Are flat ethernet cables actually any good, and can I use them for the situation described below?

[jasonhe54]

so,

Are flat ethernet cables any good, are they able to match the performance of the round cables, but not not from router to pc or anything rather from router to another router that I'm going to set up as an AP. I just bought a new router, and if I still can't get good range, I'm considering setting up my current router as an AP on the other side of the apartment so there won't by any dead spots but my current plan is to put it in another room but the door might be closed. This leads me to the issue, there's no way for me to use powerline or something to get ethernet to that room and there's no way for me to drill through the wall and run it in the wall. So that eliminates those options, which leads me to my two options, round ethernet cables or flat ethernet cables? It's to connect the two routers, idk if that would change anything but... yea.

Ideas?

 

[jaslion]

Sure why not? They just have the wires next to eachother instead of bundled up in a tube.

[jasonhe54]

6 minutes ago, jaslion said:

Sure why not? They just have the wires next to eachother instead of bundled up in a tube.

I have no idea, I read some articles on it and some said there's less "stability" or something along those lines. But I figured this forum would know much more than an article that I found just by searching a question

[truemax]

I run flat from living room to my bedroom. What's nice about it is i can close my doors and not worry about the cable getting damaged.

[SupaKomputa]

Meh, it's just wires, the quality of the single strand is what matters.

I don't see the difference between flat or round cables.

Put your attention to something else, it's nothing to worry about.

[jasonhe54]

8 minutes ago, SupaKomputa said:

Meh, it's just wires, the quality of the single strand is what matters.

I don't see the difference between flat or round cables.

Put your attention to something else, it's nothing to worry about.

k ty

[Letgomyleghoe]

I have two 50 foot cat 6 cables running across my house and I have no issues whatsoever with them. 

8 minutes ago, Benji said:

Ever heard of isolation? Because just having a flat cable with it's typical non-EMI-blocking plastic shielding doesn't do anything and can cause issues on longer runs (and this one sounds like it'll be one, running the cable to the other end of their apartment) like gigabit connection detected but not actually getting that speed because of EMI. And that's the advantage of usually thicker round cables while flat cables are usually badly isolated or they also become thick. The newer CAT standards also have specified minimum isolations (full-cable isolation only, meaning around the cable on the outside, or even fully-isolated pairs in the isolated mantle).

In the typical apartment or living area there isn't enough EMI noise to cause any noticeable issue. 

 

[igormp]

56 minutes ago, jasonhe54 said:

round ethernet cables or flat ethernet cables? It's to connect the two routers, idk if that would change anything but... yea.

In theory, higher speeds and longer distances will suffer a lot from magnetic noise, and having twisted pairs helps a lot with that. If you're not planning on reaching gigabit speeds or if it's a short run, then it shouldn't make a difference.

 

FWIW, here's a nice and simple explanation as to why twisted pairs work better against EMI.

[jasonhe54]

2 minutes ago, igormp said:

In theory, higher speeds and longer distances will suffer a lot from magnetic noise, and having twisted pairs helps a lot with that. If you're not planning on reaching gigabit speeds or if it's a short run, then it shouldn't make a difference.

 

FWIW, here's a nice and simple explanation as to why twisted pairs work better against EMI.

I mean... current internet is at 200Mbps, so I think that'd be fine, right?

[igormp]

21 minutes ago, jasonhe54 said:

I mean... current internet is at 200Mbps, so I think that'd be fine, right?

If it's a short run, then it likely won't have any problems

[jasonhe54]

7 minutes ago, igormp said:

If it's a short run, then it likely won't have any problems

I mean, most likely, it's not gonna be a short run lol. That's the main reason, because I plan on setting the router and AP on opposite sides of the apartment

[igormp]

28 minutes ago, jasonhe54 said:

I mean, most likely, it's not gonna be a short run lol. That's the main reason, because I plan on setting the router and AP on opposite sides of the apartment

Then you'd be better off using a regular round cable.

[Lurick]

1 hour ago, jasonhe54 said:

I mean, most likely, it's not gonna be a short run lol. That's the main reason, because I plan on setting the router and AP on opposite sides of the apartment

Define "far", i'd say 50ft not near anything that might give off heavy EMI might be fine but I would just use regular non-flat cables for anything more or if you need to run near something that might give off lots of EMI.

[Alex Atkin UK]

I have a 5m run of cheap flat cable running at 10Gbit alongside HDMI, Displayport and various other cables.  Ironically when I went to replace it with a round cable, thinking it would be more stable (I wasn't having any issues, I just figured as above that it was more sensitive to noise so might be a problem long term), it was THAT cable which refused to do 10Gbit despite claiming to be rated for it.

 

At the end of the day, there are no guarantees that any given cable is any good unless you overpay for a known brand.  It usually works out cheaper to just try a few different cheap ones than to buy one expensive one.

[SupaKomputa]

4 hours ago, Benji said:

Ever heard of isolation? Because just having a flat cable with it's typical non-EMI-blocking plastic shielding doesn't do anything and can cause issues on longer runs (and this one sounds like it'll be one, running the cable to the other end of their apartment) like gigabit connection detected but not actually getting that speed because of EMI. And that's the advantage of usually thicker round cables while flat cables are usually badly isolated or they also become thick. The newer CAT standards also have specified minimum isolations (full-cable isolation only, meaning around the cable on the outside, or even fully-isolated pairs in the isolated mantle).

Bruh, if you talk about shielding there are unshielded round TP cables too. And there are double shielded flat cables. For home usage, there won't be enough EMI.

[jasonhe54]

6 hours ago, Lurick said:

Define "far", i'd say 50ft not near anything that might give off heavy EMI might be fine but I would just use regular non-flat cables for anything more or if you need to run near something that might give off lots of EMI.

I mean, at most 50 ft. from router, above the TV, above the door, through the hallway, and into a room. That's really all. Most likely not 50ft. 

[mariushm]

You still have 4 pairs of wires and in each pair the wires are twisted as the ethernet standard requires.

In regular cat5 and cat5e the pairs of wires are then twisted together. In cat6 and cat6a cables there's a plastic core in the form of a cross or + or x  that separates the pairs to provide better shielding :

in your flat cable, there's still a "wall" separating the pairs from each other and providing the insulation that would otherwise be provided by that + or x profile ... and if it's a good flat cable everything is then shielded by some aluminum foil.

 

So the cable should be fine to use even for longer distances... like 30-50 meters.

 

If the cable is rated for cat5e or higher, then it does 1 gbps ... asking if it does 200 mbps is silly. It will do 1 gbps or more. It will probably do 2.5 gbps if both network cards support it.  and it would probably even do 10gbps if the distance is short enough (less than 20-30 meters)

 

What can happen if the cable is poor quality is that you'd have some dropped packets which the network card will re-transmit - you still get high speed but you would see in games that your ping fluctuates from time to time ... or you get very brief lagging, like 1 second timeouts every 5-10 minutes or so,  in the extreme cases.