What is the Longest Cat-6 Cable you can Run Between a computer and a Switch?

What is the Longest Cat-6 Cable you can Run Between a computer and a Switch?

When preparing to run some new cable for your computer, it pays to understand what the limitations are so that you do not face any issues later. keeping in view the problems in mind, today’s SuperUser Q&A post provides some useful information to a confused reader.

Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites.

The Question

SuperUser reader Bhavin needs to know what the longest Cat6 cable a person could run between a single computer and a switch is:

When I am using a “single computer to switch” setup with a VLAN function/configuration, what’s the longest Cat6 cable I have to use? I have read that there’s a 100 meter length limitation, however i’m not talking about daisy-chaining or having other users on the same line (the computer connects directly to a switch).

What is the longest Cat6 cable an individual could run between a single computer and a switch?

The Answer

SuperUser contributor ron Maupin has given the answer for us:

The UTP standard, to which the various ethernet standards adhere, is about 100 meters, however that assumes 90 meters is solid-core (better performance, but more fragile) with 5 meters on each end as stranded (worse performance, but more flexible).

It has nothing to do with daisy-chaining, however with several measurements like frequency, insertion loss, NEXT, PSNEXT, FEXT, ELFEXT, PSELFEXT, return loss, propagation delay, delay skew, balance, longitudinal conversion transfer loss, etc.

The 100 meter limit also assumes that the cable is pre-built or professionally installed with all the same rated components and checked to see if it’ll pass the full-test suite. Even experienced installers have problems when installing Category-6 cabling, although Category-5E cabling can do 1000BASE-T at identical distance. Category-6 cabling can do 10GBASE-T at 55 meters, however Category-6A cabling can do 10GBASE-T at a full 100 meters.

For those people who are curious, there are some massive equipment vendors (i.e. Cisco) that support Category-6 cabling with 10GBASE-T for 55 meters. The participants in the new NBASE-T Alliance also support 5 gigabits on Category-5 cabling at 100 meters. you can look at the documents, like At-A-Glance – Cisco Multigigabit ethernet Switches (this is a direct PDF download link).

Have something to add to the explanation? preach in the comments. need to read additional answers from other tech-savvy Stack Exchange users? check out the full discussion thread here

What is the Longest Cat-6 Cable you can Run Between a computer and a Switch?