Can You Do 10 Gigabit Over Regular Cat 5e Ethernet? (The Results Will Shock You)

Do you REALLY need to upgrade your cabling to get 10 Gigabit LAN?
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I recently bought a bunch of Cat 6 cabling and tools to rewire my place with 10 gigabit. But soon discovered that would be impossible, and I would have to live with the existing Cat 5e. But would that be good enough? Both Cat 5e and Cat 6 use the same RJ45 connector and cable pairs, they are just constructed differently. So how fast CAN you get with Cat 5e, and would it still allow me to get multiple-gigabit speeds without doing anything?
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⇨ / thiojoe
⇨ / thiojoe
⇨ / thiojoetv
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[@mraaaaaaa]

Thank you, weird Linus :)

[@adizivojevic8635]

Deformed Linus

[@DesertCookie]

Deep fake Linus.

[@vladduh3164]

what? lol

[@benjaminrash1298]

Totally choked on this video bc I thought it was Linus

[@drmiteshtrivedi]

LOLOL

[@repeatrepeatrepeat]

Cable: Cat6 10Gb PC: Gigabit Ethernet Router: 100 Meg Ethernet ISP: 5 Mbps

[@youngrp]

Outstanding setup! Hahahahahaha

[@JC.72]

human brain: 10 kbps

[@Fex.]

@@JC.72human brain understanding what's coming in: 10 bit/s

[@madezra64]

When I first started working in IT, my first job was working at a business with only dual T1 lines for their internet connection and an RV042 VPN router. SOOOOOOOOOOOO fucking slow.....

[@weareallbeingwatched4602]

Here at a venue in London, we are running 1Gb *internet* dude. If you look at what it takes to move 4k video around in realtime, you will find that you need *bundles* of 10GbE. The name for the standard ethernet plugs is RJ45.

[@archietheproto7706]

The reason for the shielding in the cable is not necessarily for outside interference, it's for reducing crosstalk between the cables inside the wire caused by electromagnetic fields generated by the current running through the wire. Running at higher frequencies (200mhz vs 750mhz) causes more cross talk, resulting in worse data integrity

[@amurtigress_mobile365]

You also have to take into consideration that such standards are also taking into consideration how much shielding is needed when a lot of such cables are squeezed into a cable canal for dozens of meters, to avoid crosstalk and have the right impedance. Basically, for a worst case scenario. At a home such worst cases almost never occur so you'd certainly have more slack with a cat 5e cable alone.

[@pegpenguin]

True, I will be adding a cable trunk of at least seven cables (for switch port replication), but ultimately it will probably end up as ten or more in the end. So I'm going with Cat 6A, shielded.

[@PoeLemic]

I like these newer type of videos where ThioJoe is honest, instead of Pranking people. Seems like he is growing up now. Also, I wish he'd done RAM to RAM, then we would know actual max speed.

[@85rx7se]

A lot depends on how well the CAT 5 was installed. No kinks, no staples, properly punched down on the wall jacks and the quality of the cable. Factory ends on the cables connecting each device are also preferred over hand crimped ends. Also your computer will have a big affect on data transfer speed. The faster the hard drive and the more RAM your computer has, the faster your data rate will be. And some Antivirus programs scan files as you copy them and that can affect your speeds.

[@juise99]

I have a 100' run of 20 year old solid copper core CAT 5 (note not even CAT 5e and yes it is from 1999), the same Asus 10g NICs, and the 8 port version of that switch (XS708E) and I get between 766 and 852 MB/s.

[@llynellyn]

Great video, I switched to 10G last month, works fine on my 5e home network at full speed. Worth noting that if you have high quality 5e (In my case Molex Powercat) it will usually be overspecified to begin with which helps your chances of having it work. By contrast you'll never get 10G using those fake fake Cat6/7 flat cables off Amazon lol.

[@Jon844W]

cat 5e can only do 5 gigabit, your cable is probably fried by now

[@Jon844W]

just upgrade to cat 6 it isn’t expensive and it actually supports 10 gigabit

[@llynellyn]

@@Jon844W Wow, how wrong can you get lol. Okay firstly you can't "fry" a cable with ethernet, it all uses the same voltage right back to the old 10 Mbit standard. Secondly when you say Cat5e can "only do" 5 Gbit what you're actually referring to is that manufacturers only certify it to do 5G at it's max distance of 100 meters, this does not mean that it can't do 10G over shorted distances, the Cat5e in my house is rated for 10G up to 45 meters and none of the cabling in my house is that long. Thirdly, rewiring a house is actually expensive, and add to that the Cat6 you recommend is only rated for 10G up to 55 meters anyway (in order to be fully compliant for 10G up to 100M you need Cat6A not Cat6). Lastly you could have learnt quite a bit of this simply from reading my original comment :P

[@Jon844W]

@@llynellyn did I ask

[@LuKyFreeS]

@@Jon844W Go away from computers and networking cause you are as dumb as a brick.

