Cat6 to Cat5 adapters?

[weshuang]

I'm doing some renovations in my home and am taking the opportunity to run network cabling everywhere. I know that there are great advances being made in wireless technologies, call me old-fashioned.

Anyway, since the cost is incremental, I'm having Cat6 run, under theory that it can't hurt. However, I don't want to spend the money to upgrade all my computers to deal with Cat6 connectors, and I don't think any home media appliances today can deal with Cat6 either. So it seems to me I have two choices:

1.) Have Cat6 cable run in the walls, but have the electrician terminate them with Cat5 receptacles.

or

2.) Use Cat 6 cables and Cat6 receptacles, and find some sort of adapter to convert the Cat6 to Cat5.

I would rather not go with choice #1, because there will be no good way to know for sure whether the electrician actually ran Cat6 cables everywhere, and by the time I figured it out it would be too late. Has anyone heard of adapter cable that can take a cat5 socket and run it over cat6?

Thanks,
Wes

 

[nightowl]

You do not need a adapter to connect Cat6 to Cat5 cable. The difference is simply in the ability of one cable to carry higher frequencies better than the other. So, for normal home installations where 100mb and even Gig work over Cat5 you will be fine conencting the two together by themselves. If you do go with a mix of Cat5 and Cat6 hardware you will be limited to Cat5 specification throughout your house since you will fall back to the lease common denominator (Cat5) and like I said this will not impact anything for your home network until maybe 10Gig .

 

[weshuang]

Originally posted by: nightowl
You do not need a adapter to connect Cat6 to Cat5 cable. The difference is simply in the ability of one cable to carry higher frequencies better than the other. So, for normal home installations where 100mb and even Gig work over Cat5 you will be fine conencting the two together by themselves.

Ah. I was under the impression from looking at cabling websites that the in-wall receptacles themselves are slightly different. Not the case?

 

[nightowl]

The wall jacks are different only in how they are rated. The Cat6 jacks/cable/ends conform to higher specifications that allow for the transmission of higher frequencies associated with the Cat6 specifications. You can mix the two without problem. The only thing like I said is that if you mix Cat6 and Cat5 parts you will be limited to an overall Cat5 specification compliance which will not change your network performance.

 

[weshuang]

Originally posted by: nightowl
The wall jacks are different only in how they are rated. The Cat6 jacks/cable/ends conform to higher specifications that allow for the transmission of higher frequencies associated with the Cat6 specifications. You can mix the two without problem. The only thing like I said is that if you mix Cat6 and Cat5 parts you will be limited to an overall Cat5 specification compliance which will not change your network performance.

Cool! That's the best answer of all -- many thanks! So is there in fact a way to tell from looking at the jacks themselves whether the electrician indeed installed Cat6 jacks and cables?

 

[nightowl]

Usually the jacks will say Cat5 or Cat6 on them, at least that is what I have seen on all of the ones I have installed and worked with.

 

[weshuang]

Got it, thanks, Nightowl!

 

[Goosemaster]

if you find recepticles that are cat5e, they will be perfect.

I've seen more than one brand that will do 350mhz. For reference, the cat5 specs say something like 100mhz and cat 6 is like 500mhz.

Cat5e certified equipment will be both fast as hell and cheap:beer:

 

[Concillian]

I'm wiring my own house (myself) and decided on Cat5e. Before I decided, I bought a Cat6 cable, and made myself a Cat5e cable with my own crimper, I also tested other randome Cat 5 and 5e cables I had around. None made any difference in my gigabit speeds, so I chose Cat5e.

From a professional installer standpoint, the largest cost is the labor, so the cost difference is probably negligible. When installing yourself, the cost difference is more noticeable.

But you seemed to have gotten your answer, all the connectors are interchangable.

