Ethernet RJ45 Speeds & Cables - Everything you Need to Know as Fast As Possible
Techquickie
·Techquickie
·2013-05-07
·
798 words · ~3 min read
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Sorry guys, what is the topic today? Oh, that's right. RJ45 Ethernet
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cables. We're going to tell you everything you need to know as fast as PO. Is this all you
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got? There we go. That's more like it.
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If you live on the planet Earth, you've probably seen an RJ45 Ethernet cable and
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a jack that it goes into at some point. So, it'll be on the back of your
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computer, on the back of your modem, network switch, wherever else like that.
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And then the cable plugs into it with a nice little locking connector just like
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that. But what actually affects the performance of this interface? The
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number one factor affecting the performance of the link speed is the
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rated link speed. So the most common speeds now are 1000 which runs at 100
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megabit per second, gigabit which runs at 1,000 megabit per second, and 10
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Gbit. However, because the ports and the cables all look the same superficially,
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you sometimes have to get down to the little details to see what speed a
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device is capable of running at. Another alternative is checking the manufacturer
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website or looking on the side of the box. One of the challenges, however, is
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that the way that manufacturers denote the speeds can often vary. So, here are
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four different ways that you might see 1 Gbit per second actually written. Data
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signal integrity is also affected by the cables. So, it can be rated at 10 Gbit
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all at once, but if you have a lowquality cable in between, your speed
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is going to be degraded and not down to 5 GB. It's going to go all the way down
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to gigabit. You can only go in full steps. So, make sure you have a cable
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that's rated for the correct speed and the correct distance. The most common
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cable types these days are Cat 5e, which is rated for 100 meters at gigabit
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speed, but only 55 m at 10 Gbit speed,
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and Cat 6, which is actually rated for 100 m at full 10 GB speed. However, it's
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not always easy to tell what type of cable you're looking at. So, look for
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the fine printing on the side of the cable in order to tell you exactly what
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type you're dealing with. It'll tell you the thickness of the wires inside as
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well as the category rating. It's usually pretty easy to tell if there's a
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performance problem with your network. For example, that file that normally
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transfers in 10 seconds might be taking a 100 seconds all of a sudden because
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it's running at a slower speed. Usually, the problem isn't caused by the network
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card itself. So, there's a few things that you can do before you go ahead and
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replace your cable. Number one, I always do this first, is take the connector and
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plug it in and pull it out a few times. This can scratch off any corrosion or
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oxidation on the connectors and can give you a better connection between the
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cable itself and the network interface card or the router. The next thing you
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can do is check your cable run. Do you have any really tight bends or any kinks
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in the cable? These can cause problems and they can make it so that your signal
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is degraded. Last thing I'd check is make sure that you're not actually
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running a cable that's too far. Maybe you have a single 100 meter cable and
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you go, "Oh, well, it's rated for 100 meters. you should be fine. What if it's
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running into a switch somewhere that has some internal cabling? What if that is
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then running another 1 m or 5 m cable that goes out to another device? That's
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where you can run into trouble with the distances. So, once you've checked all
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those things and you still aren't getting the connection you need, it might be time to replace your cable with
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something that runs a higher category or a higher quality
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internally. Hey guys, thanks for watching this episode of As Possible on
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Techquicki. If you enjoyed it, make sure you subscribe and also don't forget to
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