[@ContinualImprovement]

I’m already shocked so this will be interesting.

[@ThioJoe]

10 Gigabit allows you to transfer memes at warp speed

[@enhillax6731]

ThioJoe i beat you to comment

[@jstsumguy29]

What about the dankest?

[@InsaneFire10YT]

(THE YEAR IS 2050) my grandma: only 10 gigabits, lol i have 100 TERABITS

[@Nbez]

shit

[@NojusAd]

Memes are d0pe

[@srsykes]

Excellent practical approach to things. I have been an electrical engineer for over 50 years now and been involved in the creation of several IEEE/ANSI standards. A new standard definitely is sausage making. What the standard finally says is always a huge compromise among practical engineering, theoretical considerations. and commercial/marketing interests.

[@tezcanergene1750]

I worked at Teranetcs, PLX and Aquantia pioneering 10GBase-T and NBase-T. 10G will work up to ~55 meters with CAT5E and CAT6... for 100 meters you will need CAT6A or CAT7. It is the PHY layer and regardless of the cable, if you get a link it will run at line rate (10G, 5G, 2.5G, 1G, 100M). However, with bad/long cables or with many connectors (spec is up to 4) you will see the BER (bit error rate) increase. By spec you are allowed about one error every 100 seconds. But if you see that it's really rare and bad... If you want to test it hard use longer cables and wrap 6 around 1 cable all with active traffic... Makers of the spec said an analogy of the SNR (signal to noise ratio) of the worst cable length, connector model, and noise (cross talk + alien cross talk) is equivalent to trying to catch a frisby during an atomic bomb explosion. Hats of to all the engineers and companies that worked on 10GBase-T. More than half never even could get it to work.

[@DranKof]

Yeah...cat 5e and cat6 are very similar, I'm surprised they didn't make the number jump up to 6 with cat6a and make cat6 like, cat5h or something.

[@helloman1976]

You covered all the bases, thought of everything and all the information you'd want to know in order to present to us an amazing, and informative, presentation. Well done! You helped me out tremendously!

[@Lukaazas9]

He didnt even saturate 10Gbits...

[@Mitchell7790]

What you are most likely seeing here is performance within the 2.5 - 5Gbps spectrum. Cat5e and Cat6 were recently re-certified for the NBASE-T and MGBASE-T standards allowing for 2.5 Gbit/s over Cat5e and 5 Gbit/s over Cat6. Both the Asus XG-C100C network card and Netgear ProSafe XS505M switch are capable of these standards which is why you are seeing file transfers between 320 - 480Mbps. Also, remember to enable Jumbo Frames (up to 9000 MTU) if your network card, switch and NAS support it.

[@wildyato3737]

Wow it's Insane!! I want it now!!! Also I love your channel.Full of tech knowledge

[@ericlawrence9060]

Just discovered your channel. LOVE IT. Binge time!

[@Equiluxe1]

I came to the same conclusion a few years ago that it was not worth my while ripping out the cat5e in order to replace with cat6 as nothing ran fast enough to warrant it, perhaps in a graphics office with several computers sharing a switch but for the home no.

[@ACommenterOnYouTube]

Amen to that ... CAT5E is the best for the $$ and still is today. Heck streaming 2160P does not take 100M ... maybe 25M at most. But standard CAT5 you may have an issue streaming 2160P because its only rated at 10M ... My entire house is CAT5E, even out to my shed about 150 FT away is CAT5E ...

[@PaulFerzoco]

Nice! Very sensible real-world testing. Most of my RAW files are 90MB+ and I could really use the added speed.

[@Steamrick]

Nice experiment :) If I was getting cabling done for anywhere I might want to live in, I'd still get Cat 7 cables laid just to be thorough. It's not *that* much more expensive and might save me a lot of frustration in the future, especially when we move beyond 10Gbit.

[@PoeLemic]

Be quite a while before you get over 10Gbit. And, need for it will be very small.

[@rising_fredo_pixel]

How hard are those cat 7 to bend?

[@HaysClark]

@ThioJoe, thanks for posting and sharing this. Of all the tech stuff I have purchased over the last 15 years of my life, my NAS and my 1Gigabit Switch are the oldest and arguably best tech investments I made when I was younger, but in 20/20 hindsight, I rarely pushed my network to its max 1Gigabit speed. My advice to you is to save your money.

[@theone378]

Great video Thio!

