Cat 7 cable up for discussion.

[goraman]

I use a Gold plated Cat 7 cable to transfer Itunes from my computer to my Apple T.V.
Mine is supposed to be rated at 1000MBPS according to the salesmen ( 8X 27 AWG.) .Made by Lantek.

This link says Cat 6 and 7 has no official specs.
It also rates Cat 5 at 24 AWG and CAT 6 at 23AWG. so how can 27 AWG. be faster?
http://www.connectworld.net/syscon/support.htm

Anyone know more about Cat cables?
I also Emailed Lantek with spec questions?

[Butuz]

I have some 15 year old cat 5 cable that would transfer iTunes from your computer to your apple pc just the same.

I hope you did not pay more than 50p for that cable.

Butuz

[Stratmangler]

Cat5e is easily capable of carrying 1000 Mbit/s, except in very difficult installation circumstances. I've only seen issues with one site with Cat5e not supporting 1000 Mbit/s, and this I suspect was due to RFI emitted by the electrified railway line running along the rear of the building.

The transmission speed issues were sorted out with the network being recabled in Cat6e.

Your AppleTV can't stream any faster than 100 Mbit/s.
To have faster networking capability is overkill.

The data sent to the AppleTV is sent in packets and stored in buffer.
There is no requirement for the data to be sent in correct order - if the data isnt unpacked and stored in the correct sequence in buffer then the music will not play properly, and you get stops and stuttering.

If the cable you've got to connect to network has a connected screen then you have another potential electrical noise source to have to deal with.

I sincerely hope that you haven't spent much on the patch cable - a standard Cat5e cable would do the job just as well.

[goraman]

Cat5e is easily capable of carrying 1000 Mbit/s, except in very difficult installation circumstances. I've only seen issues with one site with Cat5e not supporting 1000 Mbit/s, and this I suspect was due to RFI emitted by the electrified railway line running along the rear of the building.

The transmission speed issues were sorted out with the network being recabled in Cat6e.

Your AppleTV can't stream any faster than 100 Mbit/s.
To have faster networking capability is overkill.

The data sent to the AppleTV is sent in packets and stored in buffer.
There is no requirement for the data to be sent in correct order - if the data isnt unpacked and stored in the correct sequence in buffer then the music will not play properly, and you get stops and stuttering.

If the cable you've got to connect to network has a connected screen then you have another potential electrical noise source to have to deal with.

I sincerely hope that you haven't spent much on the patch cable - a standard Cat5e cable would do the job just as well.

I am not streaming with the Apple T.V. I am loading my Itunes from my laptop to the 500gig hard drive in the older ATV.
Basically coping files from one drive to another via CAT 7. Ethernet connection.

[Butuz]

I am not streaming with the Apple T.V. I am loading my Itunes from my laptop to the 500gig hard drive in the older ATV.
Basically coping files from one drive to another via CAT 7. Ethernet connection.

As Stratmangler mentioned above. Your Apple TV is the bottleneck not the cable. You can plug in almost any cable you want at any price and your Apple TV will still be the bottleneck.

Butuz

[Mr. C]

We have been using a Cat 7 for audio data transmission in our studio and demonstrations rooms for two years now works well for us.

[Stratmangler]

I am not streaming with the Apple T.V. I am loading my Itunes from my laptop to the 500gig hard drive in the older ATV.
Basically coping files from one drive to another via CAT 7. Ethernet connection.

So why are you worrying about transfer speeds then ?
A simple (and cheap) Cat5e patch lead is more than up to the job.
The limiting factor is the ATV network adapter, not the cable.

[Peter Galbavy]

Cat 5(e) is fine for most domestic applications. If you are interested in the technicals here's the first website I found that looked reasonable: http://www.axiaaudio.com/tech/cable/default.htm

Basically though, the category of a (twisted pair) cable is to do with various ratings, construction methods and uses it is put to. You also get shielded vs unsheilded for the earlier standards (3 & 5/5e) but I think (without looking at the above article) that Cat 6 and above has mandatory shielding anyway. Which is grounded AT ONE END ONLY!

[Stratmangler]

Cat6 does not have mandatory shielding.

[goraman]

So why are you worrying about transfer speeds then ?
A simple (and cheap) Cat5e patch lead is more than up to the job.
The limiting factor is the ATV network adapter, not the cable.

I really was disappointed to see no improvement in transfer speed.
It can take hours to transfer so much music.

500gigs over ten hours.
And I felt a little mislead that the cable made no discernible difference.

But mostly after reading about transfer rates and 100 to 600 meg speed differences It made me want to learn more about the CAT series cables.

[lurcher]

500gbyte in 10 hours is ok, its just over 100mb/s what i would expect at the top of 100m Ethernet. To go above that you would need Gb/s ethernet, and thats a feature of the equipment on both ends not the cable.

