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What is the maximum and/or ideal length of an ethernet cable? Is there a distance that data cannot be transferred over an ethernet cable, say over X number of feet?

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ideal length is exactly one furlong. – bmargulies Sep 25 '10 at 21:40
As far as ideal length. The ideal length would be as long as necessary and no longer. Be it for cost, interference, cable management or latency (for all the hard core gamers out there). Excess unneeded cable can cause problems. – Scott McClenning Sep 25 '10 at 23:03
There is also a MINIMUM length, to avoid problems like reflection. I encountered this years ago, when I was doing up my house. I cn't remember the value, but I THINK a cable one foot long was not recommended! – user86822 Jun 21 '11 at 8:58
which is odd, as we've got some 10cm patch cables in our server room/switch bays. – tombull89 Jun 21 '11 at 9:36

4 Answers

up vote 6 down vote accepted

There is no ideal length of a cat 5 cable but the specification states that it should not be more than 100m (328 feet).

More info on the wiki page

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1  
True, if the cable is used for ethernet (which is very likely, of course). The maximum length of 100 meter ensures that collision detection mechanisms work as expected (and maybe also ensures the signal strength is okay?). – Arjan Sep 25 '10 at 16:23
up vote 5 down vote

The ideal length is exactly as long as you need (up to 100 meters) and no longer. Every extra 11.9 inches adds another nanosecond of extra latency.

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Below the maximum of 100 meters, every extra 11.9 inches adds another nanosecond of extra latency. Right? (For a moment I read: if you're exceeding 100 meters, you're introducing latency, which I think is wrong.) – Arjan Sep 25 '10 at 17:54
@Arjan - Now that you mention, I can see how it could be read that way. I added some parentheses that I think help clarify. – Joel Coehoorn Sep 25 '10 at 18:24
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I just swapped out my 25' cable for a 10' cable here at home. Those extra 15 nanoseconds are going to help me to be the first answerer on Stack Overflow. Thanks for the suggestion, Joel! – James McNellis Sep 25 '10 at 19:38
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sigh... No, that's not a difference anyone's going to notice. But the detail does help put the situation in context. Waste is waste, no matter where you find it. – Joel Coehoorn Sep 26 '10 at 2:27
up vote 3 down vote

Ideal: As short as possible, as isolated as possible.

Maximum: 100 meters without repeaters.

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up vote 1 down vote

To be in spec, a CAT 5 UTP cable should not exceed 100 meters. Cable can be connected with repeaters and you can get another 100 meters and so on. However, if you network is too large, then the TCP/IP packet will take so long to go from end to end computers will reach the timeout before they get a reply back. At that point other devices will have to be used to retransmit the packets, like switches/routers... I'm not sure about that distance/time before packets are considered lost.

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I truly doubt the maximum length is about timeouts. I've always learned it's to ensure proper collision detection. (Timeouts limits are much, much longer than the microseconds used for collision detection.) – Arjan Sep 25 '10 at 16:25

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