I spent ~$35 on new cables and my LAN speed increased 6x

Submitted ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨anonymouse2@sh.itjust.works⁩ to ⁨selfhosted@lemmy.world⁩

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.

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normonator@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Cat8 is pointless with gigabit equipment as far as speed goes. Cat6 will do 10gig, you just had bad cables.

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- IsoKiero@sopuli.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Yep. I’m running 1/1Gbps wan connection over cat5e just fine. Even on very noisy environment at work with a longish run (70+ meters) we ran pretty damn stable 1/1Gbps over good quality cat7.
  
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  - LastoftheDinosaurs@reddthat.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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  - mjhelto@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Wonder if the cables replaced by OP were user-made, not commercial cables, that were our together incorrectly.
    
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- mosiacmango@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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  - catloaf@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    100m is the spec max. More than that, you need a powered repeater (i.e. baby switch).
    
    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.
    
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SaltySalamander@fedia.io ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

Cat 5e

The fact that your old cable was cat5e has no bearing whatsoever on you getting shit speeds before changing cables. The gigabit spec was codified and products were on the market before the cat5e spec was ratified. Gigabit ethernet was literally made for standard cat5. I bet your previous cable was terminated incorrectly, and was only using two of the four pairs, limiting you to 100mbit.

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- BearOfaTime@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Bingo!
  
  Proper termination can be a bitch.
  
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  - gibmiser@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Orange white, orange Green white, blue Blue white, green Brown white, brown
    
    Learned it 20 years ago, never used it. how did I do?
    
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nova_ad_vitum@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
It’s highly likely that you had one or more bad-but-not-dead cables (like a weak termination) that was limiting your speed. By swapping everything out you fixed the problem. Cat 5e to 8 definitely shouldn’t have caused that much if a jump (if any).

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- GaMEChld@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Absolutely correct. CAT 5e should be able to max out at 125MB/s.
  
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  - TCB13@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    It may do more on short distances with good connectors and if fully copper.
    
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cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Cat5e works fine for gigabit. If it’s not connecting at 1G, then the cable has been damaged and is probably connecting at 100M.

You should be seeing about 118MB/s in an iperf test on gigabit ethernet.

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- rtxn@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  This. I’ve had issues at work while imaging classroom computers where some would finish in ~30 minutes and a few would need hours. All of the computers used Cat6 cables. This being a classroom, and students being absolute wankbags, they kept yanking the computers and kicking the cables, so the wires came loose from the plugs. I later used ethtool to debug the slow computers – the switch would only allow 10baseT link modes.
  
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  - dgriffith@aussie.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    For later reference, the link light on most network cards is a different colour depending on link speed. Usually orange for 1G, green for 100M and off for 10M (with data light still blinking).
    
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Shimitar@feddit.it ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
My guess you had broken cables or defective connectors. Because even on cat5 (not cat5e) you should get much more than 7mbit, or did you have coaxial? LoL.

In my experience 90% are plugs, specially if you crimped yourself with Chinese tools

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Presi300@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

CAT8 40MB/s

I think you went a but overkill with that one, high quality CAT6 cables would have done the same job, but hey, if it works, it works.

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- hedidwot@lemmynsfw.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  High quality cat 5e weighs have done the job.
  
  Original cables must have been faulty.
  
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  - Presi300@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I mean, all of my cables are CAT 5e and I can easily pull a gigabit down and up from my NAS… Which has a gigabit NIC, so ig you’re right.
    
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- majestictechie@lemmy.fosshost.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Atleast it’s future proof
  
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  - TCB13@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    The future of ethernet is not expensive cabling, more like switches capable of doing more on current cables. We’ve been seeing this trend for a while.
    
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eskuero@lemmy.fromshado.ws ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Your connection is 40MB/s I assume

5e is capable of getting the full 1Gbps of my connection so I easily see over 90MB/s. That being said I bought a big 100m bulk years ago and have been clipping it myself with care.

If you were indeed using leftover/ free cables of cuestionable quality it indeed could be a reason for poor perfomance

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just_another_person@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Cat8 is not the benefit here. It’s all twisted pairs as any other CAT cable. You probably just had a shitty quality cable.

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- ShortN0te@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  Cat8 is not the benefit here.
  
  That is correct. Since we talk about lower then Gb speeds
  
  It’s all twisted pairs as any other CAT cable. You probably just had a shitty quality cable.
  
  Yes, but the CAT does not simply do nothing, shielding is probably the most distinguished factor on the CAT rating and it increases the signal integrity and therefore the max speed you can push across the cable. Saying “all just twisted pair” is just BS, or just try to get 10 Gb speeds on a CAT 5 on 100m long cable.
  
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- possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Or ones (or one) that was worn out.
  
