Question What ethernet cable?

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I'm planning to setup a wired backhaul for my home network with a couple of Unifi access points connected to my router. So they need to be PoE capable. I reckon I need one 30m and one 20m ethernet cable. At first (and possibly for a long time) 1Gbit full duplex is all it's needed, but might as well make it more future proof to allow up to 10Gbit in the future. So Cat6 is what I need, or is there a reason to go higher (6a or 7)?
What about other details or specs that I should care about? I'm reading that it should be full copper and not CCA, anytime else? Any specific recommendations welcome. Thanks
 
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Cat6 will be more than adequate for your needs. Cat6a is harder to install and terminate and Cat7 is even harder still. Also to meet the requirements of Cat6a and Cat7 you really need a certified install, otherwise their performance at best is likely to be that of Cat6 or worse.
 
Shielded or unshielded?
Edit: seems that unshielded is recommended for home environments.
How is this?
 
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UTP will be fine. That cable, unfortunately is not a cat anything cable. To comply with the networking standards, patch cables can only be up to 5m in length. So that cable, even though it is 'allegedly' solid core, does not comply. Also I have never heard of the brand 'Smedz'.

I would suggest that you buy some Cat6 External Grade cable from Cable Monkey and a couple of keystone jacks
 
Shielded or unshielded?
Edit: seems that unshielded is recommended for home environments.
How is this?

Unless you have full infrastructure to utilise shielded cables then at best the shield does nothing (it has to be properly grounded to a clean earth at one end), or worst case either there is no earthing and the shield has the potential to act as an antenna, picking up radio noise or the earth is noisy and can actually pick up interference onto the cable directly.

In any case, the shielding is normally utilised in noisy heavy commercial or industrial installations where there are large motors, inverters etc that have the potential to cause signal interference, and you don’t usually get those kinds of issues in the average home.
 
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UTP will be fine. That cable, unfortunately is not a cat anything cable. To comply with the networking standards, patch cables can only be up to 5m in length. So that cable, even though it is 'allegedly' solid core, does not comply. Also I have never heard of the brand 'Smedz'.

I would suggest that you buy some Cat6 External Grade cable from Cable Monkey and a couple of keystone jacks
Thanks. It would be nice if they offered a 50m roll, as I won't have any use for more than half of the 100m one. Also, the access points I will use will be ceiling mounted, so if I get keystone jacks, I will then need another patch cable connecting to it above the ceiling, and the same on the other end, where I'll plug it on a switch (or a PoE injector). This seems like there are extra connectors for no good purpose. Wouldn't it be better/simpler to put normal male RJ45 connectors at the end of the cable? And if so, and in order to avoid having to get a crimping tool, what's would with getting a cable with the connectors already attached? For example, how about this?

Forgive my ignorance here, perhaps I'm missing something.
 
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If you are sure on the length, and can accomodate the size of hole needed to pass an RJ45 connector through any building fabric, then using a pre-terminated cable would be fine and saves you the pain of attempting to terminate yourself (it’s not difficult once you’ve had a bit of practice, but can be very frustrating while you are getting up to speed), and also means you don’t necessarily need to buy a tester either.
 
I will end up having a switch, so I will need three 15m cables in the end.
Is this good?
Or this? (a bit more expensive)
 
Never used the first one but use a lot of Connectix and Cable Monkey are a great company.
 
Quite honestly on those distances Cat5E will do the job. We have 5APs in our office all connected back to one of 2 patch bays and then onto the switches and router using Cat5E and we get very,very low packet failures or slow downs.

External Cat5E is easy to terminate with a £12 crimper from Screwfix and the most basic plugs they supply. Mine have been going strong at home for 17 years now and the IT guys we had installing a bunch more points in the office yesterday agreed that Cat5E is fine up to about 30M in one piece. Cat6 is good for electrically noisy environments, but the tighter twist means that the actual wire length for a given length of cable is slightly longer! They were carrying out a full scope and all 440 points using a mixture of Cat5E and Cat6 passed 1GBs without issue.
 
Yes, 5e should do it. For two of the three I'm going to use 5e, but for one that will be buried and difficult/impossible to replace, I'm thinking cat6 just in case.
The specs on the cable monkey patch cables don't have details, is it safe to assume they have 23awg solid copper as the reel version?
 
Rather than bury the cable, can you run some trunking in? At least that way if something fails you can replace it.
 
