2.5 and 5.0G: Don't Bandage Your Wireless

It’s been since before the turn of the century that Category 5e was ratified and 1000BASE-T was developed to transport data from the closet to the office. For many years, 5e was “good enough” and with no foreseeable need other than physical robustness to consider a higher grade of cabling, many continued to install this cable. However, the enterprise infrastructure is starting to bulge at the seams and some cracks are beginning to appear. In an attempt to ease these wireless technology implementations, silicon manufactures are experimenting with transmitting 2.5 Gbps and 5 Gbps over Category 5e and Category 6 cabling respectively. Their intent is to utilize existing cabling infrastructure to allow for a simple upgrade path by replacing only the electronics at the ends of the cable. But this is just a temporary solution for an ever-growing issue with wireless. There are also significant technical hurdles involved in increasing the bandwidth by a factor of 2.5 and certainly by a factor of five (5). Remember, the existing cabling was designed to standards developed more than 15 years ago. Consider too, there are other standards committee initiatives working to triple the amount of power transmitted via PoE technology as well.