Cat 8 cable?

Cyber-Mav

Cyber-Mav

Cyber-Mav

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Anyone using cat 8 or even 7 cable? Anyone gone from lesser cable like 6a or 6 to 7 or 8 and saw a difference?
Now im not saying this from a home gigabit lan lan setup, but from anything else or situations that have benefitted from it.
Maybe someone ran a 200mtr run of it for 10gig speed or something?
Just more out of curiosity to find out in what type of situation it was of benefit.
 
You missed the obvious point, you won't see faster speeds without a faster adapter, so the answer will always be 'no' unless the adapter is swapped out to something capable of more, or the cable is crap. Also you won't find anyone using Cat7, it's dead, un-certified by IEEE and has been for coming up to 20 years. 6a is for 10Gbit+ (though it's been proven repeatedly that 10Gb runs fine over 5e in lengths that are found in most domestic installs that don't have a wing for the servants and weren't terminated using your teeth) and 8 is for 25-40Gbit+, you generally find home users using 40Gbit and those that do won't be using cat 8, it's usually cheap infiniband kit, force everything to run TCP and wear earplugs near the switch/turn the heating off.
 
Iv read of success stories of cat 5e doing 10gig so does that mean its possible for 40gig to be done by cat6a or is that 8 territory?
 
No personal experience but there's a massive bandwidth jump between Cat6a (500MHz) and Cat8 (2000MHz). I think if you can afford 40GbE you can use the correct interconnect.

Regarding bandwidth, the actual bandwidth of good Cat5e is actually greater than the minimum required bandwidth for Cat6 which is why Cat5e will handle 10GbE at shortish distances.
 
bremen1874 said:
Unfortunately, you do but only on an amateur basis. The people that fell for the BS on Amazon when buying network cables crop up on here quite often. Whether the cable they've bought is actually Cat7 is obviously questionable.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TERA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GG45

Just calling something 7 doesn't make it actually 7, for that it needs to meet the accepted standard and 7 is dead/never progressed, the industry chose 6a and moved on to 8. By the time we're at that stage, I would really, really hope we're just using fibre for everything.
 
I really don't get why people don't just use fibre for this sort of use case. I haven't looked at it for a while but I would've thought it'd still be cheaper than some ultra-copper.
 
Optical fiber should not be affected by emi etc so doesnt need shielding like copper (or cca lol) so can run next to electric motors etc is that correct?

Whats holding back fiber optic? Is it the kit to convert light signals back to electronic signals?
 
Cyber-Mav said:
Whats holding back fiber optic? Is it the kit to convert light signals back to electronic signals?
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Last time I had anything to do with it flexibility was still an issue - you can twist it, etc. quite a lot but it does tend to impact performance and still doesn't have the flexibility of cat5, etc. it is great for longer runs but still not as convenient for the last segment.
 
Cyber-Mav said:
Whats holding back fiber optic? Is it the kit to convert light signals back to electronic signals?
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The same thing that stops people terminating their own CAT6 cables. There is an entry cost for equipment, then a learning experience is required.

On top of that there is the issue of a lack of ‘pretty’ domestic faceplates to hold the adapters. And currently it’s massive overkill. We’ve recently gone over to 100% WiFi6 access points at home and most of our speed-sensitive devices are now running at 700-800Mbps with a BT incoming line speed of 900Mbps so, in effect, more than good enough.
 
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Rroff said:
Last time I had anything to do with it flexibility was still an issue - you can twist it, etc. quite a lot but it does tend to impact performance and still doesn't have the flexibility of cat5, etc. it is great for longer runs but still not as convenient for the last segment.
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On a new-build you just tell the builder what radius conduit is required and run it in that. We do installs with Linn partners for ultra-high end home infotainment installs and they have a spec for the conduit and the fibres and we just make sure everything matches the spec. We terminate into their panels and supply a suitable SFP+ switch but we still install CAT6 off those switches for ‘legacy’ devices. We also really struggle to get non-industrial looking end-points to plug SFP+ adapters into so even if you wanted to go totally fibre to the client most home owners don’t want it.
 
Iv seen some pics of cut open cat6a and cat8 cable and both look very similar. Visually i can't see what the upgrades were.
Cat5e to 6a you can easily see the multiple shielding layers.
 
As the categories increase the differences are:
  • Thicker wires
  • Tighter twist rate
  • Improved shielding for the shielded versions of the cable (Cat6a doesn't need to be shielded)
Pictures of the cables in isolation will look very similar. Pictured side by side the differences will be more obvious.
 
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