Good and bad patch cables

[moosport]

I ran into a situation where a few patch cables used to connect from patch panel to the switch was no good. Equipment attached to the wall jacks will not connect.

Swapping out the cables fixed the problem. This is where it get strange. When I tested the bad cables using a laptop to the wall jacks. it connected fine at 1 gpbs. These are 1 feet cables.

Am I missing something here? The CAT6A patch panel are new and so are all the wirings and keystone jacks.

 

[Greg72]

The Male ends are sometimes junk. I have had to toss cables after six months because the tang on the Male end would not hold the connector in the jack anymore. Even with higher cost cables, they canhave poor plastic for the connector. Consider patch cables to be expendable stock and keep extras on hand.

 

[dosborne]

Am I missing something here?

No. It is a very common problem. Short patch cables are often (but not always obviously) made with lower quality components as in many cases the fact that they are short can, in some cases, compensate for the poor quality.

Although obviously not economical for large installs, I've switched to fully tested CAT7 cables for my SOHO to hopefully remove this issue once and for all.

 

[Trip]

No. It is a very common problem. Short patch cables are often (but not always obviously) made with lower quality components as in many cases the fact that they are short can, in some cases, compensate for the poor quality.

Although obviously not economical for large installs, I've switched to fully tested CAT7 cables for my SOHO to hopefully remove this issue once and for all.

And this right here is why I only use quality TAA patch; Panduit, Hubbel, Ortonics, Belden, etc. My lowest-tier buy would be from FS. They still individually test and bag, though. Doesn't mean this stuff can be broken and trashed in-use, either, but at least I know it's solid when being installed.

 

[dosborne]

As they often say, "you get what you pay for".

 

[moosport]

I’ll be ordering new cables with new power strip. Thanks!