Does Ethernet Cable Length REALLY Affect Speed? (Cat6 Testing up to 10Gbps!)

[@landpet]

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[@Omar-hu5qt]

wow, you got the same results for Cat5e and Cat6

[@landpet]

Looks like it

[@BaldurNorddahl]

@@landpet just proves that cat 6 is pointless. You want cat 6a if you are going for an upgrade to cat 5e.

[@dave24-73]

Unless you have lots of cables side by side I’m not surprised, I used Cat5e in my house and always got high speeds that match the equipment. I’d say as you introduce more noise it may make a difference, but for an average person 5e is good enough for most jobs That’s why coiled vs uncoiled is likely making a difference more noise.

[@chinesepopsongs00]

@@BaldurNorddahl true because the supported length for CAT6a is 100m at 10Gbit and for CAT6 it is 37-55m. He got lucky that he got CAT5e working with 10Gbit at 30m. Most runs work almost 100% of the time upto 25m above that it is becoming a gamble. Still proves that if you have really short cables you are fine with CAT5e. Also the true spec considers the total length to be 3 cables. Being patch cable to patchblock or wall socket then long cable run patchblock or wall socket and patch cable again. The 2 extra connection points have some losses as well so because he tested the 30m CAT5e direct might be why he got a bit longer run working as when used in wall runs in a building.

[@xx133]

@@landpetThe cat6 is limited by the adapter. Try the Cat6 on a 25GB adapter. 😉

[@e-man374]

These videos have given my brain something to chew on. I have 3 plex servers and a Jellyfin server. Due to the old age of my house there is a bit of distance between some of my equipment. I am slowly upgrading my network equipment as I prepare for my area to get fiber. Seeing the speeds these cables can handle at certain lengths gives me a lot of ideas on how to handle my upgrades and where I should adjust my wiring and switches. I appreciate the effort you put into this, thank you!

[@landpet]

You're welcome!

[@grasstreefarmer]

Thanks for doing all these tests and sharing it man. Its been super interesting. Edit: Oh wow, if the description of that cat6 cable is real then its better than most "cat6" patch cables that are being sold. Solid wire at the proper gauge with an internal separator. Its priced like real cat6 at least.

[@jeevana.6391]

One thing a lot of commenters seem to be missing about ethernet cables: the listed maximums that people are expecting are only with a permanant link of solid copper cabling, which can be up to 90m. The standard allows for 10m of patch cables between the 2 ends. In a proper setup, there would be a patch cable to a keystone terminal, to the permanent link, to another keystone and the final patch cable. The cables in the video are stranded wire, so they count as oatch cables, and the length needs to be derated accordingly.

[@peternjulia]

I agree. Using solid cable will reduce the attenuation of the link.

[@dono42]

It's all in the cable specification. CAT 6 only supports 10 Gbps for lengths up to 55 meters. If you want 10 Gbps at the full 100 meters you'll need CAT 6A cables.

[@JonZis2023]

YEEEESS !!!! Thanks for video, next 6A but this looks like thin patch kabel and not the 23Awg we normally use for installs

[@parawm4585]

Very interesting, thanks for making these video's so fast! It seems like the negotiated speed for the nic/cable (1/2.5/5/10gbps) is limiting the speed, and not so much physical stuff or actual resistance stuff. There's no linear reduction, it just goes to max negotiated speed in steps.

[@BaldurNorddahl]

you should get cat 6a as that is actually supposed to do full speed at 100 meters. It also should cost about the same as cat 6.

[@landpet]

I ordered cat 6a, a 250ft and a 50 ft with a coupler since I couldn't find a 300ft without getting the whole spool.

[@BaldurNorddahl]

@@landpet that should also work. The standard is 90 meters for the permanent link (patch panel at server end to outlet at the client end) plus 10 meter combined for patch cables at either end. This means it is supposed to do full speed including two couplings (patch panel + outlet).

[@Lachlan_McDougall]

@@landpetwhere are you based? I could cut a 300ft length off the drum for you.

[@Glutzie]

Just checked and cat 6 & 6e are rated fur 10 Gb @ 180ft

[@BaldurNorddahl]

@@Glutzie 6e does not exist. 6a was made specifically as an improvement to cat 6 to allow 10G at 100m (330 ft).

[@yousvellormeus]

Great video ! Thank you for sharing it with us !

[@kai_kiske]

Thank you for the video. That was very interesting.

[@landpet]

Glad you liked it!

[@veryboringname.]

Recoiling those 30, 60, and 90m cables must have been a pain! Nice results!

[@pacobacchus9118]

First of all, Thank you for your video. I like CAT 6A for my network at home longest cable is 25 meters / 80 feet. I do not care about price. In 2003, I installed a large Network for 90 computers that still is working. On that time CAT 5 cable was a cheaper option BUT I decided set up CAT 6 thinking that at least for 15 year that network will be working at more speed. But for another home MESH Network WIFI 6E & 7 to link 4 routers at dIstance around 100 feet I bought 2 cables 30 meters lenght CAT 5E for linking 2 routers with cable instead of using the WiFi interlinking feature that provide lower speed tha using cable. Today the Price of CAT 5E is 70% less than CAT 6.

