sea surfer
Distinguished Member
Hi looking for some advice, I need to run some decent shielded cat6 cable to an outbuilding, can you guys recommend a decent cable from Amazon or somewhere?
Cheers
Mark
Cheers
Mark
How are you looking to run the cable? Direct bury? Clipped to a structure? Catenary supported? In a conduit? In a service duct?
It is important to know as this will dictate the correct type of external grade cable to use. Just FYI there are 3 principal types of 'External Grade' Cat X Cable
Normal External Grade - which has a thick HDPE jacket, which is water proof, UV Resistant and tough towards abrasion. This cable is normally clipped to the outside of structures
Duct Grade - Which has a very thick HDPE Jacket and is designed to be run in ducts. It does not bend easily but is much tougher than normal external grade and is designed to be cable of being permanently immersed in water.
Armoured Grade, which is similar to normal external Grade except that between the outer sheath and the inner sheath there is steel wire, helically wound, longitudinally along the cable to provide mechanical protection. This is designed to be buried directly into the ground.
So as you can see, it is important to buy the correct type of 'external' Cat6 for the application'
As above, why do you want to run STP over UTP as it is much harder to terminate? Even if you were running it next to an armoured mains cable, you still would not require shielded. I have clipped External Cat6 cables to SWAC mains that have already been clipped in place without a problem.
The 3 metre run. Is the cable exposed to the environment? Where abouts is this? Clipped to a building? Please explain that 3m run. If it is exposed could it be protected by another means? Additional conduit? Flexi-conduit? Alkathene pipe?
It's going outdoors 3 metres, I have some 20mm flexible plastic conduit that I can use.
Just Don’t!!! Internal Cat6 will become brittle under UV and will eventually crack. Once that happens water will get inside the outer sheathing and will eventually track the end of the cable where it will either short out the socket or the device it’s plugged into. I have now replaced 2 switches and a camera where the client has done exactly this. For the sake of a few extra pounds, do the job properly. There is a reason for external grade CatX cable. Do the job once and do it right.