ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade Voice - Data - Video Discussion cat5 or cat3

VOIP phones often have 10megabit interfaces on them. The reason why is so that they will work over Cat3 (or twisted pair that predates Cat3 but will still work with 10baseT such as AT&T DIW).

This is the biggest issue with Cat3, IMHO...non-managed switches and ethernet interfaces that autonegotiate to 100megabit. Cat3 works just fine if you manually set the port to work at 10megabit, but that isn't an option if you've connected two non-managed switches together. In that case they'll autonegotiate to 100megabit and this may or may not work over a cat3 link (will if it's short enough).


Otherwise..the average home user isn't going to notice a speed difference between 10megabit running on cat3 and 100megabit running on cat5 (or cat5e).

... until he starts transferring files, like doing network backups.

That's not the "average home user". The average home user has no clue that they need to do backups. (Hell, the average dedicated server customer I dealt with when I did that support didn't either. "Yes, sir, hard drives are mechanical devices and they do fail, that is why you had the option of purchasing our tape backup services or making arrangements for your own backups")

The average home user doesn't make use of file sharing very often. If they have a network it's to share the internet connection (and maybe a printer) with more than one PC and that's primarily it. For those uses one would be hard pressed to tell the difference between 10mb and 100mb.

I think that is "old thinking". Now that Microsoft is pushing media servers and people are using their network for more than just connecting the broadband and printer you are going to see more complaints about network speed.

Microsoft can push, will people buy, that is the question.

My impressions of what the average home user does with their PC are based on what I've seen. I'm excluding the computer types from that category of "average home user" because they are not. Heck, the average home user is likely to be still using dialup, either because high-speed is not available or because they aren't aware of the benefits or do not feel they are worth the extra cost.

How about the popularity of the low-speed, lost cost DSL/Cable tiers that run around $20/month with 768K down/256K up? I know several people who use those plans because they don't think that $50/month for higher speed access is worth it. I don't expect those people will be getting a media server anytime soon.

I think it is how we will watch TV pretty soon

I have enough trouble getting a couple of my business clients to realize that they need to make backups.

Well, now if you consider, for example, Comcast In Demand. Who said the media server needs to be on the customer's premises?

"Back up my hard drive? There's no reverse switch!"

I really believe we will be bypassing the networks and cable content providers and getting our content directly from the internet soon. When people get used to their DVR and understand these can be directly connected to an online program guide and online content the whole idea of TV schedules will go away. My ReplayTV (1999 technology) has the capability of sending and receiving content over the internet (one reason Sonic Blue was sued out of existence). All it will take is a content provider who wants to tap that market.
Some day soon there won't be "channels" or "time slots", only a catalog of shows.