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  - BearOfaTime@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Yep, a break from being wrapped up tightly a bunch of times
    
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carl_dungeon@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
You can get gigabit over 5e, you don’t need super expensive cables. That said I ran cat 6 through my whole house and am able to fully saturate the bus, about 115 MBps (920 Mbps) which accounts for the TCP overhead. I haven’t tried 2/5/10G on it bull I’ll probably upgrade in a few years, I don’t expect to have much trouble getting good speeds. Your biggest issue was you might not have had all the cable pairs in your wire, or your cables ends might have been crusty, or you could have had bad kinks in the wire causing packet loss, or some real absolute trash quality wire. In general, 5e and 6 are plenty for most people/situations to get good speeds (1Gb+)

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avidamoeba@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Cat 5e does 2.5Gb.

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fubarx@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
You’ve been using cheap cables.

Next step up is a JCAT: audiobacon.net/2019/11/02/…/amp/

/s if not obvious.

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- ShepherdPie@midwest.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Someone took Monster’s “$100 gold plated HDMI” cable and one-upped it.
  
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Passerby6497@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I’d be interested to see if you swapped the cables back if your local interface negotiated to FE instead of GE. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that you’ve got a pair that’s not properly terminated or broken and dropping you down to 100Mbps.

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possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
40MB/s is no where near the limit of cat 5e. It can easily do gigabit.

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- BCsven@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Not all cat 5e is created equal…you can buy a good cat5e from a reputable supplier or a super shit one at the dollar store…they just stamp 5e on it even if it is under sized wire and not actually been tested to work
  
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  - possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Cat 5e cables are tested to meet the cat 5e standard. Anything outside of that is false advertising and you should return it for a full refund
    
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  - avidamoeba@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Well if it can’t do the spec, then it’s not Cat 5e is it. 😅
    
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WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I have stable ~950 MBit/s to the NAS with Cat5e. That’s ~115 MB/s. If that 40 is to a machine on the LAN, either there is some bottle neck at one of the ends, or there’s some problem with the cable to the RJ-45 jacks.

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RelativeArea0@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Also learned this the hard way, when i was starting my “homelab” , I bought a box of (not knowingly that its bad) cheap CCA(copper clad alum) cat6 cables and im wondering why are my access points not negotiating to gigabit, turns out cca are trash and shouldn’t be used on POE or even on high speed trunks, learned my lesson now and swapped my cables to pure copper, they are more expensive like 100$ more expensive but at least they do the job.

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- TCB13@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  CCA wasn’t probably your issue there, CCA is actually becoming the standard everywhere because copper is way too expensive and to be fair not needed with modern hardware.
  
  You most likely issue with that CCA is the AWG size you picked, cheap cable is usually 24, 26 or even 28 AWG and those will be bad
  
  If you want PoE or anything gigabit or above you need to pick 23 AWG. This is considerably cheaper than full copper and it will work fine for the max. rated 100m. Either way, cheap 26 AWG should be able to deliver gigabit and PoE at short distances like 20 meters or so.
  
  Another important thing is to make sure your terminations are properly done and the plugs are good. Meaning, no Cat5e connectors should be used, always use staggered ones:
  
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  - RelativeArea0@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Thanks, I think I got 24awg cca before I swapped them to pure copper, and now I also think, I wanna re crimp all of my connectors using staggered ones lol
    
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- catloaf@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  CCA shouldn’t be used anywhere ever. It’s garbage cable for garbage people who will pinch a penny and end up spending ten times that in dealing with the issues and the eventual replacement.
  
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  - TCB13@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    It depends: lemmy.world/comment/11680250
    
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Mellow12@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Ethernet speeds historically were measured in 10/100/1000. In my past life I worked for an a small rural isp. And part of my learning I was taught that cat5 was 8 wires, or 4 twisted pairs. If one wire were cut a network card would negotiate down to its lowest speed. It’s possible with those numbers you had a bad connection, or a broken strand in the cable and it auto negotiated to 10mbps.

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- TCB13@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I’ve a run of around 60 meters of old telephone cables (made out of copper, 4 wires) and I can get 100Mbps on those reliably. I used the old telephone infrastructure on the building to pass network from an apartment to the basement that way.
  
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  Not to spec on ethernet on any way, not even twisted pairs but they do work. Unfortunately I can’t replace the run with a proper Cat6 cable because there’s a section that I can’t find where it goes to, it just disappears on a floor and appears 2 floors bellow it inside the main telephone distribution box.
  
  On the distribution box (that is already on the basement of the building) I’m plugging into the LSA connector that goes to the apartment:
  
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  The box box you see there is a mikrotik gper that is essentially a switch with only 2 ethernet ports so I can get over the 100m limitation of ethernet. I’m running a cat6 cable from there on metal cable trays for about another 90 meters until it reaches a storage unit 2 floors bellow ground.
  
  Here’s a ping test from a machine sitting on the storage box to the router on the apartment:
  
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  The router reports this as a 100M full-duplex connection:
  
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Decronym@lemmy.decronym.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:

Fewer Letters More Letters

IP Internet Protocol

NAS Network-Attached Storage

PoE Power over Ethernet

TCP Transmission Control Protocol, most often over IP

[Thread #915 for this sub, first seen 10th Aug 2024, 16:35] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

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Fewer Letters	More Letters
IP	Internet Protocol
NAS	Network-Attached Storage
PoE	Power over Ethernet
TCP	Transmission Control Protocol, most often over IP