Running Cat5e under rug

[DeadlyPilot]

I don't wanna go through the trouble of stapling it to my walls so I think I'll run it under a rug which means people will be stepping all over it on a daily basis. Will this damage the cable enough to reduce performance?

[DeadlyPilot]

I have an unshielded cat5e that has a rip in yhe sleeve which exposes the wires inside. Will this cause any interference even though it was an unshielded cable o begin with?

[Julian5]

What kind of cable is it solid or stranded?

 

very little if any

[ApolloX75]

If it flattens or kinks at all then the cable will degrade quickly. The twist in the pairs of wires within the sheeting is essential.

 

A nick in the outer sheeting won't hurt it much however.

[DeadlyPilot]

10 minutes ago, ApolloX75 said:

If it flattens or kinks at all then the cable will degrade quickly. The twist in the pairs of wires within the sheeting is essential.

 

A nick in the outer sheeting won't hurt it much however.

I wouldnt call it a nick. Its more of a rip about 3 inches along the cable.

[DeadlyPilot]

I mean if the cable wasnt shielded in the first place, i would assume a rip wouldnt make a difference right?

[mariushm]

There is such a thing as plastic "cable bed" (that's what is called in my country), basically a rectangular or square tube of plastic.

I see them listed on some sites as "cable raceway", here's an example : http://www.cableorganizer.com/surface-raceways/

 

You may find more of these in stores that sell stuff electricians buy, maybe stores for home improvement (home depot, praktiker in Europe), the same stuff is sometimes used by electricians to route power cables through buildings. Some of these plastic tubes also have double adhesive band on the bottom, so you could stick the tubes on your wall at the bottom and you wouldn't have to drill holes. Other such tubes have pre-cut holes for screws, in case you want to attach the tubes more firmly to the wall.

 

Anyway the idea is that you could get one such tube that's just wide and tall enough for one network cable, and you could slide it under the carpet and maybe use a bit of adhesive tape to keep it in place. You can step on it a lot and it will hold it's shape for some time but in the end eventually it kinda dries out and the plastic will crack. Still, basically it's extra protection for the cable.

 

Here's two other examples, from Amazon this time (see the 2" x 1" 2100 series) : this or for example this

 

 

[ApolloX75]

2 minutes ago, DeadlyPilot said:

I wouldnt call it a nick. Its more of a rip about 3 inches along the cable.

That shouldn't cause an issue unless it's bundled with other cables.

[DeadlyPilot]

9 minutes ago, ApolloX75 said:

That shouldn't cause an issue unless it's bundled with other cables.

So are UTP cables usually ok to bundle together?

[ApolloX75]

1 minute ago, DeadlyPilot said:

So are UTP cables usually ok to bundle together?

Unshielded is even more susceptible to cross talk, so no, not generally. It's also easier to damage.

[mariushm]

For up to 1 gbps and Cat5e cable, the fact that the cable is shielded or not is generally not an issue. The way each two wires are twisted around each other and then the four pairs are twisted along the cable insures the crosstalk is minimal and can be ignored and interference from outside can generally be "cleaned" by the network cards easily.

So, it's safe to to bundle several UTP cables (u is for unshielded) and there's not gonna be any problems, as long as you don't put the cables right near fluorescent bulbs/tubes and as long as you don't run the cable really parallel and very close to live mains cables (for example you may have mains cable inside the wall going from your wall socket to the electric panel and you just happen to route the network cable exactly on the wall above the cable, you may have problems from time to time because of this)

If the cable goes on the outsides of a building it would be a good idea to buy shielded twisted pair cable STP, there's also Foil twisted pair cable which has a mylar (or other plastic) foil around the pairs of wires as an extra insulation from interference and humidity and other things (in case the sleeve cracks or breaks or is cut) .. there's also SFTP (shielded foil twisted pair)  if you want to go nuts.

There's also cables that include a steel wire all along the cable, which helps if you want want for example to install the cable between two poles, the steel wire makes it harder for the cable to sag or to be moved around by winds.

 

In fact, there's about 7 such types of network cables but like I said, for your situation, regular UTP cable will be just fine : http://www.belden.com/blog/datacenters/STP-UTP-FTP-Cable-More-7-Types-When-to-Use-Them.cfm

[DeadlyPilot]

21 minutes ago, mariushm said:

For up to 1 gbps and Cat5e cable, the fact that the cable is shielded or not is generally not an issue. The way each two wires are twisted around each other and then the four pairs are twisted along the cable insures the crosstalk is minimal and can be ignored and interference from outside can generally be "cleaned" by the network cards easily.

So, it's safe to to bundle several UTP cables (u is for unshielded) and there's not gonna be any problems, as long as you don't put the cables right near fluorescent bulbs/tubes and as long as you don't run the cable really parallel and very close to live mains cables (for example you may have mains cable inside the wall going from your wall socket to the electric panel and you just happen to route the network cable exactly on the wall above the cable, you may have problems from time to time because of this)

If the cable goes on the outsides of a building it would be a good idea to buy shielded twisted pair cable STP, there's also Foil twisted pair cable which has a mylar (or other plastic) foil around the pairs of wires as an extra insulation from interference and humidity and other things (in case the sleeve cracks or breaks or is cut) .. there's also SFTP (shielded foil twisted pair)  if you want to go nuts.

There's also cables that include a steel wire all along the cable, which helps if you want want for example to install the cable between two poles, the steel wire makes it harder for the cable to sag or to be moved around by winds.

 

In fact, there's about 7 such types of network cables but like I said, for your situation, regular UTP cable will be just fine : http://www.belden.com/blog/datacenters/STP-UTP-FTP-Cable-More-7-Types-When-to-Use-Them.cfm

I ran across this video. He is using HDMI over ethernet but the UTP cables are creating cross talk that cuts the signal. So is this video legit?

 

 

[DeadlyPilot]

Like I said, it is a video signal, but it still managed to distort the signal. Does this only happen when cables are in contact? If using UTP, how much space should i leave in between cables?

[kirashi]

2 hours ago, DeadlyPilot said:

I wouldnt call it a nick. Its more of a rip about 3 inches along the cable.

Use some electrical tape there for a quick repair, but otherwise, it shouldn't affect it too much.

38 minutes ago, DeadlyPilot said:

I ran across this video. He is using HDMI over ethernet but the UTP cables are creating cross talk that cuts the signal. So is this video legit?

1

HDMI over Ethernet is a little different than regular internet packets. As @mariushm stated above, network cards can generally clean up small errors received with packets sent over the internet, or simply discard the packet and ask for a resend with so little "lag" to the user. Video streams are a little different.

 

When you watch a video, technically it's still a bunch of Data packets being sent over a cable. However, video packets are sent as a continuous stream with the audio and video synchronized. If there's any packet loss, especially with a digital signal, you'll either see or hear artifacts on the screen or from your speakers, or there will be a flickering signal or absolutely no signal at all. There's simply not enough time to correct for errors in transmission on a video signal such as HDMI - it wasn't built for error correction at the consumer level. (There are industry-grade rack mount audio/video preprocessors used at concerts and performance venues that can indeed correct and compensate for certain errors in transmission, but consumer equipment doesn't have these features built in.)

 

Because of this, the video is indeed telling some truth about running HDMI over Ethernet cables.

[dalekphalm]

22 hours ago, DeadlyPilot said:

I don't wanna go through the trouble of stapling it to my walls so I think I'll run it under a rug which means people will be stepping all over it on a daily basis. Will this damage the cable enough to reduce performance?

Should be fine, but why don't you simply try it out and report your findings to us?