CAT 6 cable for telephone/internet use

[manortim]

i've got a 100m length of cat6 external cable. its 4 pair wire.

My requirement is to run a cable to a new office. The use of the cable is too provide 2 separate internet broadband connections too the office.

at one end will be the 2 separate sockets to plug in the 2 separate routers ETC and at other end, BT guys will hook their side up too the pole.

Is the CAT6 cable suitable, overkill or not suitable?

 

[rsgaz]

not suitable

This one! ↑↑↑

If you are planning to use two of the pairs to terminate it onto ordinary BT sockets (I think that's what you meant anyway), then Cat6 is no good. It's 23AWG wire, so it's too thick for IDC connections that BT sockets use. They are designed for 24AWG, which is what Cat5e or CW1308 cable is.

Gaz

 

[ban-all-sheds]

Does a difference in diameter of only 50 microns actually matter?

 

[rsgaz]

Does a difference in diameter of only 50 microns actually matter?

When you put it like that it doesn't sound much, granted! (Actually 63.5μm BTW)
It's over 12% larger. Worded like that makes it sound worse IMHO.

The force required to cram 23awg into a 24awg IDC slot is a LOT more than the normal punch down force, so you're risking damaging the PCB or causing a dry solder joint, possibly causing an intermittant fault. Intermittant faults are the worst kind of fault to find!

And if BT are supposed to be hooking it up to a pole, if that pole has IDC connections rather than screw terminals, they may refuse to connect it. Krone strips are supposed to be re-useable, so they might not wish to cram 23AWG wire into it, splaying the IDC blades apart slightly, because 24AWG connections in the future will experience problems.

In any case if this cable is going to be run aerially, then it should be 10b dropwire, as it contains steel strength members to take the tension.

Gaz

 

[ban-all-sheds]

(Actually 63.5μm BTW)

Mea culpa.

Given the rest of the article, I really should not have trusted this:

A 23AWG cable is 0.57mm wide, while a 24AWG cable is 0.52mm wide.

Sorry.

 

[Lectrician]

Rare to Krones used outdoors these days.

 

[rsgaz]

Rare to Krones used outdoors these days.

What's in the green boxes then?

I've never been up a BT pole, but had assumed they would use 237a strips in something looking a bit like this...

Surely they don't still use screw terminal ones like this...

Or is it still this old type, but full of 8A jelly crimps instead of actually using the terminals provided?

Gaz

 

[Lectrician]

In all the green boxes around here, the Krones were ditched years ago. It's all pairs hanging in front of the old rails, were the Krones used to be. Up poles the same, all jellies.

Perhaps just around here then with the salt air.

All the E-side cables are split into 10 pair bundles.

Sorry, that's the way it is. Just saying what I see.

 

[SUNRAY]

In all the green boxes around here, the Krones were ditched years ago. It's all pairs hanging in front of the old rails, were the Krones used to be. Up poles the same, all jellies.

Perhaps just around here then with the salt air.

All the E-side cables are split into 10 pair bundles.

Sorry, that's the way it is. Just saying what I see.

Surely you have that round the wrong way.
The clear plastic strip with 10pr bunches came in in the early 70's, I haven't worked in a cab after about 1976 and I never saw a Krone strip in a cab up to then. It quite took me by surprise when I walked past an open cab.

 

[ericmark]

I seem to remember having a problem using Cat 5 cable for long runs, it was some time ago so can't be sure correct pairs were selected, but the twist on the pairs is to balance the feeder, wrong amount of twist can result in loss of signal. For speech it seemed any old cable would work, but for data it was far more critical.

Back in the days when I used a fax machine to send in time sheets we had a BT system which gave us two numbers on a single line, the way they rang was different and the fax machine auto answered one ring type and ignored the other one. Also had same in Hong Kong. It seemed with the old fax machines you needed a strong signal so the main incoming line went to one of a pair of double sockets, and the other socket was internal. So the fax machine connected both sockets together when no fax was being received, but disconnected the internal line when it detected a fax. Should for any reason we were not using fax machine we could swap phones into the other socket.

