I have a single Cat 5e cable that runs inside a wall common to 2 rooms. I was thinking of splitting this cable to 2 outlets: 1 for each room. However, if I use 2 pairs of conductors for each outlet (1, 2, 3, 6 for one set and 4, 5, 7, 8 for the other set), is this good enough to use the full potential/bandwidth of Gigabit hardware? (Or does Gigabit require all 8 conductors per outlet?)

if they didn't, they would not have put 8 wires in the cable

Well, ordinary Ethernet (10/100) uses only 4 conductors (2 pairs) and so thats why I asked if Gigabit uses all 8.

100Base-TX (10/100 half duplex) uses only 2 pairs 100Base-T4 (10/100 full duplex) requires all 4 pairs 1000Base-T (Gigabit ethernet) requires all 4 pairs

"if they didn't, they would not have put 8 wires in the cable" Nice try, but the cable has had 8 wires for many moons before Gb was even heard of. ===================================== If at first you don't succeed, you're about average. M2

If your trying to split it so you can have where to plug more than one PC on that Network Drop, the easiest thing to do is buy a 5 or 8 Port Ethernet Switch Netgear sells one for about $39.99. You plug the Netgear switch the Network Drop then plug the PCs ot it. Check out the second diagram on this webpage: http://www.garethjmsaunders.co.uk/p... This might be helpfull to you. Who knows, knows and who doesn't know, dosen't know jack! El que sabe, sabe y el que no sabe, no sabe nada!

Actually I was thinking of an in-wall switch. Using an external box makes it messy, so I was thinking of using something similar to one made by 3Com: http://www.3com.com/products/en_US/... However, this one does not support Gigabit, so I'm looking for one that supports Gigabit. Also this switch is for usage on the same side. I'm looking for one that can allow 2 pieces.... i.e. one piece for each room, mounted on each side of a common wall. Anybody know if such a product exists?