[@peternjulia]

Going to a shielded Cat 6a cable will “speed” up the signal by a fraction. The Nominal Velocity of Propagation - NVP of a utp cable is around the 60% of the speed of light where as the NVP of most shielded cable is over 70%. In real terms it’s not much, but the devices may notice the improvement. We are getting into very small amounts of

[@StefanHacker]

From the Amazon links it looks like you used copper clad aluminium (CCA) cables. According to Wikipedia these cannot actually be cat 6 compliant. Supposedly the compliant pure copper ones have much better performance especially for 10gbps. If you aren't sick of cables yet maybe something for a follow up? ;) Thumbs up for putting in the effort to actually do these tests at all though. As they are the cheapest many people will get CCA cables so it isn't unrealistic.

[@kai_kiske]

Can you possibly test Cat6a cables speed with 61m and 91.4m length? Or they are very expensive? In various sources it is recommended to use Cat6a cable for 55+ meter length. Cat5e and Cat6 can handle 10Gbps only with 55m and below length.

[@landpet]

I bought a cat6a 250ft and ,50ft with a coupler so I will get them to 91m together since I couldn't find a 300ft cat6a

[@johnzach2057]

@@landpet You can buy cable without connectors. You just have to crimp the RJ45 plugs. You can buy cables even longer than 300ft.

[@Fabonikazell]

​@@landpetI suggest you contact the manufacturer AMPCOM - they allow customers to make custom cable lengths upon your request.

[@kkpdk]

This surprised me enough that I went into my lab, grabbed 85m of cat6 FTP direct burial certified-good cable, and am running 2*iperf3 @ 10Gbps.. My managed switch is happy. This is supposed to work, and does work - cat6 FTP has lower crosstalk and the PHY specification says it should work @100m. cat6 UTP @61m is tight, but should have worked with in-spec cable (the usually referenced 55m for cat6UTP is with 4 connectors in the link - here there are only 2)

[@JasonPrice1]

What is actually really wild is that most people can really only afford to go all in on 2.5gb and at that speed, any of these cables will be fine for average house sizes! The "full length" spec for these kinds of runs is 100m or 330 feet. If your house is that big, you don't care about if you have to rewire :)

[@WMCheerman]

This absolutely blows my mind

[@AshtonCoolman]

It would be neat to see this test done with 2 managed switches in between so that you can get all of the transmission metrics like errors, retransmits, etc.

[@MatchGrade08]

Last thing to check is the 100 ft cat 7 flat cable. I think they insulate them and use pure copper except at a lower 32 gauge. After that would be using it next to a microwave oven or wrapping phones with the long ones.

[@johnzach2057]

I am surprised that Cat6 couldn't do 10 gigs at 60m. I bet better quality cable would be able to achieve that. Did the cables have single stranded or multi stranded cables?

[@gulengz5643]

Thanks for the video and follow up. Really interesting. So anyone who's still stuck with 2.5G switch won't need to worry too much about their aging cables in their home. I'm so sad my condo of 5 years old only uses Cat3 cable and they actually expected us to still use a land phone at this year and age. I could have used that port for WiFi Mesh wired Backhaul if it's at least cat 5e or cat 6. :(

[@landpet]

Wow didn’t realize cat3 was even used since cat5 is very old as it is. Although I do have to say some people said cat3 can still get some speeds so you may want to try it. Wired backhaul is typically ideal.

[@Paul-qj4dr]

I assume the cable type matters the most in data centers where there are many of them running along eachother.

[@Lachlan_McDougall]

Too low voltage to worry about induced voltages between cat cables. Only matters if it was running with electrical cables.

[@Paul-qj4dr]

@Lachlan_McDougall if they are really close to eachother it will influence eachother

[@BaldurNorddahl]

@@Lachlan_McDougall there is possible cross talk between the cables. Best practice is to limit the amount of cables in a shared duct to 25 cables. If you need to run more cables, you are supposed to use multiple ducts to create separation.

[@HardcoreFury1]

Very good video, can you do the same concept to test different lengths of cat 6, but test PoE

[@woofinu]

Is there a risk of interference when an Ethernet cable is next to a power line? (not coiled Ethernet cable)

[@Cobinja]

What kind of cable is that 300ft one? s/ftp or something else?

[@peternjulia]

This is making for some interesting results. Is there someways to “force” the devices to connect at 10Gb?

[@landpet]

I logged into my switch to see if I can change it, didn’t see an option. I checked the Mac options and didn’t see anything there unless it’s a terminal command or something.

[@landpet]

I logged into my switch to see if I can change it, didn’t see an option. I checked the Mac options and didn’t see anything there unless it’s a terminal command or something.

[@CamelCasee]

You need a certifier for really test cables like this.

[@nid274]

always wanted to try this... thanks

[@landpet]

No problem

[@nekron75]

The more a networkcable is bent and physically manipulated, the lower the highest frequency it can reliably carry (so bandwidth is reduced). A new cable still rolled up is just an ideal case.

[@landpet]

That’s a good point, I still like the coiled test that’s why I did that first before uncoiling it to see if and how much of a difference it would make.

