Do Ethernet patch cables make a difference?

[mikmas]

And if £26 versus £5 makes a massive difference to your wallet and therefore causes confirmation bias due to £21 then perhaps this is the wrong hobby (unless of course part of the hobby is doing things for as cheap as possible as can be worthwhile in its own right).

Why stop at £26 when you can pay nearly 7 grand:

http://www.futureshop.co.uk/product_...1#.VkYkT9Y8GV4

Surely the audio benefits will be through the roof

[sq225917]

If Chord's cables are genuinely directional then they can't work for ethernet which is a bidirectional protocol- simples.

Show me some tests for bit loss and call backs between the different specs and I'll become a believer.

[Audio Advent]

How about differences in noise introduced into the system, RFI etc (either by bad design or not - practical issues of this specific system are relevent, not generalised theory here) between different earthing and shielding arrangements of the CAT types?

Ignoring one aspect of possibility to say something is impossible is unscientific. If all aspects one can think of are tested and likely not to cause sonic differences based on results then we can begin to assume there are no sonic differences and it's all placebo.

First step here though would be simply to try a normal £2+p&p CAT7 cable rather than this possible foo Chord effort.

[NRG]

Good grief haven't we done this to death in the other threads recently.

[orbscure]

Good grief haven't we done this to death in the other threads recently.

Round and around in ever decreasing circles Neal

http://theartofsound.net/forum/showthread.php?41337

[struth]

It is why sites exist. so folk can state their experiences ... like life, everyone has different ones. Dont like, dont read.

[NRG]

Eh? It's the same topic!!!!!!!

[Spectral Morn]

The op, has heard a difference, that is good enough for me. To those who where not there, didn't hear a difference you are awful sure in your ridicule.

[Spectral Morn]

It is why sites exist. so folk can state their experiences ... like life, everyone has different ones. Dont like, dont read.

Indeed + 1

[ReggieB]

I don't think you understand how Ethernet works Reggie.

I'm afraid I do. I've fixed many networks where poor cabling caused all sort of subtle problems on computer networks. I soon realised that the quality of the cabling made a huge impact on the performance of the network, and is why I always worked with an excellent professional cabler whenever I could.

The occasion that brought it home to me was when I was called in to troubleshoot a network where we'd installed a set of Intel 100Mb/s switches to replace a set of 10Mb/s hubs. Since they'd gone in the company had been getting all sorts of problems. Inspecting the cabling, it soon became apparent that that was the problem. The customer had installed it themselves and had used connectors to extend lengths of cable. That was OK for 10Mb/s connections, but it couldn't handle the 100Mb/s traffic and too many packets were being dropped.

Network protocols like TCP do a lot to try and overcome the problems of dropped packets, but if you have poor cabling - or it passes a strong electrical noise source, then the amount of packets dropped get too much and you start getting often very subtle network faults.

Another cause of problems are the connection protocol handshakes that go on between switches and network cards. At the start of a connection, the hardware devices will negotiate the speed they will connect at. They start at the fastest speed they work at and at full duplex (both directions simultaneously) and work down to slowest half duplex (both directions, but one direction at a time), until they get the best connection that both sides can support. If you have poor network cabling, these handshakes become very difficult and the connections will drop out. The fix being to stop the auto-negotiation and set the connection speeds manually.

I expect that the effect of good network cabling is very environment dependant. If you've kept your network cable away from your mains cables, and don't have any devices nearby spilling out a lot of electrical noise, and your cables aren't too tightly twisted and of decent quality (for example, no bare wire visible going into the connectors), you'll get very little benefit from well shielded cables. On the other hand, if the cables run through the mess of cables that inhabit the back of many home hi-fi systems, and run near common household appliances, then you may well get a benefit from having better cables.

It's going to be like mains cables. If you've got a clean mains, mains conditioners will have little effect. The same applies to ethernet cables.

Rob Nichols CCNA, CCDA, Intel Certified Integration Specialist, Network+