proper cat6a S/FTP termination

[SGTKross]

Hello, hope I posted this in the right category:

A friend of mine recently rewired his house with cat6a ethernet cable (S/FTP) and had about 15 meters of it left over, and he gave it to me, so I decided to upgrade my wiring (simple 5m connection from router to workstation).

Now, in the past I've only worked with simple cat5 unshielded cables, so I'm not aware of the proper termination of shielded cables, to be more specific: do I need to fold the shielding back on the jacket and wrap the drain wire around it so as to make it in contact with the shielding on the RJ45 plug?

 

[bill001g]

At that short it won't matter just ignore it and use the cable like any other.

Shield cable is dependent on the equipment supporting shielded cable....most does not. The shielded rj45 have metal tabs on the side that the shield is to be connected to. Problem is if those tabs have nothing in the equipment to actual ground to....and it takes a very special ground to avoid ground loops....you are actually better off with cable that has no shielding.

Most time when you use shielded cable with equipment that does not support it you run the shielded cable to patch panels that are properly grounded and then you don't worry about the small patch between the panel and the equipment.

Shielding is pretty much a joke because when you actually have a issue that requires shielded cable it is much easier to use fiber optic cables which are much easier to install than shielded cable especially when you are going to run 10g.

 

[SGTKross]

Thanks! One question (for the sake of curiosity), if one were to say, want to route a 25m cat6a S/FTP cable across floors, would they have to worry about shielding with it only going past a few TV cables ?

 

[bill001g]

The only time I have ever seen shielded Ethernet required was in a airport. They said it was because of the radar. I am still not clear if they were worried the radar would causes issues with the ethernet or they were afraid the ethernet would generate signals that would mess up the radar.

The only time I have ever seen any type of interference was when someone pretty much wrapped the ethernet around the ballast in a florescent light fixture. Its against code to even run ethernet in the enclosure much less near a ballast.

I have been involved with installation (most design lately) of many hundreds of thousands of ethernet ports and path panels and we never use shield cable. If you open modern server racks they are just packed with electical and ethernet cable in very close proximity and they cause no issues.

TV coax cable is already shielded anyway.