Help a network noob with understanding shielding please :)

dav3evans · 15 Apr 2021 at 23:09

Evening all. I've had a bit of a Google around on this, but I'm clearly not quite hitting the mark so I thought I would seek out the wise and powerful members of this forum

I've recently run a couple of ethernet cables through the walls, I was offered some shielded Cat6a for super cheap (cost of a Dominos!) which has brought the requirement of shielding into question, namely - whether to actually earth it properly to make the shielding work. I think the answer is just a flat out no unless I live in a factory, which I don't, but here are the conditions that have me wondering:

runs within 2m of all the electrical cables for the house that run into the fuse box
from 1st floor, it runs under the floor, essentially in contact with a new power cable for sockets to the garage
One of these ethernet cables runs into the garage through the same hole in the wall as the power cable
At one point the cable is in the ceiling directly above the kitchen, so kitchen lighting/appliances are within close proximity
The 2 cable runs are around 15m-20m each

Question 1 - Should I bother? If it's as simple as a big ol' no. That's great, thank you.

Question 2 - Entertaining the idea of learning something from this - assuming that the cable in the walls, the faceplates and the cables from faceplates to the router/computers are all shielded, where should I be looking to ground everything? Is it usually the case that you have a router/AP with shielded ports, and then the power cable for the router serves as the earth? Or would you opt for earthing the faceplate to a socket instead?

Thanks in advance, try not to judge me too much

ChrisD. · 16 Apr 2021 at 07:44

dav3evans said:
Question 1 - Should I bother? If it's as simple as a big ol' no. That's great, thank you.

I doubt it’s worth it at home. I run a few 5e cables around and I get 10 Gbit out of them.

dav3evans · 16 Apr 2021 at 09:42

That's kind of where I'm at, at the moment I think from what I have looked into. Essentially just because the shielding is there, doesn't mean I have to actually use it. I did a little reading about whether the shielding potentially creates more of a problem if it isn't earthed properly, and from what I can tell the "antenna effect" isn't likely to be an issue either, seemingly for the same reasons as I potentially don't need shielding - because it's a house, not an industrial warehouse, so there's just not enough interference to consider it a problem.

Zefan · 16 Apr 2021 at 09:52

I understand why it's on your mind but I wouldn't bother doing anything at all. Unless you live in either a very non-standard construction house, or a mansion, your runs are going to be far, far shorter than what the cable is capable of delivering. No amount of shielding funkery is going to make a difference in your case. The only thing I'd be conscious of is the increased pain that shielded cable can be to work with.

Cyber-Mav · 16 Apr 2021 at 09:59

Shielded cabled is big headache terminating. The faceplates got to be a lot deeper which is what i hate the most.

dav3evans · 16 Apr 2021 at 12:59

Definitely not a mansion! Each cable is at most about 15ish metres. The guy that gave me the cable has said he will do the terminating for me as well, he just asked me to pick up some face plates. It was this that sparked the overthinking on it all really, noticing that the Cat6a boxes have that shielded cable brace on, at which point I looked into how the shielding works, whether it's needed, ground loops, antenna effects *internal screaming*.

Seems like the answer is, as long as the terminations can be taken care of, and the faceplate depth isn't an issue, we're still looking at just not worrying about grounding it. All making me feel beeter so far, thanks!