[@malcolmrains2426]

When is linus coming over to give you 100000TB of storage?

[@TimVK]

Very informative, I was looking at doing 10 gig for a future home server project, now it's looking more enticing.

[@TheDplo]

Thanks a lot for this information on real-world testing of this! Boosting my confidence on the (overkill) wiring i'm installing today. In fact i'm half surprised about that, as when we installed into a flat, i looked at the installed cabling, well, wired as telephony only (only the center pair connected, no big deal rewiring correctly the wall sockets with all 4 pairs and adding a proper patch panel at the network center), and cables are PTT298 (an old french standard somewhat between Cat3 and Cat5). While i first envisioned replacing all cabling with at least Cat5E (well, i replaced one line that was partly cut about 3 meters in the sheath -1 pair damaged- as a result of botched job by some tenement builder's contractor, so put Cat5E instead by the way), all cable runs were about 15m max, and according to some internet forums many saying gigabit ethernet runs fine on this cabling up to about 25m. Tested it and works flawlessly. While at the meantime in a family house i'm running mixed categories (our smallest standard sheath diameter here allows either 3 x Cat5E or 1 Cat6/6A + 1 Cat5E): Cat5E + Cat6, 6A for the most important nodes, well, for now they all handle 1G, and some theoretically will handle 10G, but it looks that they'll probably be able to handle 10G each (25m max) and maybe the 6A's have some extra margin for handling future standards like 25G, maybe 40G though i wouldn't bet too much (lol, at least i can say those are cabled once for my whole lifetime, internet access in this rural house is only 25Mb dn/18 up, so no much need except faster NAS access) ) Looking at 6/6A's the pair separator and/or individual shielding, while being much more cumbersome while wiring cables, is probably a very good addition to counter crosstalk, but just seems like it's not yet mandatory, and as Ethernet standards were initially business-oriented i suppose they kept large margins to guarantee consistent reliable performance in any situation so as a side effect us home power-users can benefit by pushing the limits on decently installed short-runs. About benchmarking the actual performance of your network, to abstract SSD/HDD speed limit (and getting even more awesome raw figures :), you should test with tools like NTttcp or iperf which transfers network data directly to/from RAM.

[@Pryside]

results shocked me

[@ThioJoe]

THAT'S WHAT I SAID

[@andreas5458]

Als ob du auch hier 😂👍

[@VulgarPhil]

Awsm vid Thio. Pls keep doing more. And thx for the tips btw dude rly appreciate it!

[@esra_erimez]

This was really very good. You covered all the bases here. Well done.

[@ShinyTechThings]

The reason some switches only have 1-2 SFP+ ports is to uplink to another switch.

[@FlumenSanctiViti]

3 years later and I'm still shocked by the results!

[@doublesmash]

Your video exactly covered my question, because I get 10Gbit connection from my ISP and (probably) Cat5e ethernet in my walls.

[@7wingsaseagles89]

I do structured cable for a living I install a lot of network cable however I do it in commercial and Industrial applications. Ethernet is 300 feet with patch cords 328 ft. Most people forget about that part so if you're not using patch cords you can exceed that 300 ft. limit up to 328 ft. Also keep in mind that one thing that may have affected the test on the 5e cabling in the walls is the jacks and Patch panels whenever you're using a RJ45 connector and a jack and Patch cords you will have more loss due to the connection points then. simply using a cat 6 patch cord made of solid wire makes a difference. because most patch cords you bye are made from Stranded cable which actually has a higher amount of loss than solid wire but are more suitable for patch cords because they are more flexible in the wire is less likely to break. One thing that may help is by replacing the jacks and Patch panels and Patch cords with Cat6 components and leaving the wire in the walls. Some manufacturers have cable that will exceed those limits there's a company called ber-tek that makes a Cat6 cable that has a maximum length of 344 ft. With a maximum overall length of 372 ft. This is a expensive high-end cable. Also most people do not realize there are different grades of Cat6 in the industry. The main application for Cat6 cabling is poe. The gauge of the wire is a half a gauge larger then 5e or 23 in a half. 5e is 23 gauge wire. Cat 3 wire which is regular phone UTP cable is 24 gauge So it can carry more power. They will soon be approving if they have not already 60 in 100 watt power over ethernet. Imagine being able to charge your laptop simply using the ethernet port. The main problem with running 10 gigabit over 5e cable or Cat6 cable is what we in the industry call alien crosstalk. Which occurs when you have a large number of cables that come together at a point and run for a distance together that are all different lengths which creates amplitude differences which can create interference from an adjacent cable due to amplitude differences. So to fix this problem there is a cable called cat6a which will allow for 10 gig up to 300 feet with cat6a patch cords 328 ft. And if you're not exceeding these long distances and do not have a lot of cabling in your house you will probably be okay with a 5e cabling or a 6 cable. Which the test have pretty much showing that you've done Because alien crosstalk occurs under certain conditions that usually do not happen with a small number of cables that are relatively short in length. One other thing to keep in mind 10 base t 100 base t 1000 base t or 10g base T are methods of transmitting across ethernet and they operate within certain parameters which means it doesn't matter if you're using the full capacity or not the cable has to be Suited for the standard you're trying to send across it.

