[Help!]So I bought some high end belden shielded cat6 cable

[dholster]

And now I cant return it. So I need to go ahead and do my home network with this expensive cable. Which means spending a lot more on jacks and patch panels. Unless one of you amazing folks has a suggestion on negating the "antenna effect" without using shielded jacks, patch panels, and patch cables? Keeping in mind this is only going into my home network with about 20 nodes and very little actual contact/crossing of any electrical wiring in the house.

And this cable will support up to 10GBASE-T in the future. So I am still on the fence on just doing it right and installing all the shielded hardware for future proofing. But even then my scouring on the internet has left me with how to do the Jacks, and using shielded patch to devices. But not much on the patch panel side of things, I keep reading about ground loops and to only do one end of the cable, which means do I not use a shielded patch panel and ground it to the earth?

Maybe my google/bing fingers aren't what they used to, but I honestly cant find any reliable and even consistent information on installation of shielded cable.

So to sum up this rambling.

I have shielded cat6 cable, Do I actually have to use shielded jacks, patch cables, and patch panel if it is only being used in a small home network with little to no contact with electrical wiring where the cable will be running?

Thanks!

 

[bill001g]

Unless it is cat 6a cable it will not do 10g except at very short distances. Put in cat 5e jacks and worry about it if you ever go to 10g.

I doubt you will have any issues you seldom need shielded cable even in corporate environments.

 

[dholster]

It is Belden 2413F cable, and I think it will support the 10g in the future if I ever need it to.

However for now I plan on just installing regular cat 6 jacks, but my main concern is that some people claim not grounding out my cable will result in amplified interference due to the foil shielding not being grounded and acting as an antenna. I would prefer to install regular unshielded jacks since they are cheap plus the patch panel for a shielded system is way more expensive then a regular patch panel.

I guess since I don't need to certify the cabling I can just replace a few easier to get to nodes and test out my transfer speeds.

 

[wacabletech]

And now I cant return it. So I need to go ahead and do my home network with this expensive cable. Which means spending a lot more on jacks and patch panels. Unless one of you amazing folks has a suggestion on negating the "antenna effect" without using shielded jacks, patch panels, and patch cables? Keeping in mind this is only going into my home network with about 20 nodes and very little actual contact/crossing of any electrical wiring in the house.

And this cable will support up to 10GBASE-T in the future. So I am still on the fence on just doing it right and installing all the shielded hardware for future proofing. But even then my scouring on the internet has left me with how to do the Jacks, and using shielded patch to devices. But not much on the patch panel side of things, I keep reading about ground loops and to only do one end of the cable, which means do I not use a shielded patch panel and ground it to the earth?

Maybe my google/bing fingers aren't what they used to, but I honestly cant find any reliable and even consistent information on installation of shielded cable.

So to sum up this rambling.

I have shielded cat6 cable, Do I actually have to use shielded jacks, patch cables, and patch panel if it is only being used in a small home network with little to no contact with electrical wiring where the cable will be running?

Thanks!

Sounds like a lot of hoopla without the necessary facts.

Physics 101, go google impedance, and then how does coax work you will find coax impedance between the shield and the conductor is based on the space from each other they are. That impedance offers the isolation of the conductor from EMI up to a certain power level. Depending on the design of the CAT6, it may have enough impedance between the shield grounded or not, and the twisted pairs inside to work just fine. If this is inside a home I suspect it will be just fine as you are not prone to having high power transmitters running around in your house.

In an office environment that may differ. Each step toward say a dish array for mass communication you head the less of a chance that will work for you, I'd never even think about putting that on say a naval ship, but my house I'd ignore the hoopla and in addition to that, my grasp of physics is not up there by any means, but I suspect an ungrounded shield would at worst make a weak Faraday cage, and not an antenna. The antenna would need to make a connection to the pair to b an antenna. Now maybe you have real weak impedance [no idea maybe they publish that info in the manuals], but its still going to be better than a straight conductor to it, which is what an antenna is.

Sounds like a lot of internet theorycrafting and no real world implementation to me.

