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CAT3 VS CAT5

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by john

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I have an office that has CAT3 cable running through it. If I set up a network in this office what would happen to my 10/100 network? Would I have any problems and if so what would they be? I have been told that I can only run at 10 but I don't completely understand why.

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by john

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I have tested it momentarily at 100 with just two computers and a switch and it worked just fine. I did "google" before I asked as well, I also read that article before you posted this answer, it doesn't say what would happen if I continued to run my network at 100.

by valis

basically, your network equipment should autosense the speed the network is capable of. either it will run slow, or it wont. i would just keep everything at autosense, chances are no one will even notice

by gralfus

The design of CAT3 is more conducive to cross-talk (signals from one wire jump to another causing signal scrambling). You can probably get away with some amount of 100Mb speed, but it will be subject to a lot more signal degredation and interference than you would see with CAT5 cable. You'd be better off sticking with 10Mb speeds for consistency. Or if it is worth it, and is feasable, upgrade to CAT5e.

The twists per inch of the wire pairs in CAT 5, as well as how the wires are wrapped, enables it to cancel out a lot of cross-talk and communicate at higher speeds.

by chartech

Honestly it is time to replace your CAT3 cable anyways, if you don't end up with problems now, you will in the near future when people start running 1000 instead of 100.

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