In fact, even Cat 5e is problematic, see here
<https://www.audioholics.com/audio-video-cables/bjc-cat-network-cable-quality-interview>.
56RAF_phoenix
On 23/06/2020 16:35, 56RAF_phoenix wrote:
I've recently had an interesting set of problems in the home network.
A few years ago, I thought I'd done a really smart thing by cabling most of the rooms in the house with Cat 6 ethernet cable. It was painful to keep it invisible, but by clambering through eaves and the attic, I managed to keep it all out of sight, ending in Cat 6 RJ45 sockets in all the rooms bar the main bedroom. All the cables ended up in the garage in a Cat 6 patch panel. I bought a simple ethernet continuity tester to make sure the connections were good. In anticipation of getting fibre-to-the-house, I added two cables going to a dual RJ45 in the utilities cupboard, where I expected to get the fibre as it was closest to the road.
The first hint of a problem was that I didn't seem to get Gig-E to the patch panel. Digging around for info, I found some comments that this patch panel wasn't up to Gigabit speeds. So I replaced the patch panel.
Then fibre-to-the-house eventually came, and at the relatively modest speed of 30Gb/s, the fibre modem connected to the router, but the fact it wasn't at Gigabit speed didn't really matter.
I've upgraded to 500 Gb/s on the fibre modem. Now all the problems came home to roost. The BT remote testing said I had a ~100m distance between the fibre modem and the outer router that couldn't support Gigabit. Now I realised that the Cat 6 cable I'd bought and wired from Maplin was poor quality and simply not up to the job (I'm glad they've gone bust now!) The ~15-20m cable run, three RJ45 sockets and a passive patch panel was simply too lossy and noisy for Gigabit speeds.
Having now read up about it, I've replaced the fibre modem to router with a single, good quality, shielded (specifically S/FTP), factory installed plugs, length of Cat 7 cable (I don't think a little coiling makes any difference at these frequencies). Apparently amateurs like me can successfully wire cables up to Cat 5e standard reasonably successfully. But once you get faster every untwist and cut of the wires counts as signals bounce off the ends. You need serious equipment to test that you've got a good connection.
Similarly, I've now replaced the short generic Cat 6 patch cables that are dotted around with stiff Cat 8 S/FTP (though standard RJ45 plugs) patch cables with 26 AWG copper wires.
Apparently, a lot of the stuff sold on Amazon as Cat 7 or 8 simply isn't. I've had good experience with Veetop and Kasimo brands. Installers tend to buy from big reputable distributors.
Now the bonus factor is that the mysterious interference on the satellite TV signal is much reduced. That's after hours of replacing compression plugs on thick coax, which didn't solve the problem.
So I've penned this to help anyone else who might be heading the same way as speeds increase. Don't buy cheap and cheerful ethernet cables beyond Cat 5e.
56RAF_phoenix
