Better ethernet cable than cat 5e?

[zMeul]

Just now, xDylanio said:

What do you mean i've seen plenty of reviews on cat 7. Not cat 8 though. 

I'd like you show me tech specs for cat7 from certified people, not random shit on amazon

[zMeul]

12 minutes ago, FAQBytes said:

Cat7

http://shop.loxone.com/enus/cat-7-cable.html?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=PLA_US&gclid=CKiH-93k5tICFUs7gQodtWAOhw

Cat8

http://certicable.com/cat-8-cables/50-ft-cat8-cat-8-shielded-copper-cable-10gb-10-gigabit-ethernet-also-for-video.html

mate, where are the tech specs for those cables?!

CISCO, Fluke .. anyone?!?! an ISO/ANSI standard

 

as far as I know this is the latest: http://www.csd.uoc.gr/~hy435/material/Cabling Standard - ANSI-TIA-EIA 568 B - Commercial Building Telecommunications Cabling Standard.pdf

 

 

tomorrow I'l start selling cat11 cables 

[Glenwing]

Honestly if you don't work in a server room it's not something you need to worry about. Even if you buy a Cat 6 cable you'll probably still be getting a Cat 5E cable anyway, most "Cat 6" cables do not pass Cat 6 spec.

[FAQBytes]

6 minutes ago, zMeul said:

mate, where are the tech specs for those cables?!

CISCO, Fluke .. anyone?!?! an ISO/ANSI standard

 

 

tomorrow I'l start selling cat11 cables 

Sorry, it's getting late and I tend to start to care less. It's the first shop that showed up. You're right with the cat-8 it being snake oil. 

And you're right, it's just cat-7 cable with 10Gb. 

 

It still does exist, though in the experimental phase.

http://www.datacenterjournal.com/cat8-future-data-center-cabling/

 

[zMeul]

4 minutes ago, FAQBytes said:

Sorry, it's getting late and I tend to start to care less. It's the first shop that showed up. You're right with the cat-8 it being snake oil. 

And you're right, it's just cat-7 cable with 10Gb. 

cat7 are not recognized by TIA (Telecommunications Industry Association), see my post above

 

cat8 standard was issued ~1y ago: http://www.tiaonline.org/tia-issues-new-balanced-twisted-pair-telecommunications-cabling-and-components-standard-addendum-1

doubt anyone has actual cat8 cables for end-user

[TheKDub]

52 minutes ago, xDylanio said:

 

Well im moving tons of files and I want them to be quick, I was thinking of a cat6a, or a cat7, maybe a cat7a

I'd end with Cat6, not much use going past that with modern consumer equipment. (Even then you're not going to use the 10Gb/s capacity of it unless both sides of the line support it, as well as any other connected devices.)

 

23 minutes ago, zMeul said:

cat 6

 

cat7, 8? not a thing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO/IEC_11801#CAT7

[mariushm]

tl:dr 

 

at5e is good for at least 1 gbps (125 MB/s) - it's the cheapest type of cable that is very common everywhere.

cat6 is good for 10gbps, as long as two conditions are met : the cable should not be installed with more than just a few other cables running in the same direction (for example at most 5-6 cables) and the maximum distance allowed is at most around 55 meters.

cat6a (also named cat7 by some) is the same as cat6a but doesn't have those restrictions, it can transfer 10gbps at up to 100 meters and the number of network cables bundled together makes no difference

There is a cat7 but probably all cat7 cables you see in stores are actually cat6a cables or cat6a cables with some extra shielding inside the cable.  The real cat7 standard (separate from all the other cat versions) requires some special connectors, so it's unlikely you'll buy such cables from the store near you.

Cat8 actually follows the cat6a standard and it's supposed to be able to transmit up to 40gbps (but i don't know if it's over the same length of 100 meters).

 

If you install cable in your house, you should install cat6a , it's not much more expensive compared to cat5e.

If you buy patch cords (ready made cables, 3 to 15 meters long), most of those are cat6a because the manufacturing process is good enough that they'd have to try hard to screw it up on such small distances.

Just stay away from very cheap cables and from cables which have the notation CCA on them (which is short for copper clad aluminum, basically instead of using 100% copper for the wire strands inside each of the 8 small wires in the network cable, they use aluminum wire covered with a very small layer of copper.  This makes the cable cheaper (because copper is expensive) but this cable is not recommended to be used for distances higher than 20-30 meters and in addition, this cable is more sensitive to being bent and stepped onto/over.

 

//apologies if I made any typos,i spilled some Pepsi on my regular keyboard and this temporary keyboard is crap, the keys are all mushy...

 

ps. companies in the networking industry have recently ratified a new networking standard, which would allow up to 2.5gbps (250MB/s) to be transmitted over regular cat5e cable, and 5 gbps through regular cat6 cable. 

So there could still be quite a lot of life in plain regular cat5e, but you're not going to install cables every month, you can afford to spend a few dollars more for something that would then serve you for years. Go with cat6a.

