Spec/Find/Recommend Me...

RedMogg

RedMogg

RedMogg

Soldato
Joined
1 Nov 2011
Posts
3,255
Location
Portsmouth
I'll be very brief as I'm carpet shopping right now, but I'll come back and give more info later:

Right now, I need a recommendation for decent quality, but good value Cat 6 cable drum.

I intend to network the new place (2 Bed GFF with integral garage - Wheelchair accessible spec) to a Node Zero for media distribution and to keep sticky fingers off my toys... :D
 
I'd wager that not one of the "Cat6" installs done on this forum is anywhere near spec and half wouldn't even pass Cat5e.

That said, Belden is the best cable manufacturer out there.
Source your patch cables from the same people too.
 
bitslice said:
I'd wager that not one of the "Cat6" installs done on this forum is anywhere near spec and half wouldn't even pass Cat5e.

That said, Belden is the best cable manufacturer out there.
Source your patch cables from the same people too.
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Can you elaborate ?
 
R.O.S.S.I said:
trollolol.
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Oh look, someone saying troll when really they mean your view differs from mine. Make a point or stop wasting people's time.
rhysduck said:
Can you elaborate ?
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Go pull the first 50 examples of CAT6 cable off google, not one will give you any idea of specification. That's because most are outsourced to China who know they can deliver a cable that looks the part because nobody is asking them to build to a spec, you'll be lucky to find the impedance being close to nominal, never mind any other parameter.
Cable companies don't care about the domestic market, they are interested in people who buy cable by the 100's of km not the metre.

Cat6 cable is very sensitive to how it's constructed, Belden apparently even used a Cray to work out the optimum twist for a cable, because real world interference differs so much from the theoretical.
Then there are installation issues, OK if you can lay this stuff on flat trays from the ceiling, but in a house you might have someone yanking it around under floorboards and then zip tying it all together.

To properly measure what you end up with requires some very expensive equipment and a lot of time, which is why almost nobody does it, they just hope that because the number is one bigger (cat5 < cat6) then it must magically be better.
In real world situations you can actually get cat6 installations that perform worse than cat5.

That's why I'm dubious about most of these installations, because people's interest only appears to go as far as finding a cable with Cat6 written on the side.
RedMogg is actually the only poster so far to consider what he is buying.
 
But to 99% of home users who will buy cable 'marked' up as Cat6 and get 1Gbps throughput why does what you have mentioned matter in the slightest?
 
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R.O.S.S.I said:
and get 1Gbps throughput
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Because they don't? Nobody does.
What you actually get is some vague and intermittent combination of what your hardware/application/protocol/cable can provide.
At some point somebody is going to try and negotiate a 10Gb link across these installations and it's not going to work very well, the Chinese cable is going to be ripped out and someone is going to redo everything.
There is very little point in throwing money at something when you haven't got the kit to test what you have done, you are not going to use it in your lifetime and you've skimped on the one component that is critical to it working anyway.


"Ah yes, this house is fully future prepped with cat6a cable throughout, blah, blah"

That is almost completely meaningless.
 
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Thanks for the really helpful posts gents. I shall be sure to order hundreds of kilometres of actual proper legit CAT6, so that my 2 bedroom, 75 square metre council flat is fully compliant when streaming CBeebies HD... :rolleyes:
 
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RedMogg said:
Thanks for the really helpful posts gents. I shall be sure to order hundreds of kilometres of actual proper legit CAT6, so that my 2 bedroom, 75 square metre council flat is fully compliant when streaming CBeebies HD... :rolleyes:
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Couldn't agree with you more mate!
 
R.O.S.S.I said:
Couldn't agree with you more mate!
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I can't see that celebrating ignorance is a step forward :confused:

Take a close look at your motherboard sometime, notice the odd lines which are more squiggly than the others? That's because it is hard to get a signal from one end of a 12" board to the other without some arriving at different times.
Now attempt the same thing over 100 metres with all the wire's transmission parameters changing at every bend and at every noise source, as part of a system installed by people with no clue about RF.

Personally I like doing something right, and if I don't understand the finer points of RCBO's or whatever, then I'll go find someone who does.
 
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bitslice said:
I can't see that celebrating ignorance is a step forward :confused:

Take a close look at your motherboard sometime, notice the odd lines which are more squiggly than the others? That's because it is hard to get a signal from one end of a 12" board to the other without some arriving at different times.
Now attempt the same thing over 100 metres with all the wire's transmission parameters changing at every bend and at every noise source, as part of a system installed by people with no clue about RF.

Personally I like doing something right, and if I don't understand the finer points of RCBO's or whatever, then I'll go find someone who does.
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We get it,

Your a little anal about your network installs.

So I suggest a forum user name change to "network anal-yst"
 
I'm not being anal about anything, I'm just bored of people installing it because they have read that 6 is a bigger number than 5 and therefore cat5e sucks balls.

I've seen this attitude at work, one site was a monkey's nest of Belkin crap and half assed wiring, any attempt by Engineering to copy a CAD file crashed the network. Their IT guy didn't even know how to analyse the network for errors.

Basically he had massively upscaled his home network using the same kit he got off eBay and didn't understand why it wasn't working.
There is a reason it's called "Network Engineering" and not "cabling ****fest by retarded monkeys"
 
Just remember to check you're getting the right type of cable depending on how you're terminating the ends.

If using a punch tool I'd recommend solid, otherwise go stranded for more flexibility.

Let me know if you want a sample, I've got tons left.
 
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