 

[dholster]

Sounds like a lot of hoopla without the necessary facts.

Physics 101, go google impedance, and then how does coax work you will find coax impedance between the shield and the conductor is based on the space from each other they are. That impedance offers the isolation of the conductor from EMI up to a certain power level. Depending on the design of the CAT6, it may have enough impedance between the shield grounded or not, and the twisted pairs inside to work just fine. If this is inside a home I suspect it will be just fine as you are not prone to having high power transmitters running around in your house.

In an office environment that may differ. Each step toward say a dish array for mass communication you head the less of a chance that will work for you, I'd never even think about putting that on say a naval ship, but my house I'd ignore the hoopla and in addition to that, my grasp of physics is not up there by any means, but I suspect an ungrounded shield would at worst make a weak Faraday cage, and not an antenna. The antenna would need to make a connection to the pair to b an antenna. Now maybe you have real weak impedance [no idea maybe they publish that info in the manuals], but its still going to be better than a straight conductor to it, which is what an antenna is.

Sounds like a lot of internet theorycrafting and no real world implementation to me.

The weak Faraday cage was actually my favorite of the things I have read about it. Not only does it sound cooler, but it makes me more comfortable that someone else feels that way. I plan to just hook it up like normal paying extra attention to remove any excess foil shielding and drain wire from the termination points.

Thank you both for your responses. Worst case scenario I hook it up and the signal is spotty as hell and I have to replace a few super cheap keystone jacks with the more expensive shielded kind. Not that I will be able to tell its a bad signal I don't plan on getting it certified and as long as it runs faster then my cat5 existing runs I will be fine. On that note, I should probably be just fine using regular patch panels and patch cables instead of wasting money on shielded.

 

[dholster]

Well i hooked up two of the computers, one i plugged directly in using cat6 hardware to the router. The other i used a cat5e keystone with the cat6 cable and cat6 patch cord. it works, and it works great. I am getting 37-40 MB/s reading from my mac mini server (with 5400 hdd) to my desktop and a little slower copying from my desktop to the mac mini. Which those speeds seem about right since its not like hard disk drives write much faster then that so i am assuming 40MB/s over gigabit is fairly accurate.

unless im wrong and you guys will tell me how slow my bullcrap network is

nonetheless thanks for the assistance.

 

[wacabletech]

Well i hooked up two of the computers, one i plugged directly in using cat6 hardware to the router. The other i used a cat5e keystone with the cat6 cable and cat6 patch cord. it works, and it works great. I am getting 37-40 MB/s reading from my mac mini server (with 5400 hdd) to my desktop and a little slower copying from my desktop to the mac mini. Which those speeds seem about right since its not like hard disk drives write much faster then that so i am assuming 40MB/s over gigabit is fairly accurate.

unless im wrong and you guys will tell me how slow my bullcrap network is

nonetheless thanks for the assistance.

Looks right by this thread
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/21405-42-highest-transfer-rate-home

 

[dholster]

Something weird about my hard drives being the limiting factor on my network speed. My ssd itch is acting up...

 

[dholster]

I failed to updated you helpful folks.

My network is pretty much amazing now. I ran the new cable and paid special attention to the shield foil and drain wires to make sure they were neat and tidy. Only issue is how freaking thick and stiff the cable is. Otherwise it went perfect, thanks for the help guys!

 

[sdkjr]

I failed to updated you helpful folks.

My network is pretty much amazing now. I ran the new cable and paid special attention to the shield foil and drain wires to make sure they were neat and tidy. Only issue is how freaking thick and stiff the cable is. Otherwise it went perfect, thanks for the help guys!

Hi - Follow up to this. I have a new construction house. I ended up using Shielded Cat6 cable in it. Looking back, I should have just went with unshielded. But I'm now terminating. Wanted to check with you. How has your network held up so far using unshielded jacks, patch cables, patch panel? I'm thinking of doing the same. And with the drain wire and foil - did you just cut them off at the point of the connector? You said they were neat and tidy - hoping you can expound on that a bit.

Thanks!