 

[Xtremist]

What you really need to do is seperate the term Cat-5/6 which refers to a cable specification and other terms I haven't heard yet besides "recepticle". That would be RJ-45, RJ-11, etc... Those refer to connector types. There's no reason you can't put a RJ-45 connector on both Cat-5 and Cat-6 cables. This is basically what you've come up with, I guess I just thought I'd add that in myself. A lot of people use the terms interchangablly (spelling?) which is generally fine... unless they don't actually understand there IS a difference

Good luck with your wiring. My personal suggestion is to run MORE than you think you'll need. When I moved into my house I ran 2 Cat-5 cabes and one coax (can't remember the rating) to each of my rooms. I had 1 Cat-5 for networking and used the other to serve as copper for two phone jacks. Well now I have Vonage and a nice wireless handset and all of those phone jacks are essentially useless to me. In hindsight I wish I would've ran at least another Cat-5 to have two network drops. It makes things easier if you have two PC's (or maybe a PC and network printer, etc...) where you don't have to go and find a switch for just two things!

 

[Goosemaster]

Originally posted by: Xtremist
What you really need to do is seperate the term Cat-5/6 which refers to a cable specification and other terms I haven't heard yet besides "recepticle". That would be RJ-45, RJ-11, etc... Those refer to connector types. There's no reason you can't put a RJ-45 connector on both Cat-5 and Cat-6 cables. This is basically what you've come up with, I guess I just thought I'd add that in myself. A lot of people use the terms interchangablly (spelling?) which is generally fine... unless they don't actually understand there IS a difference

Good luck with your wiring. My personal suggestion is to run MORE than you think you'll need. When I moved into my house I ran 2 Cat-5 cabes and one coax (can't remember the rating) to each of my rooms. I had 1 Cat-5 for networking and used the other to serve as copper for two phone jacks. Well now I have Vonage and a nice wireless handset and all of those phone jacks are essentially useless to me. In hindsight I wish I would've ran at least another Cat-5 to have two network drops. It makes things easier if you have two PC's (or maybe a PC and network printer, etc...) where you don't have to go and find a switch for just two things!

Simplicity at its finest from 3com

 

[Xtremist]

No kidding! I looked at those and came very close to buying them however decided to stick with a single width box in the wall. Looking back though, it would've been nice.

 

[Ninjazx]

Might hafta get me one of those... thats pretty nifty with PoE included!

 

[Goosemaster]

Originally posted by: Ninjazx
Might hafta get me one of those... thats pretty nifty with PoE included!

damn right.

 

[weshuang]

"What you really need to do is seperate the term Cat-5/6 which refers to a cable specification and other terms I haven't heard yet besides "recepticle". That would be RJ-45, RJ-11, etc... Those refer to connector types. There's no reason you can't put a RJ-45 connector on both Cat-5 and Cat-6 cables. "

Thanks for the clarification, which now that I look back at the specs I gave the architect, I actually did know already. ;-)

I guess that's really my question, I assume that the only way to really know whether the electrician runs Cat6 is to look at the wires themselves.

 

[Concillian]

Originally posted by: Goosemaster

Simplicity at its finest from 3com

Fine if you only need 100 mbps, and actually not much more expensive than just having keystone jacks and multiple cables.

It is, however limited in that you cannot expand to gigabit without replacing the entire switch in every room. If you do it with a central switch and multiple wires, upgrading to gigabit capability is a simple matter of swapping out the switch.

 

[Goosemaster]

Originally posted by: Concillian

Originally posted by: Goosemaster

Simplicity at its finest from 3com

Fine if you only need 100 mbps, and actually not much more expensive than just having keystone jacks and multiple cables.

It is, however limited in that you cannot expand to gigabit without replacing the entire switch in every room. If you do it with a central switch and multiple wires, upgrading to gigabit capability is a simple matter of swapping out the switch.

Aye, but for home and small office use, it is ideal. Most SMB's will not need gigabit, so being able to make a drop for the future is more than enough...hell, I used to work for a co. that had 10Mbps ...and it was an enterprise :Q Obviously they wouldn't use this in the enterprise....

 

[Mday]

summary: dont worry about it =D