Rick Stevens wrote:
I wonder it the difference was that we were using all plenum rated cable? We were running between floors and through firewalls. Like you, we had 24 port rack mounted patch panels on both ends. We also had routers and a lot of patch panels for wall jacks on one end. The other end was in the server room. (About 500,000' of 4 pair CAT 5 installed.)On Mon, 2008-01-21 at 12:16 -0600, Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:Not enough coffee - Both CAT 3 and CAT 5 cable are available in different number of pairs, but 4 pair tends to be the most common in CAT 5 and CAT5e. You want to have fun, try terminating a 100 pair CAT 3 cable. At least with CAT 5, they tend to bundle each set of 5 pair in their own jacket inside the main cable. (I would rather have them bundled in 4 pair groups - I hate wasting 5 pair of a 25 pair cable when doing networking. I would rather have 5 groups of 4 pair for a 20 pair cable.)Most CAT5e 25-pair I've seen don't bundle five pairs in a separate jacket...it's just a standard 25-pair telco cable that meets 5e specs (and I've even seen CAT6 versions of the same cable). I've used the 5e stuff a BUNCH of times...typically to cross-connect racks using 24-port patch panels. Each panel requires four 25-pair cables and you sacrifice a single pair per 25-pair cable. I've pushed gigabit across it with no problems--I've even pushed 10GB across it with a bit less success (haven't tried the CAT6 version, but I don't design data centers much anymore).
Mikkel -- Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy and taste good with Ketchup!
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