[@AmyraCarter]

Useful info for the future...merci beaucoup Joe.

[@nednl788]

very interesting video ThioJoe, Happy New Year to you :)

[@CrazyCamRR]

remember when this guy used to title his videos "HOW TO TURN YOUR PS3 INTO A PS4!!" lmfaoooo

[@sistemas6854]

I did some speed tests today, I'm doing 1GByte/sec transfer speed (10Gbps) from Nvme to Nvme through a "Mikrotik RJ45 10GB Switch" using 10 years old Cat 5e cables. So there is no way I'll be buying expensive Cat6 cables in a near future. Thanks for the video!

[@dfortaeGameReviews]

Nice video. Would you be willing to re-test the full speeds using a RAM drive on 2 different systems? It would be cool to see the maximum potential.

[@techcrispz6470]

Hey, you made impossible quite possible. By the way, can you make a video on Synology NAS describing about its different editions and features.

[@c0re76]

Good job Joe. This is absolutely correct, CAT 5e is a common practice in enterprise data centers using short runs with 10GbE. I know of thousands of servers across the globe running 10gig on 5e. Now there are several other reasons why you wouldn't want to use 10gig copper (like cost when to look at the entire stack including power consumption and latency) but Joe is correct 10gig on 5e is a viable option for short runs.

[@redxroberts]

okay so if you having issues getting to wires that are ran through a wall the best way to change out a wire is to to take the existing wire thats in the wall attach one end to to a end of what you are trying to replace it with something like tape then from the other end of the ran wire just pull it through till you get to the change over of cables. tbh when wiring a house if i see pre existing ran wires its like Christmas for me because it makes things so so easy

[@thebandit1324]

Sfp+ is actually a lot more common because they draw less power so in huge data centres that all adds up. Also the reason why spf+ cards are slightly cheaper than there 10gbaset counterparts. Just because something isn’t common to you doesn’t mean it’s less common. 👍🏽

[@mrteausaable]

What is the connection from your Synology NAS to the Switch? Do you get additional card for the NAS to get 10G cat-6?

[@chuuni6924]

You should have tested network performance, like packet loss, while the transfers were ongoing. 400 MB/s is cool and all, but if it causes 10% packet loss on other, simultaneous traffic on Cat.5e, then Cat.6 would still be totally worth installing.

[@rising_fredo_pixel]

Actually I expected these results. The network cables doesn't have active components (on the other hand the SFP one does, i think), they're just copper wires, so they don't have something like a speed limiter according each CAT Great vid!

[@YonatanAvhar]

My house is so old it doesn't even have Ethernet in the walls, just 240 volt power

[@YonatanAvhar]

And my isp only provides my area with 40 Mbps

[@ilaneanisaliane1898]

Kryštof Píštěk i get 4

[@keshav_c17]

I get 8 mbps

[@Mareepu]

I get 120 volts and ~25 mbps.

[@repeatrepeatrepeat]

Ilane Tech Reviews I get 4 mbps

[@bannereddivpool]

If you run shielded cat5x and shielded 6x you'll notice they're identical in speed transfers. Cat6/7 is very hard to work with and a lot of bulk cable comes with a nylon/plastic cross-hammock so you don't stretch the pairs in the field. Try crimping those things down a few times!

[@TheDplo]

In our family house i ran mixed cabling (Cat5E and Cat6A), i can confirm the latter is much more pain in the *ss installing as bulky, very rigid and higher turn radius, takes about double time both for passing the cables into the sheaths and crimping the keystones terminations at the wall sockets and patch panel.

[@UNBOXINgdude]

nice video i like it

[@66thething]

Tip for anyone installing cables. Always install the best cables you can at the time. I wouldn't go any less than cat 6a at this point. I have now even installed my first fiber cable at home as you never know whats coming next. Also, in the past I have had no trouble with second hand server grade 10 gig Intel NICs. You may need to play with the drivers more but you may get them cheaper or even a 2 port one.

[@mrmotofy]

Or just run conduit through inaccessible walls\areas

[@seanb3226]

Hey, Joe! Hope you're having a great day.

