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.

    • catloaf@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      edit-2
      3 months ago

      100m is the spec max. More than that, you need a powered repeater (i.e. baby switch). And you won’t get 100m if you have bad cables.

      I once saw a run in a cruise terminal, out of the cruise ship, down the gangway, along the terminal hallway, and through two more little switches just sitting on the floor next to an outlet. Not sure why they needed that run, but that’s what they did and it worked.

        • catloaf@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          3 months ago

          Yes, I was agreeing with you. Although as I mentioned, it’s technically 100m, which is 328 feet and one inch. And the spec also allows up to 5m of patch cable on each end, which I don’t think I knew.

          But that’s the spec target. Low-quality cable, physical damage, or environmental conditions like interference may reduce the actual max in practice. You might be able to push it with cat6 and up, but the spec still only says 100m.

          • mosiacmango@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            4
            ·
            3 months ago

            Copper core versus copper clad aluminum is going to matter here too. Both will claim to hit the spec, but you’re more likely to get there with the expensive copper only.

            • TCB13@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              3 months ago

              Yeah and don’t forget good terminations. I’ve seen a lot of people not getting the speeds they could get just because they used cheap plugs/connectors.