| Author |
Message |
reellifetv@hotmail.com
Guest
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 Posted:
Wed Feb 02, 2005 12:03 am Post subject:
Question about Cat 7 cable |
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I'm about to wire up my house, and have decided to run Ethernet cable
pretty much everywhere, using it for both data and audio.
Was originally going to use cat 5, but have instead settled on Cat 7
(which in the UK only appears to be available from Canford). It will
cost quite a lot more, but it's not often I have all my floorboards
up, and I'd like to future-proof as much as I can!
My plan was to run the cat 7 to deep single- and double-gang metal
boxes, to which I'd attach Canford connector plates with holes that
will take either XLR, BNC, phono or BNC sockets. This way I have
flexibility over what to feed to different locations.
One concern is that Cat 7 uses solid core rather than stranded
conductors - will this create problems in connecting to the various
sockets? I've seen reference to needing to connect using a punchdown
block, and I'm not sure how this would work in the setup I'm
envisaging.
This is a bit of a leap into the dark for me, representing quite a big
investment plus a real headache if I put it all in, replaster my walls
and lay the floors, only to find it doesn't work, so I'd be very
keen for any thoughts.
Many thanks,
Chris |
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Al Dykes
Guest
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| Posted:
Wed Feb 02, 2005 12:10 am Post subject:
Re: Question about Cat 7 cable |
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In article <1107284600.778601.129660@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>,
reellifetv@hotmail.com <reellifetv@hotmail.com> wrote:
| Quote: | I'm about to wire up my house, and have decided to run Ethernet cable
pretty much everywhere, using it for both data and audio.
Was originally going to use cat 5, but have instead settled on Cat 7
(which in the UK only appears to be available from Canford). It will
cost quite a lot more, but it's not often I have all my floorboards
up, and I'd like to future-proof as much as I can!
My plan was to run the cat 7 to deep single- and double-gang metal
boxes, to which I'd attach Canford connector plates with holes that
will take either XLR, BNC, phono or BNC sockets. This way I have
flexibility over what to feed to different locations.
One concern is that Cat 7 uses solid core rather than stranded
conductors - will this create problems in connecting to the various
sockets? I've seen reference to needing to connect using a punchdown
block, and I'm not sure how this would work in the setup I'm
envisaging.
This is a bit of a leap into the dark for me, representing quite a big
investment plus a real headache if I put it all in, replaster my walls
and lay the floors, only to find it doesn't work, so I'd be very
keen for any thoughts.
Many thanks,
Chris
|
You'll get other comments, but if you're litteral about "future
proofing" you'll pull CAT-something, fiber, and maybe COAX, and plan
for an an appropriate number of 802.something APs and put a CATx pull
to each of those locations. Like anything else, it comes down to cost.
Never heard of CAT7. What's do for me ?
Stranded is for patch cords. installed UTP wiring is solid.
--
a d y k e s @ p a n i x . c o m
Don't blame me. I voted for Gore. |
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Dale Farmer
Guest
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| Posted:
Wed Feb 02, 2005 12:46 am Post subject:
Re: Question about Cat 7 cable |
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"reellifetv@hotmail.com" wrote:
| Quote: | I'm about to wire up my house, and have decided to run Ethernet cable
pretty much everywhere, using it for both data and audio.
Was originally going to use cat 5, but have instead settled on Cat 7
(which in the UK only appears to be available from Canford). It will
cost quite a lot more, but it's not often I have all my floorboards
up, and I'd like to future-proof as much as I can!
My plan was to run the cat 7 to deep single- and double-gang metal
boxes, to which I'd attach Canford connector plates with holes that
will take either XLR, BNC, phono or BNC sockets. This way I have
flexibility over what to feed to different locations.
One concern is that Cat 7 uses solid core rather than stranded
conductors - will this create problems in connecting to the various
sockets? I've seen reference to needing to connect using a punchdown
block, and I'm not sure how this would work in the setup I'm
envisaging.
This is a bit of a leap into the dark for me, representing quite a big
investment plus a real headache if I put it all in, replaster my walls
and lay the floors, only to find it doesn't work, so I'd be very
keen for any thoughts.
|
cat 7, as a industry-wide standard, does not exist. You have one
particular manufacturer's attempt to jump the gun and grab some
marketshare. Go with a cat5 or 5e cable, which will be far less
expensive and likely perfectly fine for your needs. As for solid
wire, that's what you put into the walls. Stranded wire is for
patch cords and other wiring that moves about a lot.
If you really want to future proof, just install conduit from a
central patch point to each location you may want something in
the future. Easy enough to pull in whatever cable you need when
you need it. No locking yourself into whatever today's standard
is. Do be careful about fire stopping and smoke plugs to follow
local building code for these conduits.
