CAT 6 telephone connection

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geegee

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What is the difference between CAT 6 and a standard telephone socket? I know of someone who has requested this for a new house. Is it anything to do with bandwidth? I was reading recently that 521kb bandwidth is paltry compared to other European countries so would CAT 6 be required for a future increase in bandwidth?
 
As far as I know it's only required for 10Gbps :eek ethernet and is only required in rare situations. [broken link removed] and others on the same site are worth checking out.
Although currently manufactured CAT5 cable should work just fine for 1000Base-T installations, think of using CAT5e as buying insurance against bandwidth problems. If you're on the fence, price out using both CAT5 and CAT5e for your installation, and let your pocketbook be your guide!

One thing you shouldn't buy into, however, is any recommendation that tells you to use CAT6 for a gigabit Ethernet installation. CAT6 was added to the TIA-568 standard in June 2002 and has a 200MHz bandwidth. Despite the fact that vendors would love to sell you their pricier CAT6 wares, you should only consider it if you're going to be running 10Gigabit Ethernet over copper, which frankly any small networker is going to be extremely unlikely to do! And pitches for CAT7 cable? Fuggedaboutit!
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A standard telephone socket will be an RJ11 or RJ12 ( 4 or 6 way )

I am thinking that you will only find cat 6 sockets in 8 way ( RJ45 )

Of course from a high frequency point of view a CAT 6 socket is a much nicer place for an electron to be than a plain old telephone socket.

Does he want his outlet for voice or data or both ?

Is it for a LAN or ADSL ?
 
I am thinking that you will only find cat 6 sockets in 8 way ( RJ45 )

But aren't RJ11 (e.g. telephone) plugs physically compatible with RJ45 (e.g. ethernet/patch panel) sockets even though the former are smaller?
 
As far as I know it's only required for 10Gbps ethernet and is only required in rare situations.
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yes, but is this not the future standard and would it not be a good idea to future proof your connection?

Is it for a LAN or ADSL ?
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ADSL.

For a broadband user is it worth the extra expense to have CAT 6 installed?
 
yes, but is this not the future standard and would it not be a good idea to future proof your connection?

Tom's Networking/Hardware is a very reputable site and I would be guided by what he says on the matter above. If proper ducting is installed it should be easy/cheap to install alternative cabling in the future if necessary.

For a broadband user is it worth the extra expense to have CAT 6 installed?

Not for the sort of broadband that's available right now or the sort that will be available for the next few years in my opinion. Remember that even around the world broadband is still only in the tens of Mbps at it's very best so having 100Mbps/1Gbps/10Gbps+ speeds on your home LAN is not going to help make things run faster as far as the connection to the outside world goes and is simply overkill unless you have some good reason for having such a fast LAN. In the vast majority of home and office setups 10/100Mbps wired or 54Mbps wireless networking is more than enough and should be for a long time to come.
 
In the vast majority of home and office setups 10/100Mbps wired or 54Mbps wireless networking is more than enough and should be for a long time to come.
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So would a new standard telephone connection be up to this standard or would it have to be requested?
 
This is nothing to do with the telephone connection. It relates to internal LAN setup (e.g. CAT5/5e/6 for 10-100BaseT ethernet etc.).

Let's get back to the original issue - who is suggesting CAT6 and why? I suspect that there is no good reason for it but if it is backward compatible with existing voice/data technologies and the price differential versus CAT5/5e is not huge then they may as well get it.
 
"But aren't RJ11 (e.g. telephone) plugs physically compatible with RJ45 (e.g. ethernet/patch panel) sockets even though the former are smaller?"

May I suggest It is not good practice to use RJ11/12 in RJ45 sockets.
They do fit fine . but the plastic is higher than the pins and will damage the RJ45 outer connections ( pins 2and 7 for example )
If the socket is later used for Data the RJ45 plugtop will most likely have problems .
It would be best to use RJ45 plugtops to connect a device to an RJ45 socket.


Roger
 
Re: Re: CAT 6 telephone connection

Thanks for that. In our new offices we patch things at the patch panel or floor ducts using a combination of RJ11 (phones) and RJ45 (computers) cables so I guess that we should be using RJ45 connectors in all cases. You learn something new every day.
 
Cat 6 was probably specified by an architect who read about something about it and thought it was the way to go.
I believe it will be another 10 years before the technology catches up with the cable.
 
ClubMan said:
Thanks for that. In our new offices we patch things at the patch panel or floor ducts using a combination of RJ11 (phones) and RJ45 (computers) cables so I guess that we should be using RJ45 connectors in all cases. You learn something new every day.
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Yes Clubie, expect at least pins 1 & 8 on some of your rj45 sockets to be damaged by RJ11s. Pin 8 doesnt matter but pin 1 is used by 10/100/1000BaseT. If you dont want to modify your RJ11 leads you can buy short adapter leads with an RJ45 plug and an RJ11 socket
 
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