cat 6 550 mhz - stranded or solid?

[cwall64]

I am planing an update to my home to cat6 wiring, and I understand the difference between plenum an regular cable. But, which is better for normal patch cables solid or stranded? I want to buy a bulk 1000 foot roll and my longest run will probably be 75 feet. I have 2 24 port D-Link non-managed gigabit switches (DGS-1024D) and one 8 port D-Link gigabit switch (DGS-2208) in the home.

 

[spidey07]

You should not be making your own patch cables, especially with cat6. Use solid core cabling punched down into keystone jacks and then store bought patch cables.

Patch cables are stranded (because they are moved often) and that's why thier length is limited to 10 meters or less. 90 meters of solid with 5 meters of patch cable on each end. If you try to crimp ends onto stranded cat6 cable it will be complete failure.

 

[cwall64]

Forgive me for asking, but is there something special about making patch cables for cat6 vs cat5? It stands to reason that someone somewhere makes them, again I am not trying to be a wise-ass, just want to understand the difficulty.

 

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: cwall64
Forgive me for asking, but is there something special about making patch cables for cat6 vs cat5? It stands to reason that someone somewhere makes them, again I am not trying to be a wise-ass, just want to understand the difficulty.

1st off to make your own patch cables you have to use solid core cabling. This presents a problem because overtime all the bending will make the cable unreliable.

But the main reason is your homemade cables will very highly likely not meet category specifications and can cause all sorts of hair pulling problems including performance. We used to play around with new guys who thought we should make patch cables. It was really funny watching their face when their cables failed a cable scanner. They'd change their mind after that - thou shalt not mess with the physical layer.

 

[cwall64]

OK, sold! Heading to Fry's...

 

[imagoon]

Also it is not all that hard to do in wall installs. Myself and one other person wired every room for 2 x coax and 2 x cat6 in about 4 hours.