--Dale |
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Thomas Beneken
Guest
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| Posted:
Wed Feb 02, 2005 1:44 am Post subject:
Re: Question about Cat 7 cable |
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Dale,
Category 7 is in ISO/IEC 11801.
Regards
Thomas
"Dale Farmer" <dale@cybercom.net> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:41FFDCB7.1DC52D21@cybercom.net...
| Quote: |
"reellifetv@hotmail.com" wrote:
I'm about to wire up my house, and have decided to run Ethernet cable
pretty much everywhere, using it for both data and audio.
Was originally going to use cat 5, but have instead settled on Cat 7
(which in the UK only appears to be available from Canford). It will
cost quite a lot more, but it's not often I have all my floorboards
up, and I'd like to future-proof as much as I can!
My plan was to run the cat 7 to deep single- and double-gang metal
boxes, to which I'd attach Canford connector plates with holes that
will take either XLR, BNC, phono or BNC sockets. This way I have
flexibility over what to feed to different locations.
One concern is that Cat 7 uses solid core rather than stranded
conductors - will this create problems in connecting to the various
sockets? I've seen reference to needing to connect using a punchdown
block, and I'm not sure how this would work in the setup I'm
envisaging.
This is a bit of a leap into the dark for me, representing quite a big
investment plus a real headache if I put it all in, replaster my walls
and lay the floors, only to find it doesn't work, so I'd be very
keen for any thoughts.
cat 7, as a industry-wide standard, does not exist. You have one
particular manufacturer's attempt to jump the gun and grab some
marketshare. Go with a cat5 or 5e cable, which will be far less
expensive and likely perfectly fine for your needs. As for solid
wire, that's what you put into the walls. Stranded wire is for
patch cords and other wiring that moves about a lot.
If you really want to future proof, just install conduit from a
central patch point to each location you may want something in
the future. Easy enough to pull in whatever cable you need when
you need it. No locking yourself into whatever today's standard
is. Do be careful about fire stopping and smoke plugs to follow
local building code for these conduits.
--Dale
|
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James Knott
Guest
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| Posted:
Wed Feb 02, 2005 2:31 am Post subject:
Re: Question about Cat 7 cable |
|
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reellifetv@hotmail.com wrote:
| Quote: | One concern is that Cat 7 uses solid core rather than stranded
conductors - will this create problems in connecting to the various
sockets? I've seen reference to needing to connect using a punchdown
block, and I'm not sure how this would work in the setup I'm
envisaging.
|
Is there even a CAT 7 spec? I've never heard of it.
Normally, you run solid wire to the jacks and use stranded for patch cords. |
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jtodd5 dot 1
Guest
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| Posted:
Wed Feb 02, 2005 3:50 am Post subject:
Re: Question about Cat 7 cable |
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|
Dale Farmer wrote:
| Quote: |
"reellifetv@hotmail.com" wrote:
I'm about to wire up my house, and have decided to run Ethernet cable
pretty much everywhere, using it for both data and audio.
Was originally going to use cat 5, but have instead settled on Cat 7
(which in the UK only appears to be available from Canford). It will
cost quite a lot more, but it's not often I have all my floorboards
up, and I'd like to future-proof as much as I can!
My plan was to run the cat 7 to deep single- and double-gang metal
boxes, to which I'd attach Canford connector plates with holes that
will take either XLR, BNC, phono or BNC sockets. This way I have
flexibility over what to feed to different locations.
One concern is that Cat 7 uses solid core rather than stranded
conductors - will this create problems in connecting to the various
sockets? I've seen reference to needing to connect using a punchdown
block, and I'm not sure how this would work in the setup I'm
envisaging.
This is a bit of a leap into the dark for me, representing quite a big
investment plus a real headache if I put it all in, replaster my walls
and lay the floors, only to find it doesn't work, so I'd be very
keen for any thoughts.
cat 7, as a industry-wide standard, does not exist. You have one
particular manufacturer's attempt to jump the gun and grab some
marketshare. Go with a cat5 or 5e cable, which will be far less
expensive and likely perfectly fine for your needs. As for solid
wire, that's what you put into the walls. Stranded wire is for
patch cords and other wiring that moves about a lot.
If you really want to future proof, just install conduit from a
central patch point to each location you may want something in
the future. Easy enough to pull in whatever cable you need when
you need it. No locking yourself into whatever today's standard
is. Do be careful about fire stopping and smoke plugs to follow
local building code for these conduits.
--Dale
|
Yes, while there is no North American standard (TIA) for Cat7, there is the
ISO Class F, which from a performance standpoint would be Cat7, when TIA
gets to it. Manufactures that have Class F compliant product in Europe so
some marketing here using Cat7/Class F.
