UTP Cable Wiring Nightmare
 

Hi All

I've decided to changed the Cat 5 ethernet cables at home to Cat 6, to make file sharing faster. THis is the kit i brought off ebay

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1109597300...84.m1423.l2649

When making the patch leads of around 1metre the gigabit side of things are working perfectly. However I made a lead which was 30 metres long and for some reason it is only 100mb ethernet as opposed to the gigabit that it should be.

this is the way the patch leads are wired up

http://www.beginnercode.com/wp-conte...ng_Diagram.gif

Can anybody shed some light on this, I've checked the cabling to make sure theres no cracks/dents etc and also to eliminate this further have also make a second cable of 30m and still the same 100m ethernet. The 1 metre patch lead was wired up in exactly the same way and gives out gigabit speeds.

Should i be looking into some sort of amplificaton....

Any help would be great.

Many Thanks

R

Re: UTP Cable Wiring Nightmare
 

CAT 5 & 6 are capable of Gb Ethernet speeds. Try another cable? Is the NIC capable of Gb? Is is set to run at 1Gb - check the NIC settings to make sure it's not fixed on 100Mb. What happens when you force it to 1Gb?

Re: UTP Cable Wiring Nightmare
 

I've tried another cable (shorter in length) and works fine even tried with different laptops, they all have 1GB connections. How would you force it be at 1GB?

Its just this crimped cable that i've made which is 25m+ which doesn't want to work. But the shorter cable i crimped at about 1.5m works fine at gigabit.....

Many Thanks

Re: UTP Cable Wiring Nightmare
 

NIC settings in Device Manager. Should be fine up to 100m.

Re: UTP Cable Wiring Nightmare
 

I would suspect that one of the eight cables isn't electrically connected in the socket / plug you have attached. It's very easy to get it not quite right. Presumably you have some form of cable tester?

Re: UTP Cable Wiring Nightmare
 

Rob, the op says he made a second cable of 30 metres and thats the same, so the chances of him getting it wrong twice are pretty slim (but still possible as they can be fiddly little suckers at best :))

My money is on inferior grade cable but it's just a hunch

Re: UTP Cable Wiring Nightmare
 

I've had some gigabit routers that do not always detect gig connections and revert to 100 speeds. Often simply plugging the same lead into a different port sets things correctly. Sometimes you have to reboot stuff. Bit of a black art really, But I'd want to be certain of the cables as much as the kit connected at either end.

Re: UTP Cable Wiring Nightmare
 

Good point,,, I never thought of that :D

Oddly enough on my recently modded WRT610N running Openwrt, the lan lights change colours, e.g. when I power up my PS3, the light on the lan port of the router is green yet when I switch my xbox on it is blue.

I don't know which colour symbolises gig throughput yet though.

Re: UTP Cable Wiring Nightmare
 

Thanks for all the input.

Rob:
I've tested the cables with a network cable tester and connections are fine, also plugged into several different ports on the GS108. (has lights on the switch to determine whether gigabit or 100m is being operated)

Pabscars:

My hunch is also on the cheap/inferior quality cabling, however can it really make that much difference, it is still solid 26AWG cable and even states on the houseing CAT 6e??

LSainsburys:
Can you be a bit mor specific please, as i'm a bit of a novice when it comes to tweaking network cards etc, running windows 7 pro 32bit.

Many Thanks

Re: UTP Cable Wiring Nightmare
 

Hi everyone
I have come across something like this before and it was down to external rf interference, I have to admit it was in an industrial environment though.

Re: UTP Cable Wiring Nightmare
 

It's not just the rating of the cable that is the determining factor. Length and course of the cable run and quality of the connections at each end can and do effect speed.

Each of the four pairs of a UTP cable had a different twist ratio to minimize crosstalk between pairs. Obviously to terminate the cable you have the untwist each pair in order to terminate, it's this "untwisting" thats probably causing you problems.

Short cable + bit of crosstalk = still an acceptable signal to noise ratio for 1GB speeds

longer cable + bit of crosstalk = higher signal to noise ratio, so equipment negotiates down to 100Mb(as it can work with the higher SNR)

*also as stated by MJPS, final route of the cable can also have the same effect, don't run UTP parallel to electrical cable, or even worse, over florescent lights and switch mode power supplies.

Re: UTP Cable Wiring Nightmare
 

Thanks for your replies.

MJPS:
I had the same idea too, so when making the second 30m cable it wasn't pinned against the walls but rather still in the roll, once connected to a pc, was still showing 100mb.

Jon T:
The entire cable of cat 6 is twisted tightly, but do you think by untwisting only by the clips is enough for it to drop from gb to 100mb?

Many Thanks

Re: UTP Cable Wiring Nightmare
 

Lol, cheapo mislabelled ebay fakes.

Cat6e does not exist.

Most cheap crappy cable off eBay will fail to meet Cat5 specifications beyond 20m. Buy proper cable.

---------- Post added at 03:12 ---------- Previous post was at 03:09 ----------

This.

---------- Post added at 03:13 ---------- Previous post was at 03:12 ----------

It's clearly poor if they have to make up non-existent categories and fake claims about the cable to sell it.

Cat 6 should be 22-24AWG. 26AWG is pathetic and way too small, less than half the size it's supposed to be. That cable is probably closer to category 4.

Re: UTP Cable Wiring Nightmare
 

Google shows up that cat6e does exist Qas? I wouldn't trust ebay though as you said. not even for a cat5 cable.

two links randomly picked...

http://www.ehow.com/about_6521486_sp...6e-cables.html

http://www.binbert.com/blog/2010/05/...-cat6e-cables/

Re: UTP Cable Wiring Nightmare
 

Thanks for your replies.

I think i'm going to have to report this to ebay, and try and get my money back. Its a bit anoying as i'm going to have to remove the pins out of the walls and redo it!!

This is what the cables looks like

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2013/02/23.jpg

I need about 100m in total, any recommendations as to where to purchase? needs to be uncrimped or on a roll of some sort.

Many Thanks