ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade Voice - Data - Video Discussion Cat6 installation

I am doing an upgrade of network cabling in an office building (basically the grunt work). The network guy told me to run cat6 to all locations. I am fairly new to the data industry. Any suggestions as to Cat6 or cat6a, or anything special I should know?

I understand the termination can take longer to do

Make very certain that you don't bend the cable sharply. Cat6 is extremely sensitive to bending radius. Most times even trying to straighten it out after it's been bent still results in the cable failing.

Watch out for any stub UP that you have to pull. If the whip that you pull gets stored in a coil waiting for the end of the job, just the cable hanging down over the end of the conduit can mess it up.

Any cable that fails the tests at the end of the job can't be fixed and will need to be replaced...usually by you at no extra cost. Since we're all working at razor thin margins these days, also be careful about other trades stepping on or yanking your cables once you've got them installed.

There's a lot you should know. If you're not even sure what the questions are, you probably shouldn't be installing a data network.
I'm not trying to be insulting, but answering your question completely would be like trying to put you through apprenticeship. We're happy to help, but your question is huge.

Now hang on a minute, Greg.
This guy could be a pretty darned good electrician that is looking to branch out into new areas of work.
The only REAL difference between a Cat5e cable and Cat6 is the internal "+" filler seperating the twisted pairs.
He is running these cables, he was asking for advice on running them.
I don't think he is asking how to hook up the patch panel.

I did an office with a couple hundred outlets. I pulled two spare cables and used them both. The spare cables saved hours of work and we were able to get the replacements in place and terminated so it didn't hold up testing. As careful as you might be, something or someone can snag a cable.

They are as hard to terminate as cat5 and take about as long. I give that job to apprentices. They love it and talk about doing it for a living - for the first day. If they mess up, no one gets hurt and it only takes a few minutes to fix.

We leave a coil of about 20 feet above each outlet. It's nice to be able to move the outlet when the desk is relocated.

We had specs to leave a 20 foot coil over the rack, but that was a disaster with that many data cables and almost as many telephone cables. I prefer panduit or a cable-way to hide a couple extra feet so that end can be re-terminated, too.

There is a school of thought that says you never coil CATx. You are supposed to make lazy "S"s. I am not sure I have ever seen proof, it is more of a (choke) theory thing.

If so, many schools, companies, universities and districts, plus their various installers, have done it wrong for the past 20 years. I've never seen any Cat5/5e/6 contained using anything but coiling.

4/0 feeder, on the other hand...

I agree. I said I have never seen any proof. It was just a warning of things you might hear. When I was doing TDR training in my office I had a couple hundred foot spool of IBM type 1 cable hooked up and it worked fine (just trying to get some length out there). I also had "baseband" cables coiled on top of fluorescent troffers, tywrapped to the feeder going to the elevator and every other thing I had heard legends about. The stuff just ran.
OTOH I could show you a kink in a CAT 5, every connector and a nail through it, even one that didn't pierce any pair insulation, showed up like a sore thumb. An overhand knot is pretty ugly too.
If you were sloppy doing your terminations it was almost as bad as the nail.
We were still going pretty slow in those days so the LANs still ran fine with all of these things but these days with gigabit over copper you may not do as well. The effect will usually just be the network slowing down and everything may still "work" but your LAN administrator will be tracking it down eventually if they are earning their pay.

The prohibition against coiling the cable comes from the world of radio and TV. Broadcast signals can end up causing ghosting if the cables are coiled up.
You can coil Cat6 to your heart's content, just don't kink it or bend it too sharply.

BTW, lots of times Cat6 gets specified because that's "the IN thing to have". If the network can't handle those speeds, the full capabilities of Cat 6 are never touched.

When I was in the BICSI class the mantra was to install the best cable you could find because the labor is the expensive part and nobody ever complained that their network was too fast.

OK, too harsh maybe. But he asked specifically about 6A and I see a lot of arguments here about coiling, bundling, lazy s's etc. 6A is a protocol requiring the cable to be constructed and installed to combat ANEXT- Alien near end cross talk- or cross talk originating from an unknown source rather than in the individual cable itself which is simply called NEXT. Bundling and coiling where the cables are in close proximity to each other for long distances increases ANEXT and CAT6A cable should not be installed in this manner. Loose runs laying in a tray is the suggested installation method.
Thats what I meant by knowing what the questions are.

I'm not too familiar with the specs of 6a, but you definitely want to put in at least 6 these days... Although 5e/6 will handle 1Gbps just fine, if your client makes a jump to 10Gbps they'll be SOL unless they are all short runs. Take a look at the cost vs. the expected life of the installation.

I didn't really think much about the minute differences in shielding and twist between 5/5e/6 until the last building I worked with data in upgraded their switches to 1Gbps. Fortunately, our campus had all Cat6 (opened 2000/2001) in the walls but we found out which patch cables weren't up to snuff almost immediately. My "copper is copper" theory was shot to hell as we had to track down and replace all kinds of Cat5 buried under furniture. There was another building in the district that wasn't too much older (opened 1999) that had been done with Cat5 and they had to do a whole building rewire. Messy. I didn't even realize they had Cat6 in 2000, since I'm pretty sure that 5e was not even a published standard then.

For the original post, it should be mentioned that data cable must be secured only with velcro - on sale at your local data store.