[@KevinBenecke]

Here's something to think about. Interference can be a problem in older homes. If your wiring internet into your home, just bite the bullet and put in the best Ethernet cable of the time. Right now in 2020 cat7 is the best you can get. Maybe in the future we'll have cat8 or even cat10. But if you don't want to spend the money for the best, one thing to consider is the age of your home. If your house was built in the 50's or 60's, the house wiring can cause problems if it's still using older electrical wiring since grounding wasn't always required and especially if your home still uses that old knob and tube wiring. The Ethernet cables with the better shielding might be best. My house was built in 1916 and had electric added later on. I use the better shielded Ethernet cables because of this. If your in a newer home, electrical interference might not be as bad.

[@AtotehZ]

This is exactly what I wanted to know. I just renovated my house, pulling cable everywhere and now, a few months later I'm sitting with a 10Gbit capable computer. It'll be a while till I use more than Gigabit because of the router, but I actually am getting 600/600mbit net soon. This means Gigabit wouldn't quite cut it even if I got a new router.

[@rushbayou5230]

5:22 "current wiring..." lol... i laugh every time ...

[@TheStigma]

any 8-wire TP cable can do any speed - it just depends on how short the distance or how high the construction quality. So yea - cat 5e can work ok for shorter distances of 10Gbit. Of important note - you don't need a router (the most expensive part of any 10Gbit setup) if all you need is a fast link between your NAS and your main computer. It works fine to direct-link 2 computers. (adding an override to the hosts file in windows may be needed to force the 10Gbit link to be favored for the NAS-PC route rather than your regular 1Gbit connection if that also connects to your NAS) using SFP+ network cards secondhand from ebay you can get away with paying very little for the whole setup - depending on the cable length you need it can be cheaper than a single RJ-45 ethernet NIC. I'm not saying I necessarily recommend this for most users, but for true nerds on a budget? sure...

[@williammuff5485]

I can't believe people are dissing this guy? He's just pointing out that likely the hardware is the limit (outside of the network).

[@ho77iday]

Make sure your 5e has all 4 pairs before you get mad at Joe for your contractor being cheap.

[@ACommenterOnYouTube]

why would it NOT have all 4 pairs ..??

[@ho77iday]

@@ACommenterOnKZbin Since it only uses 2 pairs there are some shit companies that make it with just the 2. People try and save a buck on it not understanding how important the 2 dead sets are for insulation

[@ACommenterOnYouTube]

1st off the 2 dead pairs are NOT for insulation because you cant insulate 2 pairs with 2 other pairs when they are twisted in the same fashion. It does not work that way. The only way to insulate those 2 pairs is to put a shield around the bundle of 2 pairs just as how CAT6A is done. Those extra 2 pairs were put for 3 reasons: 1 was to future proof for GigaBit transmission (even though Gigabit still works on 2 pairs) 2 they were also put there so that you could get 2 internet lines on the same cable. 3 they were put there for POE, 2 pairs for the data and the other 2 pairs were put there to carry the power to the camera So if you think those other 2 pairs were put there to provide insulation, i would like to see HOW that is possible ... UNLESS ... the plan was insulation and it FAILED (expected to happen) so they came out with CAT6A which had actual insulation which WORKS ...

[@ho77iday]

@@ACommenterOnKZbin "Noise" insulation. And no it doesn't really work.

[@dixonbg]

You are using multigig switch with multigig NIC over cat5e which is the whole purpose of 802.3bz standard. The 2006 standard 802.3an require higher rates cables and plugs. Are you sure you are not connected at 5gbps over the cat5e cables?

[@zigafide]

The results shocked me

[@wildyato3737]

Zigafide Me too

[@marioz5796]

Zigafide pp

[@marioz5796]

Ok LL LL LLknb on pk to p

[@marioz5796]

Ok LL LL LLknb on pk to p

[@marioz5796]

I'm just I'll like know

[@BH-BH]

You probably just saved me a pretty penny- thank you!

[@1nikolas]

I'm shocked.. And it's your fault

[@Dominus_Potatus]

Now it is informative and practical. I like this kind of video

[@danphilpott6302]

The connection hardware (jacks and keystones) vary wildly in quality and cost. I would suggest that would have an impact also. Great video

[@Fishinwithashotgun]

Amazing video. Nice job.

[@user-ot9jv9yh1x]

thanks, I actually tried this and it worked. I just got 9gbps internet and my place is wired with cat5e, I was about to rewire my office with cat8 but decided to test it. Im able to get full 10gbps down/up very consistent. Im guessing the cable is only about 60-80ft long, I also compared it to cat8, and its exactly the same performance.

