Gigabit Ethernet wiring

Question

I currently have a wired 100 mbps network in my house. The wiring runs around in every room. I was thinking of upgrading to a gigabit network, since most of my comouters and router have gigabit ports.

So my question is, do i need to change the wiring to achieve gigabit connections or is it just a matter of having gigabit ports on the devices ?

Answer 1

If you have Cat 5e wiring, you won't need to upgrade your wiring. Most installations done in the past 5 years should be ok but you'll have to examine or test your cable to know for sure.

Answer 2

If you're running 100BASE-TX in your house then you have at least Cat5 cable, which is perfectly sufficient for 1000BASE-T.

Answer 3

Depends on the wire you used and the connectors and how clean your wiring is. Gigabit most of the time uses all wire pairs - so if you wired correctly and wired all the pairs instead of just the 1-2, 3-6 pairs as some do then check the wire specs - Cat 5e or Cat 6. Next is the connectors - did you wire crimp carefully? Cat 5 100base can be a little messy, but the technical spec for Gig Cat 6 say that you can't untwist more than a quarter inch and that you must maintain the jacket and not seperate the pairs as much as possible. The jacks should be Cat6 rated and the patch cables as well.