What's new

CAT5/CAT6 - interesting article

  • SNBForums Code of Conduct

    SNBForums is a community for everyone, no matter what their level of experience.

    Please be tolerant and patient of others, especially newcomers. We are all here to share and learn!

    The rules are simple: Be patient, be nice, be helpful or be gone!

Although my experience is very limited and I barely even use GbE, I have never traced any network problem to the cable itself, and I use cheap cables & treat them without care.

That mentioned article by Fluke ... yikes. 80% of cables do not pass spec? Fluke has a hell of a reputation for being top-tier quality.


I wish the article would have benchmarked the cables with some networking tests to see how these "faulty" cables actually performed, since I honestly do not care if they fail to meet spec yet still perform. If I were a professional, I might care, but not as a standard consumer.
 
since I honestly do not care if they fail to meet spec yet still perform. If I were a professional, I might care, but not as a standard consumer.

this is the problem when people come to forums and have network problems, and blame it on everything but the cables.
They think that if i works it ok but it could be unstable and be the real source off the problems
 
this is the problem when people come to forums and have network problems, and blame it on everything but the cables.
They think that if i works it ok but it could be unstable and be the real source off the problems

Granted, but testing the cable by replacing it with a known-good cable is quick & easy.

Would a bad cable apparent in the network statistics as erroneous packets? Over the past decade, I do not remember ever seeing more than a few packet errors whenever I viewed the stats displayed by the ip/ifconfig commands. My pfSense box says 11 errored packets out of 36million, which does seem higher than I would expect...


How do the below spec cables misbehave? Is it randomly or would it be consistently bad performance?
 
How do the below spec cables misbehave? Is it randomly or would it be consistently bad performance?

Both - poor performance might stand out as being a bad cable - it's the random oddness that drives people nuts...
 
Reminds me of recent posts about the guy from google calling out substandard charging cables, however this one seems more marketing centric. Most cables simply fail, or flake out when they are moved as the point of failure is normally on the connector and are somewhat easy point out because of the transmission errors that are seen as the article suggests. Most people on home networks wouldnt see this, it is more in larger/higher bandwidth installations when connecting equipment to switches, and poor installations when running over longer distances than a patch cord (> 10 feet). Normally the switch, network cards, config are blamed especially when you pop open that new patch cable bag and connect things to the network. As you do not normally achieve the theoretical speeds, hard to say when close enough to that would really be affected by the cable, as normally you get the works or not.

when dealing with 10gbe, arent most people using fibre connections anyway?
 
Last edited:
I have always had good luck with Belkin Ethernet cables. I even order them for my home.

So far all the wiring jobs, I did at home, is all Belkin manufacture. Had no issues with Belkin cables and rj45 connectors. One time was checking the boxes for the manufacturing certifications, packaging labels and the Holographic Label Authentication was legit. then I discover the 300 feet roll of cable was made in the USA. I thought was made in PLANET CHINA.

Good thing, I spend some time reading about counterfeit issues.
Lucky me, and very bless, I still own and able to test all my cables and terminations with my personal own fluke TDR with all the modules to adapt to different type of testing. {time domain reflectomery}.
 
Last edited:
Belden is fairly decent quality in bulk spools, and their pre-cut (5/10/20 ft) are good...
 
Belden is fairly decent quality in bulk spools, and their pre-cut (5/10/20 ft) are good...

When I bought the cat5e roll, I broke out my fluke, to test the length, Gage, and weight of the spool cable, I was making sure there was no "short falls in the factory spool roll", the sales man was asking my son: That gentleman is so picky! My son told him: He is my father! I just smile with a grim!

I always took my tasking seriously. it paid off at the end.
 
Granted, but testing the cable by replacing it with a known-good cable is quick & easy.

Would a bad cable apparent in the network statistics as erroneous packets? Over the past decade, I do not remember ever seeing more than a few packet errors whenever I viewed the stats displayed by the ip/ifconfig commands. My pfSense box says 11 errored packets out of 36million, which does seem higher than I would expect...


How do the below spec cables misbehave? Is it randomly or would it be consistently bad performance?

A lot of time people don't want to pay for cabling testing tools to run their own home test.
 
Similar threads
Thread starter Title Forum Replies Date
A Testing Cat6 in the new home network Switches, NICs and cabling 14

Similar threads

Latest threads

Sign Up For SNBForums Daily Digest

Get an update of what's new every day delivered to your mailbox. Sign up here!
Top