Best shielded CAT 6/CAT 7 cable? Need advice..

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Hey guys, need a decent cable. Looking for something 20ft in length, black, round, and shielded. I believe the shielding will actually be necessary because it'll be running parallel to main electrical wire in the wall, which is something I've never done before, but I don't wanna go super overkill.

Networking is most definitely not my forte, figured someone here would have some input :p

Was looking at this https://www.amazon.com/dp/B016WQQN7O
 
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Almost all of my CAT6 is parallel with power wiring, works fine. It's pretty rare to see an issue with this. Also for the shielding to work, I believe the connector needs to be grounded at other ends as well. Most consumer gear doesn't do this.
 
Theres is no need for sheilding unless it's an 256Amp, we do normal CAT4 cables that do gigabit in the walls laying with all the electric cables :) and there's I no problem, even though that CAT4 is only 10Mbit.
 
That is the longest product description headline for an Ethernet cable I've ever read. Impressive.
 
People always say "Why did you go for Cat6/7?" and the reply is usually "Well it was $1 more!"

Plus give it a couple more years and Ebay will have a lot more 10Gb gear for good prices.
 
Sheilding is only supposed to be grounded at one end - usually done at the patch panel or switch. Grounding both ends can create ground loops.

Long runs of CAT5 are definitely susceptible to noise when run along AC wires, it shows up as packet loss mostly. That being said, it takes either some pretty long runs of cable in parallel, or pushing up near the speed/distance transfer limits of the cable before you really start to see it. I don't know about CAT6, it's a different standard and I'm not as familiar with it.

In the wall you want to watch fire code. UV Direct Burial is nice stuff, but if, god forbid and I don't know if it will do this or not, it catches on fire and fills your house with toxic smoke, it wasn't so awesome. Usually building code will specify Plenum-rated wire for jobs like this, which probably won't be UV Direct Burial
 
Shielded CAT5/6 must be grounded? What??

EDIT: nvm, read "usually done at the patch panel / switch"
 
if you only connect the ground in one end, the shielding will act as an antenna, giving problems, you need to tie it at both ends., this is basic RF electronics.
ground loops, is only an symptom of bad grounding or bad choice of solution.

I had an problem with an cable 3 months ago where the customer had tied the cable at one end and forgot the other, this actually crated package drops.

regarding noise, Ethernet is balanced signals, coupled with transformers, thus it has an high common noise rejection.

as I wrote earlier I have cat4 cables doing gigabit laying with the 64 and 32Amp power cables without any problems.

the main difference between CAT5 and CAT6 is almost none when talking gigabit speeds.,
 
You've got some really high quality cat 4 cabling then. Cat 4 was something like 16Mb/s up to 20mhz.
 
You've got some really high quality cat 4 cabling then. Cat 4 was something like 16Mb/s up to 20mhz.

What a cable is rated for and what it will actually do are very different things. One, a lot of it depends on the quality of the equipment at either end. Two, the ratings are based on MAX length, so the shorter it is, the more you'll get out of it.
 
What a cable is rated for and what it will actually do are very different things. One, a lot of it depends on the quality of the equipment at either end. Two, the ratings are based on MAX length, so the shorter it is, the more you'll get out of it.

Yes, it's still amazing that he's getting gigabit speed out of cat 4 at any distance. The max speed we've gotten from cat 4 at work is 57Mb/s at a distance of 20ft. We didn't test any shorter than that because we don't have runs shorter than that. Maybe we did a horrible job or our equipment was shit or you need much shorter than 20ft to get gigabit on cat 4.
 
Yes, it's still amazing that he's getting gigabit speed out of cat 4 at any distance. The max speed we've gotten from cat 4 at work is 57Mb/s at a distance of 20ft. We didn't test any shorter than that because we don't have runs shorter than that. Maybe we did a horrible job or our equipment was shit or you need much shorter than 20ft to get gigabit on cat 4.

There's also a lot of variation from brand to brand for cable, and some stuff might not even operate at the "rated" speeds in the real world. Then again, the 1st guy here might see a "gigabit" link light on the switch and assume he's actually getting gigabit speeds out of that CAT4 without any other testing.
 
There's also a lot of variation from brand to brand for cable, and some stuff might not even operate at the "rated" speeds in the real world. Then again, the 1st guy here might see a "gigabit" link light on the switch and assume he's actually getting gigabit speeds out of that CAT4 without any other testing.

Links are stable at 1Gbit and package drops are none on the switches (CISCO), so no problem, the reason for the CAT-4 is that the building is old, and haven't been renovated yet, whenever management gives the go it will be changed and old the tokenring cabling will be removed to :).
 
I heard that if you take a bunch of shielded CAT bringing them together to turn it into a massive twisted pair of equal specifications to the ratings of the individual cables themselves, you increase bandwidth throughput by an exponential factor of 10.

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I heard that if you take a bunch of shielded CAT bringing them together to turn it into a massive twisted pair of equal specifications to the ratings of the individual cables themselves, you increase bandwidth throughput by an exponential factor of 10.

813.gif

I hard that the factor was more around 100.
 
if you only connect the ground in one end, the shielding will act as an antenna, giving problems, you need to tie it at both ends., this is basic RF electronics.
ground loops, is only an symptom of bad grounding or bad choice of solution.

Just to respond to this bit of advice:

The entire purpose of the shield is to be a shield, so that it picks up EMI rather than your data lines, and safely conducts it to a grounded source. Of course it's supposed to act as an antenna, so that your data lines do not.

In an ideal world, all "grounds" would be at the same potential - earth ground. In the real world, that isn't always true, and why you can end up with ground loops. The easy way to avoid this - just connect to one ground. Double grounding isn't necessary for a shield, or for most applications for that matter.

You really should read the installation instructions for cable when you work for your customers. Your doing them, and yourself, a disservice.

http://www.mouser.com/pdfdocs/alphawire-Understanding-Shielded-Cable.pdf
 
Just to respond to this bit of advice:

The entire purpose of the shield is to be a shield, so that it picks up EMI rather than your data lines, and safely conducts it to a grounded source. Of course it's supposed to act as an antenna, so that your data lines do not.

In an ideal world, all "grounds" would be at the same potential - earth ground. In the real world, that isn't always true, and why you can end up with ground loops. The easy way to avoid this - just connect to one ground. Double grounding isn't necessary for a shield, or for most applications for that matter.

You really should read the installation instructions for cable when you work for your customers. Your doing them, and yourself, a disservice.

http://www.mouser.com/pdfdocs/alphawire-Understanding-Shielded-Cable.pdf

Thanks for the link, I been doing X band RF electronics for the last 14 years, when not dealing with this I normally design network installations, for primarily military C3 systems use.

Normally we tie grounds at both ends, but we don't use normal grounds, we use data grounds, these will be same potential, this is the same case in the buildings that I work, thus it's not impossible to do this.
 
I heard that if you take a bunch of shielded CAT bringing them together to turn it into a massive twisted pair of equal specifications to the ratings of the individual cables themselves, you increase bandwidth throughput by an exponential factor of 10.

813.gif
And, they make nice speaker wire. ;)
 
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