[@Fabonikazell]

Will you also do CAT7 and CAT8 as well for good measure?

[@landpet]

I will do the cat7 and cat8 longer cable test comparing the various category standards. Something similar to a Cat5E vs cat6 vs cat6a vs cat7 vs cat8 probably at 300ft (91m).

[@Fabonikazell]

@landpet That would be great!

[@MatchGrade08]

​​@@landpetyou might want to check cat 7 right where 10 gb fails for the other wires. I am going to guess wire resistance is what fails long cables. Cat 7s should be full copper and shielded but it seems the ones I see are at 32 gauge which is still thinner even though the pure copper should help. I think it would be cool if you checked 14 gauge solid copper house wire but that might be a little difficult and you would need quite a bit even if you tried at 125 ft or 100.

[@_lorenz013]

Could you do the same experiment but with self made cables ?

[@NoEgg4u]

Were the 200 ft and 300 ft cables from a different manufacturer, compared to all of the other cables that reached (or nearly reached) 10 Gb speed? Have you ever had any 200 ft or 300 ft cables, at any cat X rated speed, from any manufacturer, perform at or near 10 Gb speed?

[@landpet]

Same manufacturer from 50ft to 300ft

[@NoEgg4u]

@@landpet Have you ever had any 200 ft or 300 ft cables, at any cat X rated speed, from any manufacturer, perform at or near 10 Gb speed?

[@test-rj2vl]

I wonder why does uncoiling make a difference?

[@jackmcslay]

When you coil up a long length of wire you make an inductor, which can generate a lot of electromagnetic noise upon itself

[@mikespangler98]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductor "They are used to block AC while allowing DC to pass; inductors designed for this purpose are called chokes." If he put a large block of iron in the center of the coil it would absorb the entire signal.

[@AnupomAG]

Thanks

[@landpet]

no problem

[@AnupomAG]

How much do you pay for 10 gig

[@landpet]

my internet speeds are 5Gbps which is around 165 a month the 10Gbps tests are on my LAN so I had to buy a few things to make that possible but just one time costs for those

[@TheGameBench]

That was disappointing. I expected Cat6 to do better than that. It basically performed no better than the Cat5e.

[@landpet]

Seems so

[@Bhairavpardiwala]

Can you do with shielded cat 6

[@BaldurNorddahl]

shield is not going to make a difference. It is a common misconception that twisted pair need shield - it is already rejecting noise due to the feature of being twisted. It is true that shielding will reject even more noise, but only if it is terminated correctly, which it almost never is.

[@johnzach2057]

Nice that you uncoiled the 300ft cable.

[@landpet]

lol, that wasn’t too much fun :)

[@veijolalli326]

The morale of story is: if you have more than 50m cable run and need 10M you really should use os2-cables.

[@poglavicas]

Multimode fiber is a lot cheaper compared with CAT6a anyway.

[@NoInterleaving]

Why would you choose Cat6 cables when you can get Cat8 cables with speeds up to 40 Gbps? Please conduct a new test using Cat8 cables.

[@Fabonikazell]

Because CAT6 cables are much cheaper, more available, and more practical; and will still achieve the same results under the right conditions.

[@NoInterleaving]

@@Fabonikazell I can not confirn that, at amazon a cat8 cable just costs around 4-5€

[@Fabonikazell]

@@NoInterleaving Then I don't think that is a reliable/legitimate CAT8 cable.

[@BaldurNorddahl]

@@NoInterleaving speeds greater than 10G on cat cables does not exist in practice. There was a standard for it almost 10 years ago, but no chipset was made, so it is not commercially available and you can't buy any equipment that supports it. The industry went in a different direction as everyone went fiber for higher speeds. There is therefore no advantage to cat 8 but plenty of disadvantages. It is more expensive. The cables are heavy, thick and unwieldy to work with. The plugs tend to get stuck in the ports and are hard to remove. It needs to be carefully grounded correctly and very few installations do this. With incorrect grounding, the installation would not actually support higher speeds and you risk creating ground loops. The only sane choice at the end of 2024 is unshielded cat 6a. Almost as cheap as cat 5e, nice thin flexible cables and does the job just the same as the other cables.

[@ronmerkus5941]

To maintain a high-speed transfer rate , you will need a booster

[@landpet]

Yup those help especially for the super long runs

[@geoffstrickler]

Length matters…to some women. 😎 And to data cables.

[@paulwoodward8265]

This is such a bad test. Here's how this works. You send 1s and 0s down the wire. If they make it to the other end and can be correctly identified as 1s and 0s then you are all good. If not, the checksums won't match, and the packet will have to be retransmitted. The bad packet is dropped. The faster the line speed, the more chance you'll get bad packets. The longer the cable, the more chance. The lower the spec, the more chance. The more interference or cable damage, the more chance. So, you' should be looking on the switch for dropped packets. If you are using the cables "in-spec" you shouldn't see any dropped packets. Once you start to see dropped packets, you should consider a better cable, or moving a cable away from interference, or maybe a lower line speed (say 5Gbit/s). So of course, cable length matters, once you get to a length where bad packets start to happen. A few bad packets (

[@user.A9]

:o)