broken cables or defective connectors. Because even on cat5 (not cat5e) you should get much more than 7mbit, or did you have coaxial? LoL.

In my experience 90% are plugs, specially if you crimped yourself with Chinese tools

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 months ago (2 children)

CAT8 40MB/s

I think you went a but overkill with that one, high quality CAT6 cables would have done the same job, but hey, if it works, it works.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

High quality cat 5e would have done the job.

Original cables must have been faulty.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I mean, all of my cables are CAT 5e and I can easily pull a gigabit down and up from my NAS... Which has a gigabit NIC, so ig you're right.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Yep. There was an assumption 20 years ago when common switches were 100Mbps and running cat5e that you'd have to upgrade cable to get the next speed tier, 1Gbps.

It propagated wildly, but was always incorrect. Cat5e was very much capable of gigabit Ethernet by design.

It was only beyond gig that you'd need cat6, and even then at short lengths 2.5/5/10Gbe has a good chance of working on cat5e anyway (but don't do it).

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The future of ethernet is not expensive cabling, more like switches capable of doing more on current cables. We've been seeing this trend for a while.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

I know, I was just tryna point out the silver lining

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

Someone took Monster's "$100 gold plated HDMI" cable and one-upped it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

That review started off promising, but then the guy starts selling it. Boo.

[–] [email protected] 57 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It's highly likely that you had one or more bad-but-not-dead cables (like a weak termination) that was limiting your speed. By swapping everything out you fixed the problem. Cat 5e to 8 definitely shouldn't have caused that much if a jump (if any).

[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Absolutely correct. CAT 5e should be able to max out at 125MB/s.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

It may do more at short distances with good connectors and if fully copper. The OP definitely had poor termination and/or broken wires.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Cat 5e does 2.5Gb. Getting higher spec cables might increase the probability of them being well made to spec but other than that, what you really need is good quality cables, Cat 5e or otherwise.

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