20180617 How To Check An Ethernet Cable Works For 1GBit

I want to connect all my devices in my living room with ethernet cables. I have a box full of cables I have collected over the years, but about half of them just say Cat5 or only numbers telling you about their physical specification but not if they work for 1GBit connections like Cat6, Cat5e or enhanced Cat5.

My buddy Mat has given me the tip to use the tool iperf to measure the connection. This has solved the problem for me.

This is my setup :

I bought an Anker USB3 to RJ45 ethernet network adapter, about 15 Euro at Amazon.de .
I use this iperf in Windows 10.
In my notebook I have an integrated 1GBit ethernet network adapter
I configure the external USB3 network adapter to 10.2.2.11 and the internal notebook network adapter to 10.2.2.12.
I start one cmd shell where I run the iperf server with iperf3.exe -s -B 10.2.2.12
When starting in a second cmd shell the client with iperf3.exe -c 10.2.2.12 -B 10.2.2.11 , the connection is measured

FYI : You have to bind iperf to the network adapters to tell iperf which network adapters you use for what. Then telling the client the IP address of the server tells iperf which route to measure.