Don't use Cat5, it's not longer a recognized standard. It should be Cat5e
or Cat6, depending on how much money you want to spend.
As for using UTP cable for audio, I'm not too sure. I've thought about
trying it at some point, but have not made it around to putting something
together. I'm a little curious why you're connecting XLR's anyway?
Setting pro-audio equipment as well? If so, I'd go with real audio cable
instead of the Category cable for audio. That then eliminates the
solid/stranded issue when soldering to the XLR/BNC connectors. |
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Crackhead
Guest
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| Posted:
Wed Feb 02, 2005 6:06 am Post subject:
Re: Question about Cat 7 cable |
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"jtodd5 dot 1" <"jtodd5 dot 1"@yahoodot.com> wrote in message
news:YITLd.551$ia4.260297@okeanos.csu.net...
| Quote: |
Yes, while there is no North American standard (TIA) for Cat7, there is
the
ISO Class F, which from a performance standpoint would be Cat7, when TIA
gets to it. Manufactures that have Class F compliant product in Europe so
some marketing here using Cat7/Class F.
|
I would just add a comment that if the category 7 specification draft goes
through changes like category 6 specification did, then whatever supposed
Cat 7 cable you're buying now is not going to pass certification as Cat 7
final (ie. you're wasting your time and money).
If you really want to future proof, use 50/125 multimode fiber.
----== Posted via Newsfeeds.Com - Unlimited-Uncensored-Secure Usenet News==----
http://www.newsfeeds.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! 120,000+ Newsgroups
----= East and West-Coast Server Farms - Total Privacy via Encryption =---- |
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Dmitri(Cabling-Design.com
Guest
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| Posted:
Wed Feb 02, 2005 8:01 am Post subject:
Re: Question about Cat 7 cable |
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Crackhead wrote:
| Quote: | If you really want to future proof, use 50/125 multimode fiber.
|
That'd be pushing it too far: there is literally no consumer-grade
equipment that uses fiber, let alone 50 micron. Besides, what are you
going to do with phones? Anyways, I would not argue with the fact that
there will be fiber optics in residential houses in the very near future
(some people are already taking advantage of it), but it will be used
exclusively for broadband access, i.e. for the outside connections.
--
Dmitri Abaimov, RCDD
http://www.cabling-design.com
Cabling Forum, color codes, pinouts and other useful resources for
premises cabling users and pros
http://www.cabling-design.com/homecabling
Residential Cabling Guide
-------------------------------------
##-----------------------------------------------#
Article posted with Cabling-Design.com Newsgroup Archiv
http://www.cabling-design.com/forum
no-spam read and post WWW interface to your favorite newsgroup -
comp.dcom.cabling - 1184 messages and counting
##-----------------------------------------------## |
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Dmitri(Cabling-Design.com
Guest
|
| Posted:
Wed Feb 02, 2005 8:01 am Post subject:
Re: Question about Cat 7 cable |
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reellifetv@hotmail.com wrote:
| Quote: | This is a bit of a leap into the dark for me, representing quite a big
investment plus a real headache if I put it all in, replaster my walls
and lay the floors, only to find it doesn't work, so I'd be very
keen for any thoughts.
Many thanks,
Chris
|
Hi Chris,
As a homeowner I completely understand your concern about future-proofing
your installation. There are, however, too many uncertainties today to
make an economically sound justification for a CAT7 install, especially in
residential environment.
It has been about 8 years now that the first components that later became
CAT6 have been introduced to the market, and most people (myself included)
are still struggling to wrap their minds around the concept of having two
systems - a cheap one (CAT5E) and expensive one (CAT6) - that support
exactly the same set of applications. Only CAT6 is a "better balanced"
system. It can mean a lot to an RF engineer, but in a casual user it
normally generates a question like: "What's In It For Me"? The famous
WII-FM.
Anyways, after 8 years of trumpeting about future proofing with CAT6 we
now have a system that cannot fully support the only application to date
that would NOT work on a cheapy CAT5E: 10Gig Ethernet. It only works for
60 meters or so on a standard CAT6, and everybody's already making CAT6+
that would support 10 Gig on the full 100 meter channel.
So, with that said, it is, obviously your call to decide whether or not to
bet your investments on a technology that does not have any installed base
(let alone residential), no equipment can take advantage of it, it is
terribly expensive because of shielding that's involved and bulky for the
same reason. But, hey, it will be the coolest cabling system on the block.
For the next 10 years, guaranteed.
Considering size of an average family dwelling, I would suggest that
installing a standard CAT6 (which became downgraded in its marketing
importance and discounted almost to the level of CAT5E these days) is as
future proof as it gets in the residential environment.
Good luck! Post here when your project is complete. I'm pretty sure plenty
people would like to learn about your experience here.
