100 Mb/s speed using cat6 cabling

[enigma54]

I wired some cat6 cables in a few parts of the house and when a friend came over to help me terminate the cables to a patch panel and to the keystone jacks, he mistakenly used cat5e keystone jacks and a cat5e patch panel. Now i'm finding that some connections are operating at 1Gb/s while some are only operating at 100 Mb/s.

Are the cat5e keystone jacks and the patch panel the problem here? Do I need to replace these with cat6 rated equivalents in order to get 1Gb/s speeds throughout? Did I get lucky with a few connections that managed to run at 1Gb/s? The keystone jacks are not hard to replace but the patch panel would take some time to re-do.

Thanks for your help!

[Gee]

I wired some cat6 cables in a few parts of the house and when a friend came over to help me terminate the cables to a patch panel and to the keystone jacks, he mistakenly used cat5e keystone jacks and a cat5e patch panel. Now i'm finding that some connections are operating at 1Gb/s while some are only operating at 100 Mb/s.

Are the cat5e keystone jacks and the patch panel the problem here? Do I need to replace these with cat6 rated equivalents in order to get 1Gb/s speeds throughout? Did I get lucky with a few connections that managed to run at 1Gb/s? The keystone jacks are not hard to replace but the patch panel would take some time to re-do.

Thanks for your help!

It would be best to replace all the jacks and the patch panel. Did you verify that the devices are all Gigabit ethernet?

[NewsyL]

It would be best to replace all the jacks and the patch panel. Did you verify that the devices are all Gigabit ethernet?

If the runs are significantly short of 100 meters you should be able to get 1G speeds with a good quality & properly terminated Cat5e jack.

You need to keep the cable pair twisted, at it's native rate of twist, right up to and into the termination slot on the jack - don't undo the twisted pair back an inch to make it easier to terminate. Every pair has its' own unique twist rate and you want to maintain that native rate right into the jack. A lot of the electrical problems with UTP or STP occur in the 6 inches of cable nearest the jack (i.e. Cross Talk). Tight bends and running parallel within a few inches of an electrical cable can also degrade performance.

I've seen issues with Gigabit network cards that are not connecting at 1G rates due driver issues and also a faulty card, it simply would not handshake properly with the 1G switch. I also recall a major secondary educational facility that installed one of the first Cat6 systems in Canada 12 years ago that had problems in part because they had requested the contractor to install a extra length of cable for each run in a coil in the wall behind the jack - 2/3's of their runs initially failed to meet Cat6 standards but later passed after the coil was relaxed or cut out.

[Busybuyer888]

CAT5e equipment can easily handle Gigbit network speeds. We commonly see clients drop in Gigabit switches in their older CAT5 cabled offices and get full Gigabit speeds. We commonly see CAT5 rated patch cables work at Gigabit speeds.

I would say two possible issues with OP's wiring. One is poor termination of the ends. Two, perhaps some of the drops are running over other equipment (ie. flourscent light fixture) that is causing electrical interference along those drops. Of the two, suggestion #1 is more likely.

[willy]

CAT-5e shouldn't be a problem for 1Gb/s. I too agree there's a good chance it's just poor termination.

I would test out the equipment at those "100Mb/s" location(s) at a tested "1Gb/s" ones to verify that it's not the equipment's fault. If it works, I would re-do the termination.

[arm2000]

As the other said, Cat5e is not the problem. But how do you know the connection speed? Did you do some speed tests or just see what the devices report when connected? If the latter, did they report 1Gb before or in other conditions?

[cwb27]

I'm thinking all your pairs are not terminated correctly.

1Gbit needs all 4 pairs, 100mbit only need 2 pairs.

[Mark77]

Yup, gig-E is fairly adaptive as well. If the 4 pairs are present, it will simply degrade the speed if the pairs aren't good enough, not generally refuse to work. If its not syncing at gig-E, either its a software problem, the 4 pairs aren't present, or, heaven forbid, the gear just isn't made to work at Gig-E speeds.

Not all gear is Gig-E. A lot of 'consumer' stuff didn't even include gig-E until recently.

[enigma54]

Thanks for all the responses, guys. I will troubleshoot a bit more with the jacks that are reporting slower speeds. If one end of the Ethernet cable is wired as T568A and the other end is T568B or vice versa, will this also cause the speed to downgrade to megabit instead of gigabit? Or will this connection simply not work? Just in case a couple of the ends were wired incorrectly.

Lastly, I bought a T110 punch down tool and there is a dial setting for "low" and "high" for the impact...what do you recommend I set this to if I redo some of the terminations?

[enigma54]

As the other said, Cat5e is not the problem. But how do you know the connection speed? Did you do some speed tests or just see what the devices report when connected? If the latter, did they report 1Gb before or in other conditions?

I have a gigabit switch in between the patch panel and the router and the switch LED's indicate if it's operating in gigabit or megabit speeds. The task manager in windows also shows the same info in the networking tab. In all instances, it has always shown megabit connection for the jacks in question.

[willy]

Thanks for all the responses, guys. I will troubleshoot a bit more with the jacks that are reporting slower speeds. If one end of the Ethernet cable is wired as T568A and the other end is T568B or vice versa, will this also cause the speed to downgrade to megabit instead of gigabit? Or will this connection simply not work? Just in case a couple of the ends were wired incorrectly.

Lastly, I bought a T110 punch down tool and there is a dial setting for "low" and "high" for the impact...what do you recommend I set this to if I redo some of the terminations?

Well, technically speaking, you have cross-over cables all around which is not right ... but since most (if not all) network equipment nowadays has auto-MDIX, it will 'correct' that for you. This alone does not downgrade the speed.

But for experiment sake, I would re-do one of these "100Mb/s" ports back to T568B (both ends) and test it again ....

[goofball]

I have a gigabit switch in between the patch panel and the router and the switch LED's indicate if it's operating in gigabit or megabit speeds. The task manager in windows also shows the same info in the networking tab. In all instances, it has always shown megabit connection for the jacks in question.

I'd bet either the termination or the jack itself has a problem. I had a faulty jack which had pin 8 defective and could only get 100mbit speeds.

[CompWizrd]

Did you friend do a proper cable test after? It does sounds like he didn't punch down the wires properly. I've done 327 feet over cat5e at gbit speeds before (connected one end of a building to the other), and have done several 300 foot runs without issue. I use a Fluke Cable-IQ(which will tell me on which end, or what part in the middle is having trouble), but for most uses even a simple wire mapper will do just fine.

Also, if he made his own patch cables, did he remember to swap pins 3+5 on both ends?

Also, how did you secure the cables? If you stapled it to the beams, that can cause trouble if you didn't use the right type of staples.

[Gee]

Lastly, I bought a T110 punch down tool and there is a dial setting for "low" and "high" for the impact...what do you recommend I set this to if I redo some of the terminations?

Use the Low setting

Well, technically speaking, you have cross-over cables all around which is not right ... but since most (if not all) network equipment nowadays has auto-MDIX, it will 'correct' that for you. This alone does not downgrade the speed.

But for experiment sake, I would re-do one of these "100Mb/s" ports back to T568B (both ends) and test it again ....

Everything recent has auto MDI-X, but he should terminate both ends the same.

I prefer to use T568A. Every commercial cable purchased is T568B (AT&T) but the official Canadian Standard is T568A (Bell PRI)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TIA/EIA-568

Read the section under T1 and Backwards compatibility

[willy]

Oh .. and also get this to test all the cable runs ... http://www.dealextreme.com/p/rj45-rj...le-tester-1261

Probably the best US$6.41 you've ever spent