IIRC "burying" cat6 and above automatically "fails" it as cat6. I forget which one, but somewhere around that "cat" requires that it should be installed into "proper" containment (track, ducts, etc.) and not just lashed to anything handy. Then you need to test it with some very expensive equipment to see whether it actually achieve cat whatever performance. There's (much) more to the "cats" than what kind of cable you buy. My "brothers in arms" that are professional data networking cabling installers could doubtless regale us with many, many stories of how they have had to break the news when "fixing" some DIY catX that actually wasn't "working" because it was badly installed. Try this for example... Installation Pitfalls in Cat6 Cabling

I fear newbies just tie themselves in knots "worrying" about this sort of thing. If you are worried about the "cat" of your infrastructure, get the professionals in to do the job and they will present you with a slew of documentation to "prove" that the work has been done to standards. And some derogations for where they couldn't. For example, I have some cat5e installed years ago that was over length at about 118m. But it tested at Gigabit ethernet so I accepted it and years later it was still working just fine.

Perhaps it would be illustrative to explain that many data networking technology evolutions are not simply "the old thing but faster." For example, gigabit ethernet has exactly the same "symbol rate" (number of times it pulses the line) as 100mbps ethernet. But it conveys 10 times the data volume. Hence, gigabit ethernet "works" over most cat5e. Anywhere it doesn't was probably crap cabling to start with and didn't work well for 100mbps either.

Wi-Fi, for example, has had the same symbol rate forever, with the notable execption of "short guard interval" introduced in the "N" standard which changed the symbol rate from 250ksps to (about) 270ksps. I believe AX has changed that again. Yet Wi-Fi has gotten "faster" by using other "tricks" to pack in more data bits per symbol.

Don't worry too much if you don't understand all of these arguments. But equally, don't obsess that "catX equals performance Y" because "the cable can't handle it."

As the saying goes "a little knowledge is dangerous." If you really want to get into "cats," go read the relevant TIA standards rather than relying on anecdotal evidence from "mates down the pub" and Internet forums. Including this one. And this commentator.

But here's a link to my favourte DIY UTP cabling site... How to wire Ethernet Cables
 
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Regarding the "cat" thing, I don't specifically require Cat6. I just need a reliable gigabit connection between my living room and the bedrooms area. So far I've had powerlines and mesh wifi, and I'm not happy with either (patchy and only delivering around 100Mbps).

At the moment, for a completely unrelated reason, we have our living room floor removed and will take some time to restore. This gives me access behind the plasterboard so I'm taking the opportunity to lay ethernet cable. (You can argue that I could have laid it anyway above the skirting, but that would not have passed the domestic redecorations approval committee 🙄). The cable will go behind the wall plasterboard (see photo for an idea, I put a different cable there just to demonstrate),
PXL_20201220_090530298.jpg
then run in front of that concrete step, then behind plasterboard again, then in a wall cavity, and then behind that wooden board on the wall (see photo).
PXL_20201220_090942226.jpg


It won't be possible to have conduit for the whole cable journey (I attach a photo of the cavity which was a real challenge to insert the cable alone),
20201216205423842.jpg
but I will try to put one for the part in front of the concrete step and have the flooring finish just before it.

Regarding cat* certification: I don't specifically need Cat6, I'm pretty sure that cat5e is enough, and I am considering Cat6 in order to overshoot. I understand that without proper installation, the Cat6 won't live up to its specs, but I won't need the full specs. Will it be at least as good as cat5e though with a chance of being better? (Whatever that means, more reliable, less heat dissipation from PoE, etc). If yes, I'll go for cat6 for this one cable, as it will be more difficult to replace it.
 
I have a question. Can anyone recommend this cable from kenable. The 50m length is all I need & wire net ports at each end.
I have my router with gig ports downstairs and want to feed an external cable around the outside of my house to an upstairs room where I have my PC & Server. It will then be connected to a gig switch.
 
Regarding cat* certification: I don't specifically need Cat6, I'm pretty sure that cat5e is enough, and I am considering Cat6 in order to overshoot. I understand that without proper installation, the Cat6 won't live up to its specs, but I won't need the full specs. Will it be at least as good as cat5e though with a chance of being better? (Whatever that means, more reliable, less heat dissipation from PoE, etc). If yes, I'll go for cat6 for this one cable, as it will be more difficult to replace it.

That's pretty much my argument - by all means install high cat cables if you don't mind the additional expence and installation hassles (high cats can be a bit mechanical stiffer as many of them have internal dividing walls keeps the pairs separated which "up to" cat5e usually doesn't.) Just don't be "disappointed" if at some future date you try to put 10-Gig down it and it doesn't work. Gigabit ethernet will be the same "speed" over whatever, it doesn't get faster/slower because you give it higher cats to play. In extremis you might get high error rates on the packets (bad packets will get silently dropped) which might manifest as poor performance when running a "speed test," but it's extremely rare and often SOHO kit (switches) lacks the monitor to detect it, so it's hard to track down. But don't have nightmares - 10/100/1000 is pretty robust and you have to do a spectacularly bad job of installation for it to not "work" - bad termination is often the biggest culprit.