[goraman]

http://www.frys.com/product/5790102?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG
Here is my cable from where I bought it.

What dose 10Gbps stand for anyway.

http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci212177,00.html Billions of bits per second?

[lurcher]

As everyone else has said, Cat5e and above will support 100Mb/s Ethernet. If you equipment only has that or slower, doesnt matter that cable you use, the speed is set by the endpoints, not the string inbetween.

Yes, Gig = 1 * 10^9, 1,000,000,000 or 1 Billion.

Thats bits per second, your data is measured in bytes. 1 byte = 8 bits + overhead.

[goraman]

As everyone else has said, Cat5e and above will support 100Mb/s Ethernet. If you equipment only has that or slower, doesnt matter that cable you use, the speed is set by the endpoints, not the string inbetween.

Yes, Gig = 1 * 10^9, 1,000,000,000 or 1 Billion.

Thats bits per second, your data is measured in bytes. 1 byte = 8 bits + overhead.

I get it,and understand the limits of my gear better.

I just wanted a better understanding of what the latest CAT 7 could really do.


CAT 7 could be used to make some fantastic shielded interconnects at very reasonable cost.

[Butuz]

Basically the whole point of Cat7 and all of it's fancy shielding is to theoretically enable 10Gigabit (i.e 100x faster than your Apple TV can cope with) ethernet over longer distances than normal Cat6/Cat6a. That's it. It's all theoretical improvements. Plugging a Cat7 cable that supports 10,000Megabits per second gleans zero improvement when plugged into devices that only support 100Megabits per second.

These benefits are only really applicable to businesses which require large amounts of data to be transferred between hundreds or even thousands of users or devices. It has ZERO merit for use at home, as you have found.

Butuz

[goraman]

Basically the whole point of Cat7 and all of it's fancy shielding is to theoretically enable 10Gigabit (i.e 100x faster than your Apple TV can cope with) ethernet over longer distances than normal Cat6/Cat6a. That's it. It's all theoretical improvements. Plugging a Cat7 cable that supports 10,000Megabits per second gleans zero improvement when plugged into devices that only support 100Megabits per second.

These benefits are only really applicable to businesses which require large amounts of data to be transferred between hundreds or even thousands of users or devices. It has ZERO merit for use at home, as you have found.

Butuz

You nailed it.

[dave2010]

The answers given by everyone else are basically correct. There is generally little point in using higher rated cable when the limitation in transfer speed is inevitably going to be due to the devices. One factor which can slow down transfer rates is if there is a need for packet resends across the network. This could happen due to interference. This is what happens with wireless LAN communication - the data rates slow down as the distance between the router (in an infrastructure network) and the mobile device increase. This is because there are more packet errors, so packets have to be sent more than once. There may also be adjustments made at the physical layer which would reduce the data rate, but the starting point is the need to resend each packet in a noisy environment.

I'd say that usually in a cabled system, if it works at all it's probably going to be OK. However I have come across problems with USB cables in critical situations, where clearly different cables made a difference, and also keeping the cables short and routed away from other equipment definitely helped.

Additional problems which may arise if there are transmission errors are that the protocols used may themselves break down, which could very well have been an additional factor in my critical link between a computer and a PVR. in some cases this can lead to a complete protocol breakdown with the communications being stalled, and then the whole communication needs to be abandoned and restarted.

In some critical situations it may be advisable to keep cable runs as short as possible, to use higher quality cable, and to minimise interference. Having said that, without knowing all the details of the digital transmission betwen your devices, it sounds to me as though there were no unanticipated levels of interference, so as noted you would have had pretty much the same outcome if you'd used Cat6 or Cat5e cable - maybe even Cat5.

[goraman]

Thanks Dave,
Great way of putting it in laymen s terms,for a guy that really doesn't get digital.
I do believe in the best stuff I can afford as it usually means room for error and or less headaches.

[jtay]

CAT 7 could be used to make some fantastic shielded interconnects at very reasonable cost

I was thinking about this and use of cat 7 for speaker cables. I made up some TNT website plaited speaker cables few years back and they worked very well. Has anyone used cat 7 for speaker cable or interconnect purposes and how was it?

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

Go very careful, by plaiting the cable you create a Litz type construction which makes a very high capacitance cable. Some amps are fine with it some are not so it is not a universal solution.

[jtay]

I've seen references to capacitance considerations with such cat 5 cables. Would the fact that cat 7 has shielding make things better or worse with capacitance?

Chris

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

I presume the 7 and 5 mean cores, if so weaving 7 cores make a higher capacitance cable than weaving 5 cores. Also the capacitance doubles with doubling the length of cable used.

It depends on if the shield is connected but it shouldn't affect the capacitance too much either way.

[Stratmangler]

The category number has nothing to do with the number of cores - they're all 4 pairs.