[FAQBytes]

9 minutes ago, zMeul said:

cat7 are not recognized by TIA (Telecommunications Industry Association), see my post above

 

cat8 standard was issued ~1y ago: http://www.tiaonline.org/tia-issues-new-balanced-twisted-pair-telecommunications-cabling-and-components-standard-addendum-1

doubt anyIone has actual cat8 cables for end-user

You're right. I'm tired, it's late, time for me to get off before I say more wrong things.

I could've sworn that Cat7 had gone through a few years ago, but I guess I'm remembering something else.

[zMeul]

12 minutes ago, TheKDub said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO/IEC_11801#CAT7

please stop  

[skywake]

To compare it to WiFi the different categories of cable would be equivalent to the material of the walls between you and the access point. Except that unlike WiFi Ethernet doesn't have as many different speeds it can run at. For example 802.11g could run at 6, 9, 12, 18, 24, 36, 48 or 54Mbps. What speed it actually ran at depended on how strong the signal was and what sort of obstacles were in the way. Like with Ethernet and the quality of the cable.

 

But for Ethernet? If you have a Gigabit NIC realistically it's only going to run at 100Mbps or 1Gbps. Cat5e should be able to easily do 1Gbps for any lengths you're likely to have for home use. Then there's Cat6 which I would only recommend for home use if you're putting cables through the walls/floor/ceiling. Purely because it should allow you to easily get upto 5Gbps or possibly even 10Gbps for the lengths you're likely to have in a house (<20m) if/when you want to go that route down the road. You don't want to have to take it all down and do it again 5years down the road.

 

Beyond that? You're wasting your money for home use. Above 10Gbps is seriously overkill for home use for the foreseeable future and for all we know by the time we reach that point for end users we might not even be using copper anymore. Cat6a is useful for people who want to guarantee 10Gbps over longer distances now. If you were cabling up something like the video editing rigs for Linus then you'd probably use Cat6a. Pushing it further Cat8 is used for 40Gbps upto 30m from what I can tell from a bit of googling. But that tech is by no means mature. For speeds above 40Mbps you need an entirely different connector.

[Erkel]

CAT5e or CAT6, anything more and you are wasting money in a home user environment.  There is only a small margin difference in price, so if buying new get CAT6.

 

10Gb ethernet being common place in the home is still many years away,  Worry about it then.  Unless perhaps you are building a house and want to do the structural wiring and still be living there in 10 years when it maybe applicable.  In which case CAT6A for the structural wiring.

[DnFx91]

lots of misinformation here. The category rating of a patch cable defines the level of shielding, and hence, the distance you can run without repeaters before signal loss.

 

over usual distances of a couple meters there is literally no difference in quality between different categories, i run a 10Gb line to my NAS over a single 2.5 meter CAT5e, no problem. It's only when you start trying to run 100m lengths that you want to consider better shielded stuff like CAT6 or 7. CAT8 is new to me, i guess you can run a single line of that to the moon

[Erkel]

48 minutes ago, DnFx91 said:

lots of misinformation here. The category rating of a patch cable defines the level of shielding, and hence, the distance you can run without repeaters before signal loss.

 

over usual distances of a couple meters there is literally no difference in quality between different categories, i run a 10Gb line to my NAS over a single 2.5 meter CAT5e, no problem. It's only when you start trying to run 100m lengths that you want to consider better shielded stuff like CAT6 or 7. CAT8 is new to me, i guess you can run a single line of that to the moon

It is not only the sheilding, but the twisting of the wire pairs,  There was a big emphasis on this moving from cat5 to cat6.  Ethernet uses balanced lines for transmission,  the twisting is to subject two wires in the pair to the most similar environment as possible, as only difference between the wires is measured as the signal, any common mode noise is cancelled out.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twisted_pair

[mariushm]

No @DnFx91, that's simply not true. 

There's differences between cat5e and cat6 an cat6a cables besides just the optional shielding

 

In regular cat5e cable each of the four pairs of wires has a different number of twists per inch, in order to minimize crosstalk.. For example you have 1.53 twists per inch for the green pair, 1.54 twists per inch for the blue pair, 1.78 twists per inch for the orange pair, 1.94 twists per inch for the brown pair.

 

With Cat6 and Cat6a, there's a higher number of twists per inch are a bit thicker, which makes the cable harder to bend (due to the twists in each pair and then those 4 pairs being twisted together)

cat6 and Cat6a cables are made with thicker gauge cable, usually AWG24 or AWG22 if i remember correctly, while cat5e is often AWG26 or AWG24.

cat6 often has an aluminum fol (or sometimes other insulating material) to shield the four pairs from outside noise.

with cat6a , even with the higher number of twists per inch in each pair, there's still enough crosstalk issues for distances higher than those 55 meters, so most of the cat6a if not ALL those cables have a plastic (or something similar) X shaped thing which separates the four pairs, shielding them from each other, and then there's an extra foil surrounding everything to protect the pairs from outside noise.