Thinking of replacing Cat5 cable in my office to Cat5e

[DonIsHere]

I want to upgrade our 10BaseT hub to a 100BaseT switch. But knowing how old our 30-computer office is, I wanted to check if our network cable was Cat5 (the wiring didn't have any writing on it). So, I had an electrical company visit my office and test our network cables. Their technician said our cable is Cat5. He also said some of the network drops are losing a portion of its signal to the patch panel.

Is it wise to upgrade cable from Cat5 to Cat5e?

 

[Goosemaster]

Not really worth it, but perhaps if you want scalability.

If you are getting packet loss then replace it. Does it travel around anything that might be causing interferance?

 

[cmetz]

DonIsHere, if they are measuring an actual cable problem, fix those drops. Any new runs should be 5e cable.

You don't need cat5e for 100Mb/s Fast Ethernet.

 

[DonIsHere]

I have tech guys coming in to fix the actual network outlets at the drops. They say that is the best first course of action.

let's see what happens.

 

[Xtremist]

Gigabit is probably a little overkill for a 30-computer office. The only thing that would be nice for that is your company file server (if you have one) that employee's access. If you can buy a switch with 1-2 gigabit ports it could be worth it to wire the file server with 5e...