Which Cat5 cable?

[mjriley]

Thanks paulears

 

Would you say the cable is better than bog standard cat5e patch cable?? and how much better do you think the van damme cable would be??

[paulears]

Absolutely - it's got a tough outer jacket and is quite substantial. Can't really help with the Van Damme cable - sorry.

[BlueShift]

For the record, Cat5/5e/6/7 cable is normally solid core.

 

You do get things like tourcat (VDC) which use stranded cable to make for an easier coiling experience (like mic cable).

 

However, the 100m of ethernet spec is based on having solid core conductors. Stranded cable won't go as far. Over 75m, 100mbit ethernet should be fine, but you'd probably be pushing it at 1Gbit...

[chelgrian]

However, the 100m of ethernet spec is based on having solid core conductors. Stranded cable won't go as far. Over 75m, 100mbit ethernet should be fine, but you'd probably be pushing it at 1Gbit...

 

Actually it's based on 80m of solid and 2 x 10m of stranded patch cords at each end plus the extra two plugs and sockets. This is why you can get away with a little bit more than 100m if you just have a single point to point 100mbit link.

 

The historical reasons for the design limit were actually a bit circular. It didn't need to be designed to go any further because the algorithms for collision detection in hub based systems would fail due to the propagation delay being longer than the constant in the algorithm. Therefore the cabling was designed to be as cheap as possible to aid adoption but still meet the distance allowed by the collision detection stuff.

 

Thankfully all Gbit is switched and hubs are generally history.

 

As I said upthread somewhere several blueroom users have reported problems with Dante networks with long runs on bog standard stranded cables and as far as I can tell only Klotz SF/UTP cable, that is to say soild core with foil screening and braid is actually qualified to 100m by Yamaha.

 

For portable rather than installed systems I'm increasingly of the opinion that audio over IP over Ethernet over Cat5 is a bad idea and that MADI over coax for short and optical for long distances is a much better idea.

[mackerr]

For portable rather than installed systems I'm increasingly of the opinion that audio over IP over Ethernet over Cat5 is a bad idea and that MADI over coax for short and optical for long distances is a much better idea.

 

Or Ethernet over fiber. ;-)

 

It is not expensive to either add a media convertor to get from GB copper to GB fiber, or a switch with a fiber port. Long runs should be fiber not copper.

 

Mac

[mjriley]

Update:

Purchased the 50m van damme tourcat drum off ebay, great service.

Really pleased with the cable itself, fairly heavy duty, feels similar to van damme classic mic cable but a bit less substancial.

I know it's only 50m which is plenty for what I'm doing but it's handling gigabit absolutely fine, not a single glitch.

Not once have I had a switch drop to 100MB.