COMPUTER NETWORK | TOPIC 5 | SEMINAR NOTES | PAIR

Patricia Jhem M. Panganiban

Patricia Denise C. Concepcion

Exercise 1:

Research Category 5, 5e and 6 Ethernet cables and write a report giving a brief outline of each category including the frequencies used.

Cat5: A Little Older, A Little Slower

Category 5 cabling, also known as Cat5, is an older type of network cabling. Cat5 cables were made to support theoretical speeds of 10Mbps and 100Mbps. You may be able to get gigabit speeds on a Cat5 cable, particularly if the cable is shorter, but it isn't always guaranteed.

Since Cat5 is an older type of cabling, you probably won't see them very much in the store, but you may have gotten some with an older router, switch or other networking device.

Cat5 has become obsolete in recent years, due to its limitations compared to Cat5E and Cat6 cables. Although the Cat5 cable can handle up to 10/100 Mbps at a 100MHz bandwidth (which was once considered quite efficient), the newer versions of Cat cables are significantly faster.

Cat5e: Faster with Less Interference

Category 5 enhanced cabling, also known as Cat5e, is an improvement on Cat5 cabling. It was made to support 1000 Mbps "gigabit" speeds, so in theory, it's faster than Cat5. It it also cuts down on crosstalk, the interference you can sometimes get between wires inside the cable. Both of these improvements mean you're more likely to get fast, reliable speed out of Cat5e cabling compared to Cat5.

Cat5E cable (which stands for “Cat5 Enhanced”) became the standard cable about 15 years ago and offers significantly improved performance over the old Cat5 cable, including up to 10 times faster speeds and a significantly greater ability to traverse distances without being impacted by crosstalk.

Cat6: Even Faster, But Not Super Necessary

Category 6 cabling is the next step up from Cat5e and includes a few more improvements. It has even stricter specifications when it comes to interference, and its capable of 10-Gigabit speeds in some cases. You probably won't use these speeds in your home, and the extra interference improvements won't make a huge difference in regular usage, so you don't exactly need to rush out and upgrade to Cat6. Bu

t, if you're buying a new cable, you might as well, since it is an improvement over its predecessor.

Cat6 cables have been around for only a few years less than Cat5E cables. However, they have primarily been used as the backbone to networks, instead of being run to workstations themselves. The reason for this beyond cost is the fact that, while cat6 cable can handle up to 10 Gigabits of data, that bandwidth is limited to 164 feet — anything beyond that will rapidly decay to only 1 Gigabit (the same as Cat5E)

Exercise 2:

Examine the network in your college computer lab. State the type of network and physical topology used. Examine all network media and connectors in the lab. Write a brief report that gives the following detail:

a.    State the network type and physical topology

·         Local Area Network

·         Star Topology

b.    Describe each connection (e.g. computers to face plate – do not repeat each computer connected in this way) in the network including:

Device at each end of the connection

·         27 Computers

·         1 Printer

·         2 Switch

·         1 Router

Cable used (or wireless)

·         Cat 5

Connector used at each end.

·         Rj45

c.    Describes connection to any external network. For example, connection to the telecommunications closet and vertical cabling and/or connection to the internet.

·         The 27 computers inside Laboratory 6 is connected to 2 switches. It is using a star topology network.

·         The 2 switches is connected to a router

·         The router is connected to main switch

·         The main switch is connected to the server

d.    If possible, get your teacher or network administrator to show you the data transfer rates on the network and include these in your report.

PING - It measures the round-trip time for messages sent from the originating host to a destination computer that are echoed back to the source.

·         29 m/s - the lower the ping, the better

DOWNLOAD SPEED – 0.16Mbps - receiving data is slow

UPLOAD SPEED – 14.32Mbps  - sending data is fast

Reference

·         https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2013/04/ask-lh-whats-the-difference-between-cat5-cat5e-and-cat6-cables/

·         Christopher, J. (2017). Cat5 vs Cat6 Cables: What are the Differences? – FireFold Blog. [online] Firefold.com. Available at: https://www.firefold.com/blog/difference-between-cat5-vs-cat6-cables/ [Accessed 22 May 2017].

·         http://beta.speedtest.net/result/6315723373esult/6315723373