[@maybachlover1591]

Ethernet is a communication standard not a connector type. Your SFP+ cable and your traditional networking cables are both use the Ethernet standard. The traditional "phone jack" style connector is called RJ45 (registered jack 45) in contrast to the SFP+ connector. Generally, I like what you are doing. You spread knowledge and interest in technology to a younger generation. Please take the time to understand the concepts and technologies before teaching them to others. I have several other gripes like your use of "router" as an umbrella term.

[@JivanPal]

You mean 8P8C? RJ45 has a tab that keys it.

[@123456iambelial]

I agree with you. LTP does the same thing.

[@jejeroy]

no traditional phone line is RJ11

[@daimientaylor3108]

Did you really just call a Phone Jack RJ45.....

[@jakubtrzebiatowski5308]

Phone jack is rj 11.

[@jamesearl2062]

Thanks for the video man. Also, I appreciate that your channel doesn't have the subscriber base and budget to spend $1000+ on the hardware needed to have 2 or more devices capable of >10 Gigabits (1.125 Gigabytes) per second, but it would've been nice if you had atleast 2 devices that were capable of fully saturating that 10 Gigabit switch thereby allowing you to determine the real speed difference between a fully saturated Cat5e and Cat6.

[@TheDplo]

For testing the raw network performance excluding storage devices limitations, there are some tools like iperf or ttcp that transfers data to/from network directly from RAM

[@QeQ5]

Sometimes I just ignore ThioJoe notifications because I need to prepare for the greatness!

[@kenlogsdon7095]

I suggest a remake, taking the storage devices out of the picture. Try using Lanbench or iPerf for a realistic evaluation of network link speeds. No need to cloud the issue with disk drive limitations which are going to be the same regardless even if they're in the same box.

[@rogerhonacki5610]

But... there are non-standard and other things you can try if you have Cat5e to get you there. Most people say 45 feet is the maximum distance, but it depends on the quality of the Cat5e and the power at each end. Old Cat5e may be limited to 10m or even much less. For a while there were some Cat5e cables that were rated at higher frequencies and those may work fine at longer distances. If your house has Cat5e, and it connects but is slow because of dropped packets, rather than tear holes in your house or apartment, you could try shortening the cables as much as possible and use shielded connectors on the ends. This might also buy you a little more distance, and is relatively cheap. Then on the little more expensive side, you could try a 5 port switch at one or each end of the cable with high power active SFP+ transceivers. So here are some 10gbit considerations I have run into. I had a home router with a 10Gbit SFP port that had a limited spec to low power SFP+ direct attach or optical transceivers and would overheat with active SFP+ 10Gbase-t transceivers. So I used a passive direct attach cable for 3 feet and took it to a switch designed for active SFP (I used Mikrotik CRS-305’s, $140), then connected the active ports through 10gbase-t RJ-45 ethernet, since the Synology didn’t have SFP+. I noted the standard 10Gbase-t ports on the Synology didn’t get anywhere near as hot as SFP+ 10Gbqse-t transceivers. You can theoretically go 33 feet with passive direct-attach. The active SFP+ transceivers for 10Gbase-T get very hot to the touch, and the switches are heat-sink’d to an aluminum chassis so they get very warm.. For really long distances > 328 feet with cat6a, you can use optical transceivers, which have lower latency, or if going into more Cat5e cable after a long run, you may need another switch to use as a repeater which can boost the signal again (you will need a power connection for each switch). With each switch, you (theoretically) gain an additional 328 feet with Cat 6 cable. Your mileage will definitely vary using Cat5e this way, but you may gain an additional 50 feet (or more) this way if the S/N is acceptable.

[@thepoliticalstartrek]

Cat 5e can run 10Gb at up to 10 meters about 30 ft. Problem with it is cost of a switch is high. If you are doing a true SAN you can get a fiber connection card and if under 9 meters fiber you do not need the extra connectors. You are actually negotiated at 10Gbs, but your actual transfers are around 6 to 8Gb. At 40 meters you will not get consistant transfers at 10Gb.

[@jonah290]

Thio! This is brilliant you’re proving what I suspected but never got round to personally test out. I have been installing structured cables such as CAT5e, CAT6 and CAT6a for 20+ years and this just confirms what I have suspected all along. CAT5e is still capable providing the cable length is not too great. That the bottleneck is hardly ever going to be the CAT5E, CAT6 or CAT6a it’s going to be the network cards, switches, read/write speeds of drives and usb connections etc. Thanks for the upload. Just out of interest have you tried this test using greater cable lengths than 15m for CAT5E and CAT6? It would be interesting to know at what distance the speed starts to really drop off.

