Cabling for Catalyst 2950T 1GHz port

[y2kmvs]

Hi,

The documentation for the 2950T switch only mentions CAT5 cabling - which is only rated to 100MHz. CAT5e is rated to 350MHz and so is a better option than CAT5. I assume that CAT5e will work with 2950Ts since it is well specified technology. I have read that the spec for CAT6 (which is rated for between 55MHz and 1GHz) isnt even final and so am not sure whether cabling from any specific vendor will work with my 2950T. Are there any recommendations for high speed cabling that will work for sure with my switch? Any specific vendor I should look at? Or should I stick to CAT5e?

Thanks,

Kenneth

[konigl]

Cat5e will serve you fine for 1000Base-T, out to 100m. The standard calls for Cat5 compliance, and all four pairs are used vs. only two pairs for 100Base-TX and 10Base-T. Anything better than Cat5 is just future-proofing...

The networking gods worked it out that 1000Base-T had to run over Cat5 as a minimum because there's an awful lot of Cat5 cable out there in the walls right now. They decided that they didn't want to make everyone re-pull cable yet again (as happened when Fast Ethernet was introduced, and everyone had to junk their old Cat3 10-meg Ethernet or Cat4 16-meg Token Ring cable plants and move to Cat5).