Cabling – New, Faster Protocol for EXISTING Cat 5e, Cat 6

The cabling in your walls is ‘out of sight, out of mind,’ but greatly impacts the speed of information traveling over your network – data, internet, wireless traffic.  You might be familiar with Cat 5, Cat 5e, and Cat 6 cable sizes – did you know there are Cat 6a, and 7?  How to keep up – are you going to rip out cable every few years?  Not likely, so you’ll be interested in this story from Ars Technica UK by Sebastian Anthony (thanks Lenny).

This new Ethernet standard has recently been approved by the IEEE and allows for up to 2.5Gbps over normal Cat 5e cables.  It also allows up to 5Gbps over Cat 6 cabling (in case you’re lucky enough to have it).  There are some great charts and diagrams in the online article, along with some specific speeds and details, including some nice info on Power over Ethernet (PoE) standards which will be great for wi-fi access points.  It’s worth a few minutes of your time, so check it out! http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/09/5gbps-ethernet-standard-details-8023bz/