What defines the ethernet range for a router?

[Antonio Farias]

searching on the internet all I can find about ethernet is a common 100meters maximum and 55meters for cat6 if above 1Gbps, like below:


In my case, it's only 800Mbps, and my longest connections is through an only 60 meters cat6 cable.

 

But, I'm connecting my gateway, an archer ax73, to another router, an archer c6, and a friend told me these routers could be limited to 15 meters only. Is that true? Is there anyway to boost my signal? How do even measure a routers distance capacity to send its signal?

 

Best, 
Tony

[Electronics Wizardy]

These are limits of the ethernet spec, so all deviecs have the same 100M limit. You won't have any issues here with these run lengths.

 

You ports will connect at 100m/1g only, so if you have a 800m link from the isp, its running at a 1g link speed.

 

 

[mariushm]

The ethernet STANDARD defines the maximum length : 100 meters or 55 meters for 10 gbps on cat6

 

This is provided the cable is of the proper quality and the right bandwidth and so on...

 

Proper ethernet cables that have full copper wires will achieve that bandwidth and have no problems. 

Ethernet cables that use CCA (copper clad aluminum) wires - they're aluminum wires coated with a very thin layer of copper - are much cheaper, but the technical properties of the individual wires are worse because aluminum has higher resistance so over long distances the signal quality degrades and could degrade to the point where SOME data packets may be corrupted and have to be re-transmitted by the network card or the network switch / router / cable modem / whatever and that can result in speed fluctuations, higher latency, packet losses in applications that use UDP (which drops error correction and re-transmission for low latency and speed - online games use it, telephony uses, some video broadcast uses as it doesn't matter if a packet is corrupted in an online game, server will periodically send updates so game recovers ... telephony don't care because at best you'd have a few milliseconds of lost audio, and video broadcast don't care as youd just get a corrupted frame or some green squares on image for a few frames so nothing tragic)

 

Think of it like this ... the 1 gbps standard was invented 20+ years ago or whenever it was invented and the chips on network cards were less good that current chips ... think of it like having the processing power of a 486

Modern network cards have much more processing power, think of it like being dual core processors compared to old 486, but also have much stronger signal processing algorithms, they're much better at reading lower quality signals compared to network card of 10+ years ago.

So ... while you needed proper cat5e to get 1 gbps and let's say you needed 95% or better signal quality at 100 meters of cable to not have corrupted data packets, modern network cards may be able to decode all data packets with a signal quality as low as maybe 75% ... simply because they have more brains, better processing, better algorithms.

 

So for short lengths, those CCA cables are good - let's say at 30 meters a full copper cable may be 99% quality, and CCA cable may be 90% quality - both cables will work perfectly fine because the modern network cards like I said could handle as low as 75% signal quality.

At 60 meters, if the cable is CCA - it could be just long enough length of cable to get the signal distorted and weakened over the length and get some corrupted packets from time to time. One solution would be to disable any power saving features in the network card, which will make the network card transmit data at full power through the cable resulting in higher quality signal levels. By default, precisely because network cards are better these days at decoding signals and because the large majority of network cables are short, they intentionally are configured to transmit data at lower power levels.

 

[Antonio Farias]

My cable is definitely 100% copper, bought specifically for this. So it should work, right? No way the router could interfere with the maximum distance, only the cable? 

thanks guys, apreciate the help

[tkitch]

Just now, Antonio Farias said:

My cable is definitely 100% copper, bought specifically for this. So it should work, right? No way the router could interfere with the maximum distance, only the cable? 

thanks guys, apreciate the help

your PC is 200 feet away from the router?  Damn, that's a run.

 

On any standard router that should be fine.  (Is it solid or stranded cable?  For that long a run, solid would have less signal attenuation.)

[Falcon1986]

1 hour ago, Antonio Farias said:

In my case, it's only 800Mbps, and my longest connections is through an only 60 meters cat6 cable.

Out of curiosity, how are you measuring this speed?

[Antonio Farias]

I think stranded, unfortunately. Here, a reference image:



 

45 minutes ago, tkitch said:

your PC is 200 feet away from the router?  Damn, that's a run.

haha, it's a BIG apartment. Just kidding, It's a country house, with a smaller guest house 200 feet away, so I'm setting up another router there too.

[Antonio Farias]

1 minute ago, Falcon1986 said:

Out of curiosity, how are you measuring this speed?

This is what my ISP provides. 800Mbps

[Falcon1986]

22 minutes ago, Antonio Farias said:

This is what my ISP provides. 800Mbps

Are you using this to say that your ethernet cables are underperforming?

 

Because you have to measure LAN speeds with something like iperf. Set up a machine to act as a server then run the speed tests from different clients.

 

[Antonio Farias]

4 hours ago, Falcon1986 said:

Are you using this to say that your ethernet cables are underperforming?

 

Because you have to measure LAN speeds with something like iperf. Set up a machine to act as a server then run the speed tests from different clients.

 

No, forgive me if I wasn't clear, let me try to rephrase:

I am about to lay cables in between these two routers (an AX73 and a C6) that are 60 meters (200 feet) apart. A friend of mine told me that while the cable might be able to transfer clean signal through a maximum of 100 meters, my routers can't send the signal that far. I have never heard or read anything about that, so I came here to check within the fountain of knowledge that is this forum!  

He says it's something to do with the routers voltage... that the routers could be too weak to send the signal. Since I've never built a network with these lengths I have no idea. But it felt like fake news haha. I think he is just used to work with crappy CCA cables(not my case, mine is 100% copper) and thinks that 15 meters is some sort of limit... 

We are both self taught, not really professionals obviously, but he might be spreading some fake news hehe.  

