What makes a good Ethernet cable

[Mrcrysis2000]

Hi, I was watching Linus's video on SATA cable's and in the about section he talks about a good quality Ethernet cable would have a significant impact on the speed of my network so i got wondering what makes a good quality Ethernet cable :)

[KingLinkTiger]

The most important thing for an Ethernet cable is it's category or cat for short. I'm sure you have heard of Cat5, Cat5e, or Cat6, these are all just different standards for ethernet cables. What makes ethernet cables different from just 8 strands of wire in a tube is that these wires are twisted to certain specifications. These specifications allow for farther cables, less interference, and less crosstalk. Now there are also different kinds of insulators, the outside of the cable, there is normal indoor insulation (which there is only a very little bit of it), there is outdoor insulation (protecting from the weather), and there is Plenum insulation (fire retardant). The main insulator you need is just the normal indoor insulation, anything else will just be overkill for standard scenarios. Back tot he Categories, Cat 5 can run at a maximum of only 100 Mb/s, Cat 5e can run at up to 1Gb/s, and lastly Cat 6 can run at 10 GB/s. Now there are also other factors as Shielded Twisted pairs, Unshielded pairs, solid/stranded wires, cable shielding, etc, but I don't think I need to go into that much detail. If you want to see some more information about the ethernet cables check out this post on howtogeek (http://www.howtogeek.com/70494/what-kind-of-ethernet-cat-5e6a-cable-should-i-use/)

[rufee]

For patch cables (the ones that you run from a switch/router to your pc), it doesn't make much difference. I made myself a dozen cables out of what i had around and they run at gig speeds no problem. Though if you are running longer cables 10-50 meters and more (100 meters is the limit for copper cables w/o boosting) near power lines, you could get some induction in the ethernet cable which could damage equipment over time, and give you a nasty shock if you touch the ends, in that case you should consider running FTP or STP (both are the same, but have different names in some regions) shielded cables.

[SubTract]

The most important thing for an Ethernet cable is it's category or cat for short. I'm sure you have heard of Cat5, Cat5e, or Cat6, these are all just different standards for ethernet cables. What makes ethernet cables different from just 8 strands of wire in a tube is that these wires are twisted to certain specifications. These specifications allow for farther cables, less interference, and less crosstalk. Now there are also different kinds of insulators, the outside of the cable, there is normal indoor insulation (which there is only a very little bit of it), there is outdoor insulation (protecting from the weather), and there is Plenum insulation (fire retardant). The main insulator you need is just the normal indoor insulation, anything else will just be overkill for standard scenarios. Back tot he Categories, Cat 5 can run at a maximum of only 100 Mb/s, Cat 5e can run at up to 1Gb/s, and lastly Cat 6 can run at 10 GB/s. Now there are also other factors as Shielded Twisted pairs, Unshielded pairs, solid/stranded wires, cable shielding, etc, but I don't think I need to go into that much detail. If you want to see some more information about the ethernet cables check out this post on howtogeek (http://www.howtogeek.com/70494/what-kind-of-ethernet-cat-5e6a-cable-should-i-use/)

there is also a cat 7 cable although most current hardware either doesn't support it or if it does doesn't support the bandwidth its capable of.

[Swoosh]

Cat rating is not were the story ends with LAN cables however, you should also look at the AWG rating which is the gauge of the wire, the thicker the wire the better. Some cheaper ethernet cables claim 1GBit+ speeds with 26/27/28 AWG cable, despite being categorized as Cat 6 it is likely they will come close to these speeds when applied in a real world environment, generally a good quality cable will be roughly 23AWG or lower. Shielding generally isnt needed unless you are running LAN cables next to power cables, or for security reasons (I dont think your going to have anyone trying to hack your cables in a home environment though so its pretty useless!

[KingLinkTiger]

Shielding generally isnt needed unless you are running LAN cables next to power cables' date=' or for security reasons (I dont think your going to have anyone trying to hack your cables in a home environment though so its pretty useless![/quote']

Shielding also reduces crosstalk within the cable itself. Also I'm not sure how it would add security to your network having the cable shielded, if an attacker wanted to splice into your network he would just strip the shielding off if he needed it off, also you can splice in without messing with the shielding too much,

[Swoosh]

Shielding generally isnt needed unless you are running LAN cables next to power cables' date=' or for security reasons (I dont think your going to have anyone trying to hack your cables in a home environment though so its pretty useless![/quote'] Shielding also reduces crosstalk within the cable itself. Also I'm not sure how it would add security to your network having the cable shielded, if an attacker wanted to splice into your network he would just strip the shielding off if he needed it off, also you can splice in without messing with the shielding too much,

It does, but really on a well made cable, crosstalk is negligible and generally isnt a problem, you also bring into play the possibility of ground loops. You are right about security though, it pretty much does not pose any protection against a proper hacker. Thinking back on it now, I would say its less about security and more about reliability, but I think for non-commercial purposes, if standard CAT is laid correctly then you won't see any disadvantage in using standard cable in a home environment.