[c-nsp] cat6 gigE

[Bill Wichers]

> Thanks for the responce, on this last conversion actually the rj45 end i
> dont think is a cat6 connector, i was looking at that the other day.  The
> connectors i bought are the belkin connectors, not sure if they are
> considered the cheapo stuff.  When you say wire the cables straight
> through
> are you talking A or B or does it matter?

You have to use either all A or all B, you shouldn't mix. The orange and
green pairs are switched between the two standard, so if you mix them
you'll have problems. Straight through means A on both ends or B on both
ends, with pin 1 on one end coming out pin 1 on the other, 2 on 2, 3 on 3,
etc.

> You said Cat5e should work, if i need cat6 connectors with cat6 to run
> gigE
> do i need to put Cat6 connectors on the Cat5e cable if i wanted to use
> existing cables?  Our plan is to pull cat6 for everything but it'd be nice
> to know.

If you want to go cat6, you need to use ALL cat6 (wire, jacks, plugs,
everything). Using a cat6 connector on cat5e cable doesn't really
accomplish anything. I don't have anything against cat6, I just normally
use cat5e since it's cheaper, and it's not hard to replace in our
datacenters on the cable ladder if we need to. Normally for gigabit and
higher we just use fiber, so the cat5e is really just for 100FE links.

Cat6 is pretty much the current standard since it's considered to be the
most future proof. IMHO, it's fiber time for gigabit and up, but that's
partly because I do mostly optical transport these days :-)

     -Bill

*****************************
Waveform Technology
Systems Engineer