[Timothy003]

The 100-meter limit comes from TIA-568-B, which includes 90 m for the link from the patch panel to the wall outlet and 5 m for patch cords. These limits are arbitrary, though, and most systems will go over that. What matters is the actual measurement parameters like signal loss and crosstalk. If those all pass, then it'll work (unless you're using an SFP transceiver).

[tkitch]

25 minutes ago, Antonio Farias said:

No, forgive me if I wasn't clear, let me try to rephrase:

I am about to lay cables in between these two routers (an AX73 and a C6) that are 60 meters (200 feet) apart. A friend of mine told me that while the cable might be able to transfer clean signal through a maximum of 100 meters, my routers can't send the signal that far. I have never heard or read anything about that, so I came here to check within the fountain of knowledge that is this forum!  

He says it's something to do with the routers voltage... that the routers could be too weak to send the signal. Since I've never built a network with these lengths I have no idea. But it felt like fake news haha. I think he is just used to work with crappy CCA cables(not my case, mine is 100% copper) and thinks that 15 meters is some sort of limit... 

We are both self taught, not really professionals obviously, but he might be spreading some fake news hehe.  

quick test?  plug both in using the 60M cable, in the same room and test then.

 

I've been working with Ethernet for more than 25 years, and NEVER have I heard of a 15M limit on any network switch.  An ethernet port outputs super low power, so, I don't think there'd be any advantage to making it weaker than normal....

 

[Blue4130]

1 hour ago, Antonio Farias said:

No, forgive me if I wasn't clear, let me try to rephrase:

I am about to lay cables in between these two routers (an AX73 and a C6) that are 60 meters (200 feet) apart. A friend of mine told me that while the cable might be able to transfer clean signal through a maximum of 100 meters, my routers can't send the signal that far. I have never heard or read anything about that, so I came here to check within the fountain of knowledge that is this forum!  

He says it's something to do with the routers voltage... that the routers could be too weak to send the signal. Since I've never built a network with these lengths I have no idea. But it felt like fake news haha. I think he is just used to work with crappy CCA cables(not my case, mine is 100% copper) and thinks that 15 meters is some sort of limit... 

We are both self taught, not really professionals obviously, but he might be spreading some fake news hehe.  

So this reduced performance is just speculation on your friends part? Don't worry about it, your cable looks fine, your routers will be fine, as long as you crimp well, you should be fine. 

[Timothy003]

The spec also recommends two Cat 6A runs per access point to get a combined 20 Gbps backhaul for future Wi-Fi standards.

[Antonio Farias]

12 hours ago, Blue4130 said:

So this reduced performance is just speculation on your friends part? 

exactly!

 

12 hours ago, Blue4130 said:

Don't worry about it, your cable looks fine, your routers will be fine, as long as you crimp well, you should be fine. 

Thanks! I'll triple check my cable work!

 

12 hours ago, Timothy003 said:

The spec also recommends two Cat 6A runs per access point to get a combined 20 Gbps backhaul for future Wi-Fi standards.

That's a great tip!

[Alex Atkin UK]

20 hours ago, tkitch said:

quick test?  plug both in using the 60M cable, in the same room and test then.

 

I've been working with Ethernet for more than 25 years, and NEVER have I heard of a 15M limit on any network switch.  An ethernet port outputs super low power, so, I don't think there'd be any advantage to making it weaker than normal....

 

Energy Efficient Ethernet is a thing that does exactly that, its the first thing I turn off as it can cause issues.

[wseaton]

As I recall the 100m spec is a cabling spec and not an Ethernet one. The spec is a guide for cable manufacturers to have a reference for cable manufacture  which can be measured with standard electrical metrics.

 

Voltage drop and interference are the two main gremlins of long cable runs. If its a straight run with solid core and good cable and not wrapping around half a dozen light fixtures 100m can be exceeded. 100m is just a minimum QC spec so that even cheap cable can work reliably with common ethernet transceivers and increasingly PoE.

 

Termination quality also is a big deal. Why I'm not a fan of patch panels with budget or small jobs. 

 

 

 

 

[Alex Atkin UK]

10 minutes ago, wseaton said:

As I recall the 100m spec is a cabling spec and not an Ethernet one. The spec is a guide for cable manufacturers to have a reference for cable manufacture  which can be measured with standard electrical metrics.

 

Voltage drop and interference are the two main gremlins of long cable runs. If its a straight run with solid core and good cable and not wrapping around half a dozen light fixtures 100m can be exceeded. 100m is just a minimum QC spec so that even cheap cable can work reliably with common ethernet transceivers and increasingly PoE.

 

Termination quality also is a big deal. Why I'm not a fan of patch panels with budget or small jobs.

Very true, there is always leeway which is why USB and HDMI cables are available in lengths technically longer than the spec dictates.  Some are junk and don't work, some do.  But with something as important as networking, in such extreme lengths, its best not to push your luck as replacing the cable would be a nightmare if it doesn't work, especially as the termination could degrade over time.

[Antonio Farias]

It's all very surreal to have this confirmed. Thank you so much guys! it's been very informative.

I finally set up the network and it's all fine and super fast! No lag, no packetloss, no jitter, just like the gateway. 

Bizarrely though, if anyone is interested, TP-Link Brazil(where I'm from) emailed me a very late reply REAFFIRMING my friend's speculation. Contradicting us all and all the information I could find on the internet –and even reality since it's working fine!–.

Their tech support said that their "home routers" aren't designed for beyond 15 meter cable connections, and recommended me business type EAPs. "Home routers" lacks the "voltage" they said. I wonder if this bullshit rumor started with them just trying to push more expensive products.

Obviously I asked what voltage are they talking about. Mentioned that I read that 802.3 cable ethernet standards define these ports output in a way that it should always work for 100 meters good quality cat6 cables. Waiting to see what they say...