Cat 8 cable?
- Thread starter Cyber-Mav
- Start date
so which cable is this that gives you more than the 4 pairs of regular ethernet?
The kenable cat6 I have may be better than the above "cheap and cheerful" some people talk of. The Kenable I have has an internal spline, internal pull thread and is black outdoor UV rated. It's quite hard to bend at a tight radius or you can damage the internal spline. It's solid copper core and apparently 23awg. It's about £45 for 100m.
looking at the excel brand cable cat6, i noticed in the pics it doesnt have that crosstalk divider spline going down the middle. why is excel rated as good quality then?
Soldato
- Joined
- 20 Oct 2008
- Posts
- 12,082
All of the Cat6 Excel cable I've ever handled over many years has had the divider. If you look on their website every type of Cat6 they sell has the divider.
What are you looking at? It isn't unusual for resellers to mix up the pictures for all sorts of products.
The plastic spline isn't actually a requirement of the Cat6 spec
Soldato
- Joined
- 20 Oct 2008
- Posts
- 12,082
True, but they're just making their life harder for no good reason if it isn't included.
I can assure it does. It's much bigger and stiffer (ooh er! Missus!) than the one in the Kenable equivalent and the outer sheath is thicker as well.
As per WJA96's comment, I can also confirm that it has the plastic divider as that's the cable I used in this house and I still have some of it in a box in the loft. Excel Networking would be my own personal choice for installs from the cable to the patch pannels etc...
There is also little to no requirement for shielded cable in a residental property.
The challenge is ‘how would you know?’ And simply put very, very few people are equipped to measure Electromagnetic radiation. So if it was working really well, or it’s completely pointless, we’ll probably never know.
This guy here demonstrated how easy crosstalk happens if the cables are next to each other:
https://youtu.be/SguxCeOFPQk
Thats the video that got me thinking
https://youtu.be/SguxCeOFPQk
Thats the video that got me thinking
And yet the real world says that demo is some kind of special case. I’m sure he got the worst case unshielded cable he could find to sell his expensive cable against.
And in any case, anyone ‘proper’ running high quality (4:4:4/60Hz) 4K over HDMI converters is using optical fibre anyway.
So the 100+ winds of cable on the drum next to each other make no difference, but pressing the cable together does? Clearly staged
Just looking at replacing the ethernet cables in my home was looking at Kenable Cat8 but there all flat cables, thought they were a reputable place to buy cables but I've also read flat cable is just a gimmick. Any help here would be appreciated.
Last edited:
Soldato
- Joined
- 20 Oct 2008
- Posts
- 12,082
Replacing what cables for what reason?
You'd have to try very hard to buy a standard Cat5e or Cat6 cable that didn't work.
The problem with flat cables is avoiding the one's that are complete junk. If you don't need your cables to be flat then they would be a gimmick.
I'm assuming there was some autocorrect goodness in your post?
I bought some junk Cat7 cables a long time ago from amazon and just looking to replace them for some decent, normal cables. I assumed all flat cables were junk and was suprised to see them on Kenable that's all.
Autocorrect did me dirty there, yikes.
Don’t use flat cable. A friend tried using it in to a patch panel recently to make it look neat in places, but it just wouldn’t recognise it at all when patched in.
I gave him my spare Cat6 reel (from Kenable actually) and what do you know it worked first time...
Soldato
- Joined
- 20 Oct 2008
- Posts
- 12,082
Are the 'junk' cables you have causing problems? If not replacing them is pretty pointless. They don't need to be 'Cat7', just good enough for the speeds you're running.
There are two main reasons why flat cables can be 'junk'
- They don't use twisted pairs
- They use undersized conductors