I just had fiber installed yesterday and got a 3Gbit plan.
The modem provided by the ISP has 1x 10GbE port and 4x gigabit ports.
I got a 10GbE NIC for my Synology NAS, which is installed right beside my modem.
However my PC is sitting at the opposite end of a 30m+ Cat5 run. The silver lining is there’s a pair of them.
Can I bond them somehow to make them a single 5GbE port?I haven’t bought a switch or router yet.
Considering the Mikrotik crs317-1g-16s+: https://www.ispsupplies.ca/MikroTik-RouterBOARD-CRS317-1G-16SRM
Short answer: Unless you just want to see high numbers, I’d probably just settle for 2.5gbit and that should work just fine over Cat5. (It would definitely work over Cat5e.)
Yep. This is called “Link Aggregation” and quite a few switches support it. You’d need a switch on both ends to combine the two cables into a single link. Generally, it’s more trouble than it’s worth, both in terms of price and headache, but the option in there.
With the price of 10gbit equipment to do link aggregation, you might be better off running another cable. How accessible is the existing cable to make a Cat6a run next to it?