This all worked fine, until the day we started using telephone internet. Can't remember if when dial up started or broad band started, but packet radio was being used less and less and email was moving to wired rather than radio. It transpired the number of twists in my twisted pairs did not match the new frequency being used. The whole of my internal wiring seemed to be redundant over night. Lucky by that point only one relative still used fax. So whole system changed to just the BT socket with cordless phone in phone socket and router in the fibre broad band socket. All the telephone wires in house except one used for emergency in my office the only non wireless phone have been disconnected.

The problem is telephone it is easy you can use a multi-meter, but data has to be frequency matched, so without something like the old VSWR meter like we used on the aerials of the old CB's you have no way to know if the cable is OK or not. After the filter so working with telephone only yes any cable seems to work, before the filter leave well alone unless you have the test gear.

 

[Lectrician]

In all the green boxes around here, the Krones were ditched years ago. It's all pairs hanging in front of the old rails, were the Krones used to be. Up poles the same, all jellies.

Perhaps just around here then with the salt air.

All the E-side cables are split into 10 pair bundles.

Sorry, that's the way it is. Just saying what I see.

Surely you have that round the wrong way.
The clear plastic strip with 10pr bunches came in in the early 70's, I haven't worked in a cab after about 1976 and I never saw a Krone strip in a cab up to then. It quite took me by surprise when I walked past an open cab.

I honestly don't know. In the cabs I have seen, it's clear there were krone strips, but they're gone. New fibre cabs do have Krones by the look of it, I assume,,due to the electronics, they're well heated and ventilated. BT engineer mate told me Krones caused problems due to corrosion and were removed.

 

[SUNRAY]

In all the green boxes around here, the Krones were ditched years ago. It's all pairs hanging in front of the old rails, were the Krones used to be. Up poles the same, all jellies.

Perhaps just around here then with the salt air.

All the E-side cables are split into 10 pair bundles.

Sorry, that's the way it is. Just saying what I see.

Surely you have that round the wrong way.
The clear plastic strip with 10pr bunches came in in the early 70's, I haven't worked in a cab after about 1976 and I never saw a Krone strip in a cab up to then. It quite took me by surprise when I walked past an open cab.

I honestly don't know. In the cabs I have seen, it's clear there were krone strips, but they're gone. New fibre cabs do have Krones by the look of it, I assume,,due to the electronics, they're well heated and ventilated. BT engineer mate told me Krones caused problems due to corrosion and were removed.

I have just chatted about the 'old days' with Open Reach chap at my local cab, he reckons that nearly all of them in this area have changed over to Krone and only a few of the clear plastic strip system left in service.

 

[manortim]

so.... to confirm..... is the cat6 cable i got going too do the job or not?

 

[DetlefSchmitz]

I wouldn't risk using the wrong cable as they may legitimately refuse to connect it.

 

[rsgaz]

The force required to cram 23awg into a 24awg IDC slot is a LOT more than the normal punch down force

Quoting myself here! But, I thought I'd do a quick experiment to get some figures to actually back this up.

Using a single wire stripped from a piece of cat5e and cat6 from the same manufacturer and a brand new cat5e module from the same manufacturer, I pressed down the insertion tool onto a module on a bathroom scale and gradually built up pressure until the wire went into the IDC slot. The punch down tool did not even cut the wire, so at no point was it my weight pushing the scale down more on the follow through. I don't have a fancy force gauge with "max hold" or anything, so just took the reading as the highest figure I saw at the point it 'gave way'.

Force to push cat5e into cat5e slot = 4.9kg
Force to push cat6 into cat5e slot = 6.9kg​

Then, using the same two IDC slots, using cat5e wire for both slots this time, the readings for using an IDC slot the second time around:-

Force to push cat5e into IDC slot used once by cat5e = 4.4kg
Force to push cat5e into IDC slot used once by cat6 = 3.6kg​

I was surprised the 'proper use' of a 24awg IDC slot had made it deteriorate by half a kg on the second go TBH. I thought they were supposed to be re-useable tens or even hundreds of times.

Gaz



Edit: I'm well aware force is measured in Newtons BTW!!