[@MrJerryjam]

Good to know. I have not purchased any 10Gig hardware yet and my older NAS equipment is powered off for several years now. I have been running my LAN since Cat5 was the new tech and before 1gig the norm. I built out LAN IN A STAR configuration and have added more managed and un-managed switches using them as hubs. Everything works great so I wonder if considering 10Gig is even worth the expense and effort. My only issue is with 5gig wireless occasional buffering of video (at outer edges of distance limits). Question: Is it possible to put a router behind a managed switch in a location about 100' from the cable modem and still let the router function properly? I ask this because my cable company installed a MOCA in front of my cable modem and ran a length of Cat5 to my router. He did this to get two TIVO Mini receivers to function better over my old Coax6. He disconnected the Cat5 connector from the control TIVO DVR after he had isolated all three TIVO devices and then installed a four set coax splitter and connected the fourth splitter port to the remaining (existing) coax runs. My network scanning software showed the three tivo devices assigned to the among the first twenty devices. I set the router to static ip addresses for the three tivo devices and had no more tivo problems for over two years now. The coax cable from the wall is attached to the input port of the MOCA and the MOCA output port is attached to the input port of the cable modem. The Cat5 wire from the MOCA is attached to the router and the Cat5 port of the cable modem is empty.??

[@tomishamoore2796]

Love your videos. Can you do a video on computer repairs or trusted companies that do remote repairs.

[@mnash3]

Cool vid...I think your video is great for us content creators. Microsoft just told me that my computer is too old to upgrade to Windows 11. I also I have ran out of space using internal.and external har drives. The craze for buying a new NAS is....wait for it. Wait for it....10gbe! As content creators, even beyond just doing backups, we transfer large files especially video files. And with high resolution still cameras in the megapixel world, a thousand photos in raw format....those files add up in size quickly. Some may ask....what does my rambling have to do with the video? I read a number of the comments and the tech guyz and data center guys were putting out flaws in the testing. That's cool that they wanted to see u improve the video. For me, however, the video was perfect! I had just finished watching a bunch of videos that talked about the only way to get 10gbe is to rip out the wiring in my walls and buy all of this fancy stuff. Of course, I was thinking....Nawl...I'm good. But it lead me to some questions.... 1. Do I really need to rewire my home for this 10gbe thing. 2. Could my existing cables work? 3. What is even needed to get setup for 10gbe? 4. Do I really need a switch? 5. Does my computer need a 10gbe card? 6. What about if my cable provider does not even provide 10gbe? 7. Will this work with a NAS? 8. How many 10gbe ports that I need? So far, I have seen some routers and switches with just one 10gbe port. That does not make sense. I can go on, buuuuuuut my only point was to say....Thank u, thank u, thank u! Thank u for doing the video as my thought was simply if I did spend the money for the 10gbe would it at least be faster than 1gbe ports that I have so I can simply move really large files i a reasonable time frame. Your video answered that and then some! And as for the technology as a whole? It seemed like it was just enough information in the video for me to say that it is a rabbit hole kr better yet, a money pit. I could throw a bazillion dollars at this problem and still not likely to get what I need. I will end with this... At some point, I might need to upgrade my router...When that happens, Netgear has a router with a 10gbe port. My logic....Get a Netgear Nighthawk with 2 10gbe ports, a Synology NAS with a 10gbe port, and it would be nice if the future Dell XPS computers came with built-in 10gbe ports in addition to thunderbolt 4 and usb 4.0 with some traditional type A usb ports. Annnnnd looks like my upgrade with existing wires to 10gbe would be complete. In either case, nice work and thanks again for sharing your experience.

[@Austin-xu4wc]

Can you do a QnA please?

[@Gichie79]

1 gigabit for home use is by far more than enough for a long time to come. With 1 gigabit you can do 40 simultaneous streams of 4K video or 10 of 8K video. Basically a consumer in home doesn't need more. 10 Gigabit is pointless in home unless you're a professional editing tons of uncompressed 4K or 8K video and transferring the files back and forth between your NAS or server. Also it's unlikely any ISP will offer 10 gigabit or 40 gigabit in residential areas in the next 20 years.

[@Krookymonster]

I successfully have 1Gb speeds over cat5 non E cable at a distance of 30-40ft. Will be trying 10Gb soon.

[@realrender]

HI, did you repeat this test using Nvme? Thanks for this and all your videos!!

[@chrispatel1755]

Hey man I love ur vids

[@utubestalker.dotcom]

Sometimes it is hard for me to take ThioJoe seriously, because I remember when a lot of his videos were mainly prank vids without noting that they were joke videos (since then he now notes in their titles that they are jokes). I watch his serious videos and wonder if he is pranking us or being truthful. See Thio what you have done to your long time viewers.. made us question your value every time we watch you. Your channel reminds me of the boy who cried wolf story. Although, I appreciate this serious video on Cat 5 and 10gbps speeds..

