On 19/11/10 18:27, Andrew Gabriel wrote:
In ,
Tim writes:
On 16/11/10 17:40, Sunny Bard wrote:
David Robinson wrote:

I don't think any network cabling you could have conceived of
in 1990 would be in any way relevant today.

Actually, 10Mb Ethernet over cat3 cable was introduced in 1990 and the
standard for cat5 cable was published in 1991 which will still work
today with 10Mb, 100Mb or 1Gb Ethernet, and I can't see much pressure
for 10Gb or 40Gb Ethernet in most businesses yet, let alone houses.

I can - I can usefully utilise 50% of a gig link pushing media files
around (that's copying not streaming) *whilst* doing other stuff. My
802.11g WiFi can stream VCD quality media video at the expense of other
activity.

I just about saturate my gig ethernet when doing backups.
That is also about the limit of sustained disk throughput on
the fileserver, so increasing network bandwidth would make no
difference.

My networking is all Cat5e, installed about 10 years ago,
but was only run at 10/100Mb at that time. Bumped up to 1Gb
around 4 years ago.


Exactly Andrew - you deployed at 100 and planned for 1000 and in 6 years
upgraded to a gig.

My point was that if folks are usefully or very nearly usefully
consuming a gig *now* it is a safe assumption (based on previous trends)
that 1 gigbit/sec is going to seem lame in a few years time. Whether
that is 3 years, 5 years or 10 years isn't clear and will depend very
much on a person's habits but, although Cat6a is a bit harder to work
with, it would be a wise consideration for anyone doing an install for
the next decade's use

--
Tim Watts