Cat 7 Question

[Bladehawk]

Cat 6 requires 22-24 gauge wire, but I can't find the standard for cat 7 and I see a lot of cables using 30AWG which sounds suspicious.  is there no gauge requirement on cat 7?  I see a lot of cheap cat 7 cables and most of them are flat.   How do I know I'm getting the real thing before i buy it?

[themctipers]

CAT7 is just more shielding, at least that's what 3 seconds of googling tells me. 

[Enderman]

Why does it matter if you're getting the real thing or not when you probably don't even have anything capable of over 1Gbps on your network?

[WereCatf]

21 minutes ago, themctipers said:

CAT7 is just more shielding, at least that's what 3 seconds of googling tells me. 

Just to clarify this a bit further, it seems the wire-pairs inside a cat7-cable are all individually shielded in addition to the shielding covering them as a whole. To answer the OP's question, if there is a picture of the cable available with the wire-pairs visible, they could just see if the wire-pairs are individually shielded or not?

[Bladehawk]

I finally found the information 22-26 Gauge qualifies as cat-7 which means most of the "Cat -7" on Amazon isn't.  I'm not saying it's not shielded properly, but many flat cables use AWG30 and claim to be compliant, by definition, they aren't.  I'm upgrading some things in my house and I'd rather use Cat-7 than cat 6 to ensure I don't have to do this again as my house came with Cat 5 and it's currently limiting my speed to both my NAS and my ISP (I get 900 MBS at the modem/router).

 

I want to be sure I'm getting what I pay for and if the vendor is lying about complying to the standard as far as gauge, then it may not meet the other spec standards. I don't want to buy something that claims to be cat 7 but isn't, how do I know it's not re-branded cat 6 at a higher margin?   Gauge is really one of the few things you can find on Amazon that would tell you if it really meets standards. Not a lot of people with gigabit connections are posting that the wire is meeting the speed requirements.

 

[WereCatf]

15 minutes ago, Bladehawk said:

I finally found the information 22-26 Gauge qualifies as cat-7 which means most of the "Cat -7" on Amazon isn't.  I'm not saying it's not shielded properly, but many flat cables use AWG30 and claim to be compliant, by definition, they aren't.  I'm upgrading some things in my house and I'd rather use Cat-7 than cat 6 to ensure I don't have to do this again as my house came with Cat 5 and it's currently limiting my speed to both my NAS and my ISP (I get 900 MBS at the modem/router).

It's pointless to go for cat7. Cat6a (Do note that cat6a != cat6, same as cat5e != cat5) is rated for 10Gbps, just as cat7 is, so you'd need to plonk up to cat7a, if you wanted up to 40Gbps-speeds. Alas, it's unlikely there will ever be any Cat7a 40Gbps home-networking equipment in the first place.

[dalekphalm]

On 4/12/2018 at 1:59 AM, Bladehawk said:

I finally found the information 22-26 Gauge qualifies as cat-7 which means most of the "Cat -7" on Amazon isn't.  I'm not saying it's not shielded properly, but many flat cables use AWG30 and claim to be compliant, by definition, they aren't.  I'm upgrading some things in my house and I'd rather use Cat-7 than cat 6 to ensure I don't have to do this again as my house came with Cat 5 and it's currently limiting my speed to both my NAS and my ISP (I get 900 MBS at the modem/router).

 

I want to be sure I'm getting what I pay for and if the vendor is lying about complying to the standard as far as gauge, then it may not meet the other spec standards. I don't want to buy something that claims to be cat 7 but isn't, how do I know it's not re-branded cat 6 at a higher margin?   Gauge is really one of the few things you can find on Amazon that would tell you if it really meets standards. Not a lot of people with gigabit connections are posting that the wire is meeting the speed requirements.

 

Yeah I'd probably just use Cat 6a, if you're having trouble finding good quality Cat 7.

 

Also, when searching, AVOID AT ALL COSTS anything claiming to be "Cat 6e" - this is a fake standard and you will have zero guarantees as to what you'll get.

[Bladehawk]

I went for cat 6a, but I received the wrong length, so after tearing my network apart, I had to put it back together and now I'm waiting on the new cables since amazon couldn't expedite the shipping.. At least because of their issues on this order they ended up giving me $35 after multiple calls trying to get the bloody things. .