Canadian Broadband → Re: dog chewed through cables need help with crimping

Arent't flat ethernet cables crap to begin with? the whole twisted pair thing just tossed out the window?

Maybe for short runs?

Correct, I often to my clients advise against flat cables regardless of how stylish they are because one will not be able to get peak performance. The twisted pairs introduce a calculated crosstalk amongst the conductors so that a transceiver at either end could remove the noise from said crosstalk, flat cables do not have this.

Secondly, flat cables can't be effectively crimped by hand, one can attempt to do so but ultimately they require injecting plastic or glue into the connector cavity after terminating because there's nothing really for the 8P8C (often mislabelled "RJ45") to grab onto other than the conductors and sooner or later the conductors are going to be yanked out or damaged without the injection. This is why the majority of flat cables are machine-terminated and have the plastic molding.

Thirdly, flat cables are much more susceptible to damage and fatigue. I have seen flat cables have the plastic jacket become dry and brittle and eventually the dry jacket rubbing against the conductors (wires) creates undue wear and tear like a dull wire cutter. In line with this, they don't have as good a bend radius as the round counterparts since they become kinked easier.

But getting back to the original question:
I would first of all address the cable location if your puppy can gain access — run the cable up and near the ceiling (can be done by nailing velcro ties to an out-of-reach run, say onto the back of a desk or up a wall and along the corner of a ceiling) Cables on the floor in any animal accessible location is a bad idea as you'll be replacing them all the time. At that point you can re-address the cabling.

Ill join the chorus here and day dump the flat cables. They suck.

to everyone hating on flat cables what exactly do I replace them with then? I got flat since the old cables stuck out like a sore thumb, these new ones were mostly on baseboards so they were practically invisible, plus I got 100MBPS (yes bytes) transfer speeds so fine for me

My dog ate my cable....LMAO, you can't make this stuff up
Have your puppy fix it

When people thing of flat cable, typically they think of old "silver-satin" un-twisted cable - which is prone to noise and crosstalk... And totally unsuitable for use with Ethernet.

They do make "flat" UTP (unshielded twisted pair) - cable; which given the price you paid, was probably what you had, and would be fine to use, other then the price...

Cat 5e is less then a 1/4" in size - if you get white cable, it'll blend in fine to baseboards, as well, for a fraction the price of the flat cable. Can also paint it to match walls or trim, if it bothers you that much.

I'm not hating on the flat cable, assuming it's the right stuff - I'm hating on the price...

I use a smaller version of this:

»www.monoprice.com/Produc ··· format=2

If the room is carpeted, you can usually sneak standard ethernet cable between the baseboard and carpet- tucking it underneath.

If you want the flat cables, okay, however:

Running cables along a baseboard unprotected is where you most likely are experiencing issues with your puppy. If you want to run cables that low with animals around, you should use an appropriate cable management solution that encases the cable in hardened conduit. If you simply replace what you currently have in place, your cable will end up damaged again. Any conduit that you may run will end up being larger than the flat cable. Some conduit solutions can blend into your wall and look like a beading of trim if installed correctly.

The thing with having animals with even minimal access to anything is that you must be willing to make concessions for the sake of practicality or you will be looking at repeated expenses or potentially your puppy may gain access to a power cable and end up severely injured.Running cable where it may be subject to foot traffic is a bad idea as eventually that cable is going to experience damage over time from the constant pinching. That's why cable ramps exist in a lot of scenarios where cables must pass through a traffic area. In my experience, there are a lot of "Designed for", but few "Practical for".

I just ended up running some "normal" cables though the flat cables were stuck to the wall using double sided tape. the only reason the dog got at them was that I was waiting for a longer cable to replace a shorter one so I didn't tape down the entire length

I've run a lot of flat cables, flat twinax, back in the day. Always under carpet where it was not practical to run jiffy poles. The cable is protected by the carpet. Note the UNDER the carpet statement.

Generally a bad idea; and in violation of code...

A dog is the least of your concerns as a cable chewer. Mice did a number on my in-wall cat5 network that I painstakingly fished through. Took me a while to realize what that issue was. Call me slow but have you ever caught a mouse with your bare hands? Were you wearing gloves? Hope so.

On another handy note: Do not carry around your Cat5x crimper in your back pocket without protecting the crimper with a plastic sleeve of some sort. I was re doing a pile of cable for myself and neighbours, but I constantly made bad cables. After troubleshooting everything but the crimp tool, I held a magnifying glass to the crimp port on the tool. Noticed a pile of minute, microscopic fussy threads all over the crimper blades. I had carried the tool around in my back pocket of my jeans unprotected between crimps, only to have the second and many beyond that test bad. Blew in some dustoff and all was good. Now my crimper lives in a protective sleeve 24/7 when not actually doing a crimp, of course.

That depends a lot on the cable's actual construction.

Most flat cables have encapsulation that prevents wires from rubbing against each other and support most of the load so you get nowhere near as much pinching as regular cat5 where loose pairs are completely unsupported and get crushed into each other when the cable is under load.

You would probably wear down the encapsulation through carpet/floor friction long before causing a half-decent flat cable to fail due to pinching... as long as you do not start rolling a 500kg toolbox on steel coasters over it.