# Does the length of ethernet cable effect speeds?



## MxPhenom 216 (Jul 9, 2016)

Does the length of an ethernet cable effect the speeds? Like does the throughput or whatever get reduced the longer the cable is, or is that false? I was told it does, but now im curious as now I am in a new apartment and the router and modem are in my roommates room instead of mine so im running a cable to his room.


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## Jetster (Jul 9, 2016)

Not at that distance. It would take at least a couple of hundred feet before you could detect any change in speed


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## Ahhzz (Jul 9, 2016)

Anything over 300 feet drops reliability/packets, which means your overall speed falls. Anything under that, packet loss is minimal, and unnoticable for all reasonable purposes. Technically speaking, there could be a minor loss of speed at close to that length, but the loss would be so minute and close to nil that it really wouldn't matter unless you were speaking "literally". A reasonable corollary would be that a waxed car technically runs faster and more fuel efficient than an unwashed car due to aerodynamic resistance. Realistically? No.


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## thebluebumblebee (Jul 9, 2016)

So does waxing your Ethernet cables make them faster?


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## Jetster (Jul 9, 2016)

I got some work to do


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## Ahhzz (Jul 9, 2016)

thebluebumblebee said:


> So does waxing your Ethernet cables make them faster?


That depends on where you're putting them


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## SnakeDoctor (Jul 9, 2016)

Cat5e/6e cable you would go max distance of 100m then fit a eg. a network switch to boost it further


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## Recon-UK (Jul 9, 2016)

You ever seen a power line that goes for miles upon miles need questioning?


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## Ahhzz (Jul 9, 2016)

Recon-UK said:


> You ever seen a power line that goes for miles upon miles need questioning?


....

I don't understand the "question"....


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## Jetster (Jul 9, 2016)

Recon-UK said:


> You ever seen a power line that goes for miles upon miles need questioning?



Yep

http://www.calculator.net/voltage-drop-calculator.html


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## Recon-UK (Jul 9, 2016)

Jetster said:


> Yep
> 
> http://www.calculator.net/voltage-drop-calculator.html


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## Aquinus (Jul 9, 2016)

Long runs are more susceptible to interference and power cables with changing voltage can induce current in another conductor. More cabling also means more capacitance so something like a power cable could have a greater impact on a longer cable compared to a smaller one (excluding reduce signal in the first place from voltage drop and, once again, capacitance. Just don't run in it parallel to any power cables. Try to cross them perpendicularly and not run them side by side and you should be fine if you're <100m.


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## Caring1 (Jul 10, 2016)

Ahhzz said:


> A reasonable corollary would be that a waxed car technically runs faster and more fuel efficient than an unwashed car due to aerodynamic resistance. Realistically? No.


No.
It's been proven a smooth surface has increased drag, whereas a rough surface breaks the tension of the air flowing over the surface reducing drag.


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## MxPhenom 216 (Jul 10, 2016)

Caring1 said:


> No.
> It's been proven a smooth surface has increased drag, whereas a rough surface breaks the tension of the air flowing over the surface reducing drag.



Show me that study that proves that.


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## eidairaman1 (Jul 10, 2016)

induction 





Aquinus said:


> Long runs are more susceptible to interference and power cables with changing voltage can induce current in another conductor. More cabling also means more capacitance so something like a power cable could have a greater impact on a longer cable compared to a smaller one (excluding reduce signal in the first place from voltage drop and, once again, capacitance. Just don't run in it parallel to any power cables. Try to cross them perpendicularly and not run them side by side and you should be fine if you're <100m.


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## crazyeyesreaper (Jul 10, 2016)

MxPhenom 216 said:


> Show me that study that proves that.


 Mythbusters tested it.

Typical dirty vs clean was wrong, however using something like a dimpled surface does reduce darg etc, Putting shit ton of clay on a car smooth surface performed worse than the dimpled surface like a golf ball, 26 vs 29 mpg.  

That said depending on cable about 300ft is the max run Ive done this a few times. At my families dealership I ran a Cat 6 cable underground from one shop to the other about 300ft all told, testing at the router, business class speed of 15 / 2  it was pegged at 15/2 at the end of the 300ft cable it was showing 14.7-14.9 it never did peg at 15 upload did however hit 2.  Adding a second router at the end actually saw a slight drop from that as well. 14.5 / 2 but still that was at 300ft


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## micropage7 (Jul 10, 2016)

actually yes, but it may not affect your connection
longer cable will give you lower speed but if your speed is 1000 and the longer cable costs you 0.0012 you still have 999.9988
it wont drop your connection


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## Ahhzz (Jul 10, 2016)

crazyeyesreaper said:


> Mythbusters tested it.
> 
> Typical dirty vs clean was wrong, however using something like a dimpled surface does reduce darg etc, Putting shit ton of clay on a car smooth surface performed worse than the dimpled surface like a golf ball, 26 vs 29 mpg.
> 
> That said depending on cable about 300ft is the max run Ive done this a few times. At my families dealership I ran a Cat 6 cable underground from one shop to the other about 300ft all told, testing at the router, business class speed of 15 / 2  it was pegged at 15/2 at the end of the 300ft cable it was showing 14.7-14.9 it never did peg at 15 upload did however hit 2.  Adding a second router at the end actually saw a slight drop from that as well. 14.5 / 2 but still that was at 300ft


Dimpled different than dirty  I do need to check the Mythbuster's tho. Are you saying a clean car is better or worse than a dirty one, according to them?