--
Dmitri Abaimov, RCDD
http://www.cabling-design.com
Cabling Forum, color codes, pinouts and other useful resources for
premises cabling users and pros
http://www.cabling-design.com/homecabling
Residential Cabling Guide
-------------------------------------
##-----------------------------------------------#
Article posted with Cabling-Design.com Newsgroup Archiv
http://www.cabling-design.com/forum
no-spam read and post WWW interface to your favorite newsgroup -
comp.dcom.cabling - 1185 messages and counting
##-----------------------------------------------## |
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reellifetv@hotmail.com
Guest
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| Posted:
Thu Feb 03, 2005 4:16 pm Post subject:
Re: Question about Cat 7 cable |
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|
Thank you all for your thoughts.
After much consideration, I've decided to go with Cat 6 - the technical
challenges of cat 7 (especially in its termination - RJ55 anyone?) at
too much for a keen amateur like myself.
So, Cat 6 for data, phones and (probably balanced) audio, CT125 for RF,
and SDV75 for video.
Many thanks to you all
Chris |
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Watson A.Name - \"Watt Su
Guest
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| Posted:
Sun Feb 06, 2005 10:06 pm Post subject:
Re: Question about Cat 7 cable |
|
|
<reellifetv@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1107284600.778601.129660@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
| Quote: | I'm about to wire up my house, and have decided to run Ethernet cable
pretty much everywhere, using it for both data and audio.
Was originally going to use cat 5, but have instead settled on Cat 7
(which in the UK only appears to be available from Canford). It will
cost quite a lot more, but it's not often I have all my floorboards
up, and I'd like to future-proof as much as I can!
|
If you really want to future-proof, you should run flex or conduit, and
thus leave yourself the option of putting fiberoptic cable at a later
date. That is if you really want the future. But it's likely that the
legacy copper will still be around and fully useable for decades to
come.
| Quote: | My plan was to run the cat 7 to deep single- and double-gang metal
boxes, to which I'd attach Canford connector plates with holes that
will take either XLR, BNC, phono or BNC sockets. This way I have
flexibility over what to feed to different locations.
One concern is that Cat 7 uses solid core rather than stranded
conductors - will this create problems in connecting to the various
sockets? I've seen reference to needing to connect using a punchdown
block, and I'm not sure how this would work in the setup I'm
envisaging.
This is a bit of a leap into the dark for me, representing quite a big
investment plus a real headache if I put it all in, replaster my walls
and lay the floors, only to find it doesn't work, so I'd be very
keen for any thoughts.
Many thanks,
Chris
|
|
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|
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Al Dykes
Guest
|
| Posted:
Sun Feb 06, 2005 10:32 pm Post subject:
Re: Question about Cat 7 cable |
|
|
In article <110cje4d41a7ka4@corp.supernews.com>,
Watson A.Name - \"Watt Sun, the Dark Remover\" <alondra101@hotmail.com> wrote:
| Quote: |
reellifetv@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1107284600.778601.129660@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
I'm about to wire up my house, and have decided to run Ethernet cable
pretty much everywhere, using it for both data and audio.
Was originally going to use cat 5, but have instead settled on Cat 7
(which in the UK only appears to be available from Canford). It will
cost quite a lot more, but it's not often I have all my floorboards
up, and I'd like to future-proof as much as I can!
If you really want to future-proof, you should run flex or conduit, and
thus leave yourself the option of putting fiberoptic cable at a later
date. That is if you really want the future. But it's likely that the
legacy copper will still be around and fully useable for decades to
come.
My plan was to run the cat 7 to deep single- and double-gang metal
boxes, to which I'd attach Canford connector plates with holes that
will take either XLR, BNC, phono or BNC sockets. This way I have
flexibility over what to feed to different locations.
One concern is that Cat 7 uses solid core rather than stranded
conductors - will this create problems in connecting to the various
sockets? I've seen reference to needing to connect using a punchdown
block, and I'm not sure how this would work in the setup I'm
envisaging.
This is a bit of a leap into the dark for me, representing quite a big
investment plus a real headache if I put it all in, replaster my walls
and lay the floors, only to find it doesn't work, so I'd be very
keen for any thoughts.
Many thanks,
Chris
|
I strongly suggest that you plan the location point(s) for WiFI APs to
cover the entire house and pull CAT5 to those points. You don't have
to buy APs until you need them. They will get their power over the
ethernet cable (aka POE). These can be closets or attic locations
that you would not otherwise think to pull cable to.
A good "g" signal gives you lots of speed and IMO will be useful in
the future as more gadgets come out. Right now it lets you put a
printer anywhere you have 120VAC.
--
a d y k e s @ p a n i x . c o m
Don't blame me. I voted for Gore. |
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