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    Pfsense network recommendations/questions?

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved Hardware
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    • V
      VAMike
      last edited by

      @BlueKobold:

      For POE I would just need to make sure that I am using Cat5, Cat5e or Cat6 cables correct? Was not sure if there was a difference other than throughput speed or if there was more to it than that.

      For 1 GBit/s you will need CAT.5e and if you ware willing you can also go with CAT.6(A) if you want to,

      For 1000baseT you need cat5, which is the cable the 1000baseT spec was designed for. Some additional tests were added to the cable standard and the result was cat5e. The differences mainly involve crosstalk tolerance, and had more impact on connector/punchdown assembly than the cables themselves. Most factory built cat5 cables would pass the cat5e spec but weren't tested/certified as cat5e. (Field terminated cat5 was a mess, as 100baseTX didn't push the specs as hard as 1000baseT, and only used 2 pairs like 10baseT–so some installers back in the day didn't even bother to terminate all four pairs.) In practical terms, any decent cable you buy new today will work fine at 1000baseT. You won't find any cat5 for sale in 2017, and If you're looking ahead to 10GbaseT there's no reason to buy cat5e rather than cat6 (if there's a huge price difference, find a different source.) If you already have cables, they're probably fine--just try them. If you run into problems (like the link takes a long time to come up, or won't get above 100Mbps, or starts at 1000Mbps and then steps down) it's probably the termination--but unless it's a really long run it's not worth fixing rather than tossing it.

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