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## petedread (Jul 10, 2016)

Can you get Ethernet cable made from fibre optic?


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## Frick (Jul 10, 2016)

Thread of the Tear, this shall be.


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## Ahhzz (Jul 10, 2016)

petedread said:


> Can you get Ethernet cable made from fibre optic?



No. Ethernet refers to the type of data transfer, which is conducted over specifically constructed Copper Cable, 8 lines, twisted into 4 pairs separately, and twisted into a single, shielded, cable. Fiber optic is a single glass "wire", which transmits data via light pulses.

To answer the question you meant to ask, you can transfer data over fiber via "Fiber Converters", which accept Cat5e/Cat6 at one end, convert to "light", send over fiber, and then "deconvert" to simple cat5e/6 at the other.  Much longer distances supported.


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## pigulici (Jul 10, 2016)

As about op question, the short answer it is YES, the middle answer: the ethernet(cat5e) we most use + TCP/IP protocol was designed for a maximum length of cable of 100m, above of that , the electric signal start to fade, so the network card will have hard time to see 1 and 0 from electrical parasite/mud, from my past experience, you can go until 150m if it is a new cable and it is a quality one(enough of 'good' metal in it, good shielded, good thickness,...), but in a apartament, usually don't exceed the 100m official limit, also you can measure the cable, it is imprinted at each meter/feet....the long answer: get CCNA....


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## hat (Jul 10, 2016)

Basic spec is good up to 100m (300ft roughly). Unless you got a really, really big apartment, you're good.


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## eidairaman1 (Jul 10, 2016)

Standard 10/100 use 2 of 4 pairs, 1000 uses all 4 pairs. In Modern Homes and apartments Ive had to use a Spair pair in cat cable to get POTs or Voip to jacks. Ive made ethernet work in non CAT* copper for short distance in old apartments. If you are lucky to have FTTH I'd suggest having 4 home runs going from the ONT to a smart panel. 





Ahhzz said:


> No. Ethernet refers to the type of data transfer, which is conducted over specifically constructed Copper Cable, 8 lines, twisted into 4 pairs separately, and twisted into a single, shielded, cable. Fiber optic is a single glass "wire", which transmits data via light pulses.
> 
> To answer the question you meant to ask, you can transfer data over fiber via "Fiber Converters", which accept Cat5e/Cat6 at one end, convert to "light", send over fiber, and then "deconvert" to simple cat5e/6 at the other.  Much longer distances supported.


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## BiggieShady (Jul 10, 2016)

Recon-UK said:


>


Dude, those are *high voltage lines *... when the voltage is in the range of couple of hundreds of thousands of volts, loss of 32 V over 5 km is 0.02 % loss ... and for say 220 V line the same loss over 5 km would be 16% loss. That's why we use high voltage over long distances.


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## FordGT90Concept (Jul 10, 2016)

Max cable length for maximum transmission rate of the standard is 100 meters or 328 feet.  The length of the cable doesn't impact speed, it impacts packet-loss which, if those packets were TCP, forces a retransmission of the packets which translates to reduced _actual_ throughput.

When network switches are turned on, they auto-negotiate link speed, typically:
10 mbps
100 mbps
1000 mbps

It tries 1000 mbps and if packets are lost, drops to 100 mbps and tries again.  If 100 mbps fails, it drops to 10 mbps and tries again.  If 10 mbps fails, the connection is considered lost and it disables the transfer of data on the connection.


If the cable length is under 100m and it isn't carrying the full rated performance of the cable, some things may be going on:
1) One of the ends was not properly installed so twisted pairs are non-functional.
2) There's interference coming from outside of the cable, penetrating it.  The power cables buried in walls are particularly troublesome for this.
3) There's something wrong with the network switch.  There's a lot of shoddy switches out there that fall to the speed of the slowest connection.  For example, it's rated 1000 mbps and has three 1000 mbps devices plugged in.  The moment you plug a 100 mbps device into it, the three 1000 mbps devices also fall to 100 mbps.  It's generally worth buying higher quality switches to prevent this behavior.
4) The cable is physically damaged (would require physical inspection of its entire length).



BiggieShady said:


> Dude, those are *high voltage lines *... when the voltage is in the range of couple of hundreds of thousands of volts, loss of 32 V over 5 km is 0.02 % loss ... and for say 220 V line the same loss over 5 km would be 16% loss. That's why we use high voltage over long distances.


That's an understatement.  Tower power lines like that are often in excess of 500,000 volts connecting power plants to substations and other power plants.

You don't even have to touch those bastards to fry.  They electrify the air around them like lightning does.


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## BiggieShady (Jul 10, 2016)

FordGT90Concept said:


> That's an understatement. Tower power lines like that are often in excess of 500,000 volts connecting power plants to substations and other power plants. You don't even have to touch those bastards to fry.


Yeah, there are certain videos at liveleak that I can't unsee


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## hat (Jul 11, 2016)

Well, I'm sure Ethernet is far away from the dangers of those hundreds of KV lines... so we should be safe.


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