[@jetfuelboy]

Hi Thiojoe What type of microphone system do you use to record your videos. It sounds fantastic

[@gregorya6250]

Use a program called soft perfect ram disk it treats your ram like a temporary hard disk so you can get the full potential of your 10 gb/s speed

[@ZetaDragon24]

I find it very interesting and informative

[@thebridge7838]

...thanks for this! 👍🏻

[@hb2998]

I don’t generally comment on videos but here we go..... I upgraded my 75ft Cat5e to Cat7 and I am now getting my money’s worth with the gigabit internet. 80mbps went to 750mbps with a $35 cable. My 2 cents. Just buy the cable and run it if ur able to. Probably don’t need cat 7... but the price was similar to cat6 so I went with it.

[@lmaoroflcopter]

Yes. Short runs only (in cabinet patching in my case). It worked fine. I have done 10gbit runs in a DC using cat5e. Cat5e costs pence and any numpty with a punch down tool and a crimp can terminate it. Fiber costs a fortune, is a pita to terminate without faff and requires actual network engineers to do so.

[@ShinyTechThings]

Sounds like you are using a SATA SSD, not NVMe

[@Joeteck]

Do you have a cable length meter? How long were your runs?

[@schembo2000]

Cool test! Did you try re crimping your patch cables with shielded ends?

[@marcink6879]

By the title I was wondering if that would be one of your classic troll videos

[@System0Error0Message]

SFP+ is actually cheaper 10 Gbe if below 5 meters. For my case, my router has 2 SFP+ ports, 8Gbe ports (36 CPU cores) $1000 (capable of 10+Gb/s symmetrical internet with QoS, firewall, VPN, etc), managed SFP+ 16 port switch $400, Direct SFP+ cables $15 each, Used mellanox SFP+cards $25-$30 The problem with cables, some manufacturers have very good quality that cat5e can support 10Gb/s within a few meters, while many out there dont even conform to their said standards.

[@ThaSatelliteGuy]

I agree with you that you can probably get higher speeds than rated at shorter runs. However, there IS more difference from CAT5 to CAT6 than shielding. The CAT6 copper conductors are larger than the CAT5. If I remember correctly, CAT5 is AWG24 and CAT6 is AWG22. This means better conductivity properties.

[@stevesether]

This isn't completely surprising. Ethernet has something like a 10^-13 error rate. I _think_ this means that, on average, you'll only get a single bit error when sending around a terabyte of data. So everything is very highly engineered to produce these very low error rates, and thus the length limitations and need for better cable becomes important. Using wire that's not up to spec likely just means you'll increase the error rate above 10^-13. For a home environment, that's likely fine in most cases. Depending on how _much_ this increases, you could get some increased latency, and jitter when you have to re-transmit packets though. This could be anywhere from significantly noticeable, to practically immeasurable and you'd never notice. It's be interesting to see information from your raw ethernet card interface about how many errors it detected, and had to re-transmit. Ethernet has error detection built into the protocol, so errors shoud be detected at the physical interface level.

[@Cr4z33_YT]

I can confirm that I can reach the 10 Gb/s in my CAT.5E wired LAN. Good quality, S/FTP and 100% copper made.

[@xmg5688]

One time I used old phone line in the wall for 100 Mbps. Just connect the yellow red black blue to Ethernet jack. Now I use care 6 with a 1 gig network.

[@daveyboygee]

Hey, thanks for running this test of equipment and creating the review! One correction though. At 7:55 you said the Cat 6 was running at 400 MBps and you said that was equal to 3.2 GBps which it is not. 400MBps = 0.4 GBps.

[@JoeBlac]

No correction needed. He said, "400 megabytes per second, that's about 3.2 gigabit". '8 bits to a byte': 400 megabytes = 3,200 megabits = 3.2 gigabits

[@nightmarenova6748]

Double your net speed ?? Triple??? QUAD??? Yet we are blessed with another one 😍

[@mikerhinos]

What's your shooting gear ? It really looks awesome :)

[@goosemeister4507]

Have you tried taping the cat6 cable to the old one and then pull it through the wall or would`nt that work?

[@developerpranav]

Great video as always! I just put 10G CAT 6 all over my house. Hopefully was worth the drilling noises :)

[@Jeromesg123]

i have a question if i have a 2gigabit internet download speed do i need a 10gigabit lan port? or my regular 1gigabit lan from motherboard is enough?

[@jaimeduncan6167]

Great practical video. A detail :Ethernet is not a cable , it’s a protocol. The SFP uses Ethernet and in your case , it seems to me, an RJ connection. .