Thanks for all the great info, gentlemen. I am an electrician, however from time to time, I install the data cables at the same time. This application happens to be for a good customer of mine. I have also worked eith the network guy several times. He just isn't into installation of the cableing. He only does set-up and programming. Therefore, I will be installing and terminating.

We did chose to use Cat6 as it is more readily available and sufficient for this application.

TWH, what does the velcro have to do with anything? No cable ties?? Even losely?

Thanks again guys!!

1) I have a 100' cat 5E run running my computer, and it is faster than wireless.

2) My high school was wired with cat 6 back in late 1990's/early 2000's. SCHUYLKILL COUNTY!!!

3) Why velcro? I thought that is elininated by twisting the conductors.

Of course, you can use loose cable ties. You can also lay the cables on the ceiling tiles, or whatever. It will all work. But, next year when another electrician sticks his head in the ceiling, he'll tell the customer that you messed up by using ties. Then, he'll tell the customer that you're sloppy because you didn't tighten the cable ties.

I recommend a termination tool that punches everything at the same time. They're pricey, but well worth it.

We use pattern A for punching, unless the rest of the place is pattern B, or is that Cat5?

Doesn't matter if you use A or B as long as you do the same at both ends, otherwise you end up with a crossover cable.

Portions of my wired network aren't faster than wireless; at least, not 802.11b; I still have a bunch of devices on a 10Mbps segment because I can't bring myself to replace things that are still working just fine, even if a bit slower than today's standards. I have a 3Com 10Mbps hub that has a lifetime warranty! Although, if I ever had to make a claim on it (if they would even still honor it) they're most likely send me something a little more modern.

The thought is that a cable tie crushes the pairs and changes the SWR. I know a kink will show up on a scope (TDR). If you create a sharp bend with the tie I am sure it will show up. Whether that actually changes performance is the wild card.

I am hard wired here on my home network and I get 100mz performance. I did weed out all of the 10mz boxes. You will do better if you swap out hubs for switches most of the time. I can have up to about 18 boxes on the network but usually there are only 7 or 8 turned on at any one time.

Home networks do not require speeds greater than provided by Cat 5 and most of them don't even need that. Someday that might not be true and having better cable won't hurt but it's going to be a while before you recover the cost. It sounds like Greg has a network beyond that of the usual home user.
Noderaser, it is not correct that either the A or B protocol can be used wherever as long as both ends are the same. Proper test equipment can tell which has been used and except for rare exceptions, B is the common protocol. Using A will usually work but won't test. It's like saying that swapping the black and white in Romex will work just fine. It will, but it's not right and the next guy is going to be pissed.

I just ran a cable to everything with a rj45 on it. That is two satellite boxes, Replay TV DVR, printer and a bunch of PCs. Mostly I am file sharing and if I am moving big files around, speed is important. My problem is my switch is 100mb, even though I have some 1gb LAN cards. I am just too cheap to replace the switch.

I stopped at the first link, so don't give me too much grief about the source. I just don't care enough to search further.

http://www.duxcw.com/faq/network/diff568ab.htm

It's a ground-up or down argument. It's only bad if your helper is ground-up and you're ground-down, in the same room. I had my last job (T568A) tested by an independent lab. However, I haven't tested T568B, so it might have gone better and I might have saved a couple cables.

Has anyone tested both to cat6 standard? That would be really helpful.

Been there. Except my helper was an industrial electrician and I was a 12-year-old. Thye result: mixed ground patterns, but I wired faster, so thee were moRe ups. I could see thyat happening with data.

Btw, all of my cat5 is ty-rapped mixed with phone, romex, se, speaker, and just about every other type of cable known to man with no problems.

Thanks for all the great information. All cat6 is installed, terminated (T568B), and all equipment back on-line. Now waiting on network guy to relocated some equipment and make any required changes. Thanks again!

I picked up a 1 Gb switch for home (4 ports only) under $20. Not a bad price, but not all my stuff has Gb cards. Now I have found that the push connections that I made were not that good. I highly recommend using a puch down tool that terminates all pairs at once (unless you are only doing your own house) and some are better than others.

Wow...
Reading this really puts me in the stone age!

My laptop (home) has a patch cord to the DSL modem, and a USB 4 port extra hub & wireless mouse & keyboard.

Sure sounds like I'm missing a lot of 'good stuff'!

It is pretty handy having a network. I have an old laptop that runs my Fax, a scanner, the weather station and a big disk drive, all on the network. Once you do that you will wonder how you ever lived without it. The fax and scanner both feed into shared files so anything you do is available to any other machine on the network.
Hook a network printer to that and you can work from anywhere in the house.

Why won't the 568A configuration be able to test? Do you mean if one end of the cable is configured 568B and the other is mistakenly configured 568A?

One of our guys just finished a couple hundred cables all terminated A and they tested okay. I don't think the testing machine can tell the difference. Anyway, it seems A is the government standard on both sides of the border.

Whatever happened to ECN member Hbiss on a subject such as this?
I'm sure he'd have a dollar or two in on this argument.

Mike, Hal is alive and well. I communicate with him pretty much daily on another forum. You're right though, he knows his stuff and definitely has an opinion. No mixed words in his vocabulary.

Sophisticated test equipment, calibrated properly, can detect the minute differences in length of each pair, caused by their differing twist rates. If you have a switch or rack set up for 568B and you terminate by the A color code on a B jack, even if you do both ends the same, the cable should fail. Not all test equipment produces this result. You get what you pay for.