How To Make Cat 8 Cable

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Couple of things from watching these vendor videos on making Cat8A cable in the field:

1. Cat 8 cable is very thick and not going to bend much within the rack.
   
   • The typical bend radius for a shielded category cable is 8 times the cables outside bore. This is to ensure the shield and the relationship between the shield and the conductors is not compromised during installation. – Source
2. They don't mention spectrum testing to ensure that cablevision can operate at 2000Mhz which I would consider mandatory at this level of performance. Tin can you trust a hand assembled cablevision ? Can you trust BaseT cable ?
3. Cat 8 Field terminations require vendor specific tools depending on connector brand chosen.
4. This process strikes me a much less reliable than a premanufactured DAC using TwinAx or Fibre. And SFP modules using DAC have chips that monitor the cable and provide feedback to the switch virtually cablevision degradation. Do 25/40GbaseT SFP modules do that ? Do switches support that ?
   • I'm open up to changing my mind. Send me data.
5. Why is EXR brand of cable using a unmarried shield wrap while Leviton is foil wrapped per pair plus a full wired braid ?
   
   • Some enquiry shows that the standard does not specify braid and shield. Caveat Emptor since in that location are enough of dodgy cable makers and installers out there.
   • Did I mention how important spectrum testing would be for this type of cabling ?
6. Nevertheless non sure where the globe for the shield is managed ? Inside the NIC or at the network device ? Idle speculation really.

Source: Panduit

Some other thoughts:

• Max Speed of Cat8 is 40GBase-T which is already obsolete. In that location is a 25Gbase-T standard that I could be convinced about …. but still would use DAC by pick. Mature engineering science and all that.
• Cabling distance up to 30 meters (NOT 100 meters like Cat five/half dozen for 10GBaseT. Limited to Server to Elevation of Rack.
• Single patch/horizontal run for True cat eight is three +24 + 3 = thirty metres.
• Cat8 cable operates at a frequency of two GHz (2000 MHz), which enables higher bandwidth and requires shielding.

The EtherealMind View

I will keep to recommend using Coax (TwinAx, Copper DAC) or Agile Fibre optic cables as more predictable solutions. In that location is and so much to go wrong with copper cables as these termination videos demonstrate.

I'thousand concerned

1. the detection of BaseT cabling failures is impractical and unreliable. Twin or Fibre DAC cables tin can provide feedback to the switch via the onboard interface.
2. mechanical reliability of these cables seems lower than DAC
3. 30 metres is quite brusk some uses.

Cabling Progression

Source: Leviton – Advantages of RJ45

Greg is surprisingly passionate about treating people as humans working as profit-generating productivity tools instead of 'fleshy IT robot price centres'. Survived 25 years of Corporate Information technology across many verticals and tens of companies working on a wide range of networking solutions & products.

Host of the Packet Pushers Podcast on information networking at https://packetpushers.cyberspace- probably the best networking podcast on the Internet.

My personal web log at https://gregferro.com

Source: https://etherealmind.com/i-wont-be-making-cat8-cables/

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