Flat Lan Cable or Round Lan Cable for long distances? (15m)

[AkoSiAdam]

as the title says im having trouble between choosing which one to use. what is more suitable for long distances? you know like which is more durable or which requires less maintenance or something like that

[brwainer]

There are 8 wires in an ethernet cable, in 4 pairs. Each pair is twisted together at different turn rates. The spec then expects those 4 cables to be in a round bundle, and some Cat6 and all Cat6A and above have a plastic guide inside the wire to keep them evenly spaced (it is cross shaped).

 

My point is, the specification expects a round cable, and was very specifically designed to reject RF noise. For long runs, unless you need flatness to fit somewhere (going under a carpet/rug is the only option, for example) you should use round cables.

[mariushm]

15 meters is not a long distance.

The flat cable will work just as well, it still uses twisted pairs, just separating the pairs horizontally making the cable flat instead of twisting the pairs around each other.

 

Use whatever is more convenient, what can be hidden or routed better

[Falcon1986]

1 hour ago, AkoSiAdam said:

as the title says im having trouble between choosing which one to use. what is more suitable for long distances? you know like which is more durable or which requires less maintenance or something like that

Where is this cable going to run? Outdoors or indoors? Are you running it within a conduit or under carpeting/rugs where foot traffic is going to be high?

[AkoSiAdam]

1 hour ago, Falcon1986 said:

Where is this cable going to run? Outdoors or indoors? Are you running it within a conduit or under carpeting/rugs where foot traffic is going to be high?

it's going to run from one house to another, it may sound absurd but houses here in our country are close to each other, so it'll run outdoors no foot traffic or anything like that. the only problem i can think that ill run into is rain and wind but we already thought of solutions for that

[brwainer]

19 minutes ago, AkoSiAdam said:

it's going to run from one house to another, it may sound absurd but houses here in our country are close to each other, so it'll run outdoors no foot traffic or anything like that. the only problem i can think that ill run into is rain and wind but we already thought of solutions for that

You’ll want to surge protect both ends (and the surge protectors must be grounded). A common good model is the Ubiquiti ETH-SP-G2.

 

There are two types of outdoor cable - direct burial and outdoors. Direct burial is meant to be buried and is not particularly UV resistant. Outdoor cables are UV Resistant but not tough. You can find some that are both Direct Burial and UV Resistant