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200 foot Cat 5e run failed, other guy swore it was fine, who's right?
I did a house in Phoenix last week where the homeowner had Cat 5e already pulled and the other installer said it was fine for gigabit. I've seen too many 200 foot runs fail at the tester because of that, so I re-pulled with Cat 6 and it passed clean. My question is, are we just being lazy or is 5e actually good enough for most homes? I know the spec says 5e can do gigabit at short distances, but I've had too many callbacks on runs over 150 feet. Has anyone else dealt with this or do you just trust the label on the box?
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alex_king1mo ago
Used to think 5e was fine for anything under 300 feet, but after enough callbacks on long runs I flipped. The spec is one thing, but real world walls, heat in Phoenix attics, and patch cables add up. That 150 foot mark is where I start seeing packet loss and slow links, every time. You're not lazy for pulling Cat 6, you're just saving yourself a second trip. The tester doesn't lie, and the customer doesn't care about your reasoning when their stream buffers. I'll take the extra few minutes pulling better cable over explaining why their "fine" run is the problem.
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