My hope for 10-gig as it starts to percolate down to mass deployment (and the costs thence fall) is that "desktop" devices will avail both half and quarter clocked 10-gig yielding (respectively) 5-Gig or 2.5-Gig where the cable isn't up to it. OK, it's not the full 10, but at least it's faster than gigabit. And of course, one would expect them to also be backward compatible with 10/100/1000. I am of the opinion that there's a lot of commercial incentive for this to happen as it (in businesses) will avail "faster than gigabit" to the desktop without the need for expensive and disruptive recabling exercise. (One of the reasons ethernet over UTP took off in business way back is that it could run over the then incumbent UTP telephone cabling present in a lot of premises.)

BTW - AVF mantra when installing cable is to "always run two" (or more.) It's highly unlikely UTP will fail in service, but if it does and you have an alternate in situ, you can get back up and running again quite quickly. With only a single run, you'd be off the air until you rip and replace or deploy "something else." Cable is cheap compared to the hassle of installing it, but one appreciates that sometimes the routing and/or domestic harmony might preclude more than one run.

On you skirting board, you might consider chasing a channel into the back side of the board to hide the cable if not chasing the wall.
 
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Thanks. Yes, I understand the risk that 10Gb may not work, although as you say there may be 5 or 2.5Gb options that will be more likely to work.
I will try to lay two cables, the key I think is to find a suitable trunking that will go between the concrete step and the flooring, perpendicular to them (so the cables are on top of each other and the training has the width of one cable and the height of two). I'm planning to stick the cables behind the plasterboard the rest of the way, I think that's easier (as I won't be doing the skirting/flooring later, but I have easy access to the open wall now as you can see in the photo).
So I'll probably buy 2 cat6 for the "buried" section, and 2 cat5e for the others.
 
The smallest cable trunking I have at home is about 15mmx18mm cross section (external dimensions including the lid) and can handle 2 No. UTP - maybe 3 if I really wedged them in. However it doesn't leave much "wiggle room" to accommodate any direction changes. UTP should not be "bent" into angles, it should be "curved" - IIRC minimum radius is something 4 times the the sheath diameter.
 
This is the smallest I find that could possibly work.

I laid the cable and realise that I underestimated the required length. I need an extra meter or so. ☹
So now I will either have to buy a 20m cable and replace the one I inserted (which will be wasted), or get an extender and use one of the few spare 1m cables I have. Will this work or is it a bad idea?
 
I've used those sort of in line cable couplers to extend "patch" cords (I usually keep a few in my desk at work for "emergencies") but for extending permanently installed "solid core" cable I'd prefer a different type that has a two IDC "punch down blocks" to accept the cable ends (and save me having to crimp on plugs to solid core cable which needs "special" plugs.) They also often have some lugs and so forth to facilitate mounting them on "something."

Whilst this isn't a brand I've used, something like this (from the same site)...

 
So I would need to cut the plugs from two cables and then take the unterminated ends and connect them inside this one, right?
Also, as it turns out I won't be able to put two cables in the cavity for redundancy without chasing, so I now have 2x 15m cables that I can't use as they stand, so I guess I can get two of these couplers and connect the other two ends so I will have effectively converted my 2x 15m cables to a 17m (to use as intended) and a 13m one for other uses.
Do I need a tool to use the coupler or do I manually align the pairs inside the coupler and press it down to close?
 
If the cables you have in hand are factory made with plugs on the end, then use the first type of coupler you originally linked. Such cables are usually made with stranded AKA "patch" cable which is not suitable for terminating onto IDC blocks.

IDC blocks are designed for use with "solid core" cable usually sold unterminated in bulk. The blocks have V shaped knives in them design to slice through the sheathing of solid core wires and bite into the copper cores. If you terminate "standed" cable onto IDC, the knives tend slice through the (thinner) wire strands and you get no or bad termination and won't work.

So the general "rule" with UTP is "solid core" cable should be terminated onto IDC "punch down" blocks and "stranded" AKA "patch" cable should be terminated onto plugs. Everything you wanted to know about DIY UTP here... How to wire Ethernet Cables
 
But be aware that there are RJ45 Plugs for solid core and there are RJ45 Plugs for stranded cable and they are different.
 
Thanks everyone, so in the end I am going to install a shelf to host the switch, the NAS and three Fibaro Home Center, and avoid the need for a longer cable (or an extension) that would run down the wall. All good. Happy new year!
 

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