Cat5 cat5e or cat6 options?

J

James Drake

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Jul 17, 2012
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Anybody experienced in making their own?

Looking for the absolute best cable option to buy in lengths of 100m. Should coil nicely like a good mic lead and live life on the road happily.

Can be cat5 or cat5e or cat6 or whatever we think is the best thing (aren't bigger numbers better?)?

Choice of connector and crimp tool as well is important. I understand that the neutrik thing is just a shell so you still have to get an rj45 connector first?

Any pros out there with authoritative opinion in this?
 
Re: Cat5 cat5e or cat6 options?

James Drake said:
Anyone used the EZ-RJ45 connectors and crimp tools?

EZ-RJPRO® HD Crimp Tool | 100054
Category Page | Connectors
Click to expand...

They're awesome.
a bit more expensive of course, but aside from miswiring the connector completely the most common problem that I've seen is that the wire doesnt get fully inserted into the connector so the crimp just barely catches. this causes it to work fine but fail after its been flexed a few times.. with these guys the wire goes all the way through so that's not even a possibility.
Also, since you strip and straighten more wire than you need then pull it through you're able to get the twists much tighter into the connector (which can make a difference if you have lots of connections or are pushing the max length)

keep in mind that if you have 100m cables, and are plugging them into patchbays or something other than the actual equipment (which it sounds like you may if you're asking about neutrik connectors) then you'll technically be over 100m total.

Jason
 
Re: Cat5 cat5e or cat6 options?

James Drake said:
Anyone used the EZ-RJ45 connectors and crimp tools?

EZ-RJPRO® HD Crimp Tool | 100054
Category Page | Connectors
Click to expand...

I've used them. I found them useful as a training tool until I got the hang of using the standard 8P8C ends.

Some potential downsides are the exposed wire may be more prone to corrosion than in a standard connector, and if the crimper doesn't cut the wires quite flush you can have connectivity problems in certain jacks.
 
Re: Cat5 cat5e or cat6 options?

to shield or not?

should we use shielded cable?

apparently if the whole system is not properly shielded and grounded then having the shield is pointless and may even cause more problems.

here is an interesting table:
EtherSound Technology: Compatibility

most of the cable on here is in fact shielded.

are there any other manufacturer recommendations from behringer/midas or anyone else using cat5?
 
Re: Cat5 cat5e or cat6 options?

James Drake said:
to shield or not?

should we use shielded cable?

apparently if the whole system is not properly shielded and grounded then having the shield is pointless and may even cause more problems.

here is an interesting table:
EtherSound Technology: Compatibility

most of the cable on here is in fact shielded.

are there any other manufacturer recommendations from behringer/midas or anyone else using cat5?
Click to expand...
A&H recommends shielded.
 
Re: Cat5 cat5e or cat6 options?

At a recent Lectrosonics training class (Aspen processor and Dante stuff), they recommended shielding... not so much because outside interference was a problem for the Dante signals, but that radiated noise FROM the Dante lines might be an issue for other gear and also FCC compliance.
 
Re: Cat5 cat5e or cat6 options?

Scott Helmke said:
At a recent Lectrosonics training class (Aspen processor and Dante stuff), they recommended shielding... not so much because outside interference was a problem for the Dante signals, but that radiated noise FROM the Dante lines might be an issue for other gear and also FCC compliance.
Click to expand...

I'd believe a recommendation of shielding to mittigate interference from the ethernet to analog connectons.

From a pure data perspective (and Dante, ACE, ... are just data) there are proaby billions of miles of Cat5/5e/6/6A in use and nearly all of it is unshielded.

Philip
 
Re: Cat5 cat5e or cat6 options?

Bennett Prescott said:
Where does the shield tie to? Isn't ethernet optically isolated?
Click to expand...

Yamaha recommends shielded Cat5e for both Dante and Ethersound, and Clearcom recommends Shielded Cat5 for their Cellcom system. I just installed both in the last two weeks.

The shielded Cat5e cable that we bought had an extra drain wire that mated with the foil shield. The instructions for the Dante remote boxes that we got with the CL5 were to afix the drain wire to the connector chassis via conductive tape, or some similar means. It's probably best if you use the metal Cat5e connectors and then find away to attach the drain wire to the Ethercon outer barrel.
 
Re: Cat5 cat5e or cat6 options?

If you have a sheilded cable then you should use a sheilded RJ45 connector and properly connect the shield.

If you look at the ethercon panel connector, it has two little metal tabs on each side. If a manufacturer is recommending the use of sheilded cable for interconnect then surely they should have tied these little metal tabs to ground inside their gear? Maybe we're going to start seeing something like the pin 1 problem for cat5 interconnect, where different manufacturers can't agree on a common grounding scheme?

As far as i can tell, the ethercon cable connector is purely a shell. So if you are using sheilded cable and rj45 connector then you shouldn't need to also tie the neutrik barrel to the sheild.

What if you use sheilded cable between two boxes which to not properly ground their connectors (or you have not followed the directions like conductive tape etc)? Do you have a big length of metal which may cause harm to your system?

So this begs the question, what to do with installed cable?

For a network installation in a building I guess they're ASSuming that all connections in a building are going to be part of the same network. In which case if their whole network is sheilded it should all be tied to ground at a suitable point, like the main patch panel or something.

But if you want to use the cat5 cabling in the building for the task of purely connecting two devices directly together, then they probably want a sheilded connection to each other, which they then ground themselves via whatever method. In this case you probably do not want your shield tied to the ground with the rest of the cat5 cabling in the building!
 
Re: Cat5 cat5e or cat6 options?

I've had problems with gear designed for Cat5 UTP when I've used Cat5 STP. Cutting the shield in the receiving end solved the issues, I personally believe that this was due to ground currents in the shield between gear running on different power subpanels, but I have no evidence to back this up.
 
Re: Cat5 cat5e or cat6 options?

Helge Dr. Bentsen said:
I've had problems with gear designed for Cat5 UTP when I've used Cat5 STP. Cutting the shield in the receiving end solved the issues, I personally believe that this was due to ground currents in the shield between gear running on different power subpanels, but I have no evidence to back this up.
Click to expand...

What end is the receiving end of a cat5? Most applications will have data traffic either way. So what is probably the best side to sever the shield in say a FOH->stage CAT5 snake?
 
Re: Cat5 cat5e or cat6 options?

Helge Dr. Bentsen said:
Good point. The shield was cut at the stage rack end. For some reason I think of it as the receiving end :)
Click to expand...

There should never be any reason to apply a telescoping ground to Ethernet; from a connectivity perspective. I would look at more typical problems like bent/kinked cabling. Damage to the twist in differential cabling can be the biggest problem. See the many youtube videos of people kinking the cable and showing the bandwidth cut in half... Yes, you can step once on a cable and loose a lot of the bandwidth with Ethernet. Of course this goes the same for audio cabling which is shielded. One step is enough to deform the shield and make it worthless. It's always awesome at a venue when the production guy drives over your measurement mic cable with his golf cart six or seven times.........

100Base-T will when not properly shielded, causes some big spikes around 1k if you're using crappy line level interconnects. The Gigabit ones seem to also show up on RG58 coax connections. Better connectors, better wire, with a tighter shield will cure this for unbalanced signals. The better the individual devices are designed as far as RF shielding, the less this shows up.
 
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