Shielded or Un-Shielded Modem Cable?

P

Peat Moss

Gawd
Joined
Oct 6, 2009
Messages
543
I recently switched to VDSL internet (from Cable) and set up my modem. My speeds seem fine but I am using cheap flat regular RJ-11 telephone cable. I was thinking of upgrading the quality of cable. I haven't decided whether to place my modem close to the wall jack or on my desk. If on my desk, the modem would need about 50 ft of cabling.

After doing some research I noticed that some modem cable is available in cat5e and also that some cables are described as shielded or un-shielded. I had thought that a cat5e cable was already shielded just by the way the wires are sheathed, but I must be mistaken.

Could someone explain the difference between shielded and un-shielded, and where and when they are each most appropriately used?

Thanks.
 
Shielding only works if there is a ground for the shield to connect to. I bet your devices have no path for grounded cabling. The receiving female connector has to have a common earth ground as well as a special plug. The rj connector also must have a special end connetor (male end) that connects cable shielding to the earth ground.

Meet all this criteria or else your buying expensive shielded cable with no benefit at all. Just being twisted pair should eliminate most rfi you will get experience. By switching from a flat cable to UTP cabling will have much higher natural noise abatement.
 
Really what you are needing if anything at all is a cat5e or better cable hooked directly to your nid, the shielding is good for eliminating crosstalk or emi from outside devices like AC power or other cables. Really though depending on the internal cabling of your house you might not really notice a difference.

But yes in cat5e and cat6 -->cat7, there are different elements of the cable that help mitigate the noise over the cable for longer distances with cat7 having a plastic rib in the middle and wrapping the different pars in a foil like shield. This really only helps when you bring the frequency up and the distances past 100m.

If you wanted you culd run some tests on your line directly pluged into the nid, and then with your current setup to see if you would really gain anything. Probably a bigger factor in all of this is how far your house is from the central office or junction box (the analog part) before the network hooks into the fiber backbone or T3 network.
 
Thanks. Looks like I won't bother with shielded.

Does anyone know where to get cat5e solid (not stranded) copper UTP cables in North America?

(the only place I can find them is in the UK).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top