Which external grade Cat6 cable?

[milleniumaire]

I need around 100m of Cat6 external grade cable, preferably on a reel to make it easier to handle.

I see that use-ip sell two types of external cable:

EXC Cat6 F/UTP external upto 50m
or
XeLAN Cat6 UTP external on a 305m reel

I'm assuming the 50m cable isn't on a reel and is cut to size. 305m is much more than I require.

No mention of the AWG value or the cable thickness.

I have found some Kenable External shielded Cat6 outdoor coper FTP cable on a 100m reel for £43.32 incl VAT, but this almost sounds too cheap! It is 7mm thick and full copper 23AWG, which I believe is the standard for Cat6, although 24AWG would be easier to terminate!

My longest run is likely to be no more than 30m, but as I'm going for Cat6, rather than Cat5e, I would hope it could cope with 10Gbps.

I would be interested to know which Cat6 cables have been used by people and how successful they were.

 

[milleniumaire]

.... just found the data sheet for the XeLAN, which states it is 23AWG and has an outer diameter of 6.3mm, so quite thin for outdoor Cat6 cable, probably because it is unshielded. It's just a shame it doesn't come on a 100m reel!

 

[dusan_h]

I bought Kenable cat7 shielded outdoor cable 50m for my new install and it is a very good solid copper. The only problem I couldn't terminate it so had to buy cat7 connectors from Kenable too. I also bought ready made 30m cat6a cables and they are great too. Easier to work with.
Go for Cat6a shielded outdoor cable, you will not regret it. If you need 10Gbps. then I am not sure, I have no way of testing it, but it should be capable.
I use mine for PTZ and colorvu cams and powering over 25m with no problems.

 

[milleniumaire]

I bought Kenable cat7 shielded outdoor cable 50m for my new install and it is a very good solid copper. The only problem I couldn't terminate it so had to buy cat7 connectors from Kenable too. I also bought ready made 30m cat6a cables and they are great too. Easier to work with.
Go for Cat6a shielded outdoor cable, you will not regret it. If you need 10Gbps. then I am not sure, I have no way of testing it, but it should be capable.
I use mine for PTZ and colorvu cams and powering over 25m with no problems.

In the end I bought 100m of Cat6 UTP (unshielded) AW23 external solid cable for £45, which works out at around £137.25 for a 305m roll, but I didn't require that much.

I decided to go for unshielded because a) I'm fairly sure I can run it between the camera and NVR without coming into contact with electrical cables, or at least only crossing them, so I don't believe interference will be an issue and b) it has a small 6.3mm outer diameter and should therefore be easier to use!

In the past I've run cat5e AW24 cable around my home to provide a gigabit home network and I've also used this cable for creating short patch cables and never had a problem fitting the plugs onto it due to its small diameter.

I also had a short 20m length of cat6 shielded cable left over from a recent project and found this "impossible" to fit plugs on, even those that were cat6 rated.

So, I was aware that using thicker cat6 cable, and the shielding makes it thicker, might cause issues for me, so purchased the "slimmest" external rated cat6 cable I could find. As it happens, I even struggled to fit cat6 plugs onto this cable and so invested in a Klein pass-thru modular wire crimper and the pass-thru modular data plugs to go with it. Soooooo much easier to fit the plugs onto the cable and the expense of this will outweigh the frustration and time I spend at the top of a ladder trying to fit a plug onto the cable when connecting it upto the cameras.

I tested the cable by adding plugs to both ends while it was still on the reel and it operated a camera over the 100m length.