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Brand new home has the cheapest and slowest LAN cabling possible (from 30 years ago)

Portugal

We bought a home, it’s just 2 years old, brand new.

It came wired up with internal LAN network cables, so every room has a LAN port, useful to put access points (APs) to distribute the WiFi over the house.

So I installed a Ubiquiti router and APs recently, amazing product and through that I discovered the network cables they installed are a standard from 30 years called CAT5, and they cap out at 100mbps (!!!).

Meanwhile the internet you get these days is gigabit fiber from 1gpbs to 10gbps. So you’ll be able to use 1-10% of your max speed inside your home.

Why? Because of course Portuguese every single time will cheap out and use the lowest cheapest of anything.

FE here means Fast Ethernet, which is CAT5 @ 100mbps.

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  • Bronze Narwhal

    •

    Oct 2, 2025

    Hi there. Eletronic engineer here. If your house was build with the regulation Ited1 (before 2010) it is correct according the law. It your house was build with new regulation Ited2 (after 2010), or even newer regulation Ited3 ou Ited4, it is mandatory that it should have cat6 cables. Note that 2010 is not the house construction date, this is the date that the house telecomunication project was delivered in to the city hall by the architect, the house is build maybe 2 or 3 yaers later maybe more. You can ask the city hall for your house projects, if the house telecomunication projet is version Ited2, 3 or 4, you have be scammed, your house should have cat6 cables. Not sure what you can do about it, maybe file a complain in Anacom, this guys are serious about imposing heavy fines to constructors that do not respect the regulations.