grounding shielded 5E ethernet cable

Am using a shielded patch cable to connect my pc to a Ethernet socket. By doing this, is my shielded solid core cable suitably grounded? will I need any special Ethernet equipment to ground it? What is the drain cable supposed to be connected to?

Edited by deleted (Fri 21-May-10 13:43:42)

There's no point. I'm using a 50m run of unshielded CAT5 with no problems whatsoever.

In reply to a post by micksharpe:

There's no point. I'm using a 50m run of unshielded CAT5 with no problems whatsoever.

as mick said there....unless you are running over 100m from point to point then there is no need to worry about loss

Even worse, if you use shielded and don't have the shielding terminated correctly all the way through, it can act as a giant antenna, giving you more of the problem you think you are solving...

Just use unshielded. It'll be fine.

In reply to a post by picky_user:

Am using a shielded patch cable to connect my pc to a Ethernet socket. By doing this, is my shielded solid core cable suitably grounded? will I need any special Ethernet equipment to ground it? What is the drain cable supposed to be connected to?

It's only grounded if you connect the drain cable to earth, but there's no need - the shielding doesn't need to be grounded to work.

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

In reply to a post by picky_user:

Am using a shielded patch cable to connect my pc to a Ethernet socket. By doing this, is my shielded solid core cable suitably grounded? will I need any special Ethernet equipment to ground it? What is the drain cable supposed to be connected to?

It's only grounded if you connect the drain cable to earth, but there's no need - the shielding doesn't need to be grounded to work.

The back boxes (the box that the faceplate screws into) has a terminal for earth. Would it be sufficient to just connect it to that terminal ? I would have to get my electrician to connect the terminal to the earth block right?

Is it ok if I connect the drain wire to the earth wire behind the power outlet or would it have to be a seperate earth wire to each Ethernet cable?

That's going to be a pain in the ass since am not a electrician. Just have to see what he says. We're getting the whole house rewired anyway.

If you're determined to earth the shielding, you should only do it at one end to prevent earth loops. It is more important not to run signal cables alongside mains cables to avoid electrocuting telephone engineers. Signal cables should never share conduits or junction boxes with power cables.

Technically the earth to the back box should be a clean earth back to the main earth point at the distiribution board, it should not connected to the mains earth at any point on the ring main as to prevent noise pickup etc.

I have cat 5 installations in what are considered very electrically hostile environments ie grid sized substations and have never had any issues with using standard unscreened cat 5 cable.
The design of the cable is such that there should be minimum noise pickup anyhow.
Screened cables can introduce more problems than they cure especially if they are installed incorrectly as has been said in other posts.

In reply to a post by micksharpe:

If you're determined to earth the shielding, you should only do it at one end to prevent earth loops. It is more important not to run signal cables alongside mains cables to avoid electrocuting telephone engineers. Signal cables should never share conduits or junction boxes with power cables.

I've already opened the box so I can't return the shielded cable. I might as well just use it then.

My ethernet cable shares the same conduits because it's the most practical way to run the cable up to the first floor. It's a pain to install a new conduit. So I should run my cable in a seperate conduit?

Am just curious how can sharing the same conduit introduce electrocution risk? The cable has a plastic covering. Also I thought you can't use thin cable on high voltage circuits. Wouldn't the Ethernet cable just melt away?

Edited by deleted (Sat 22-May-10 22:32:02)

If you're having your house rewired, you should ask your electricians. Personally, I would never run signal cables alongside mains cables or bury them. I prefer to keep them visible wherever possible so I know that they are safe. Have you thought about using a wireless network?

Edited by micksharpe (Sat 22-May-10 22:38:23)