Flat ethernet cable looks cute and blends into your decor, but beware that you might run into some performance issue I tried them and was forced to go back to the regular ones.
I have had exactly the same long standing problem with my internet dropping out for the past year, technicians were called out various times but nothing was resolved - so after viewing your video I finally decided to replace the flat cable with regular cat6 cable - and have no issues since - thanks for the info !!
They have shielded flat cables too. But yes I agree, emi wise. They don’t protect as well as rounded. But most of the time it good enough unless your running 10gbps servers.
Thanks for advice. I was planning to spread a cable from one room to another, and it is supposed to go underneath the door. So I figured the thin cable is better option. But you're right about isolation. The thick one is far more isolated.
Glad I could help! Thank you. I would like to suggest this video ( ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-7l_PgVgEz9I.html ) I made that might make life a little easier, instead of running wires all over the place.
You can get good flat cables, you can get bad flat cables. 28AWG ok, 30 might be ok for very short runs, 32AWG avoid. Some are twister pair = good. Some are not. Some are shielded, some are not. Do your reseach. Good flat cables are great for under carpet runs and you can sometimes shove several of them up a conduit where only 1 round will fit.
I used a 50ft flat ethernet cable, I have 1.5 Gbps internet speed, the speeds I was getting were inconsistent, when I tried normal cable, it worked just fine.
Thanks man. I was just about to buy the thin cable. But decided to look it up first and your video is the first video i came across. Thanks once again will buy the thick one.
Gonna help you make a correction. Not all rounded cables are shielded. Shielded cable (STP) implies there is an aluminum foil wrapping around the 4 pairs of wires (blue, green, orange, brown), and sometimes even the individual pairs of wires are wrapped. However, shielded cables are much stiffer than regular UTP (unshielded) cables.. so that might not work for every application especially if you need flexibility. Regular CAT6 cables have a plastic separator in the middle that separates the 4 pairs of wires, and each pair of wire is twisted differently (i.e. some pairs have more twists than others). This separation of wires, and variation in "twists" in the wires is what gives you that electromagnetic interference resistance. An aluminum foil shielding increases that "resistance" to interference. Note also that wire "thickness" or gauge is also important as thin wires like 28AWG would be more susceptible to interference to a thicker one 24AWG. Now to explain why flat cables such, the dimensions don't allow for the appropriate amount of twists, wire gauge and proper separation. There is an international standard that defines a proper ethernet cable.. there's nothing in it pointing to flat cables. It's like going back to using telephone wire lol.
Im almost buying one of these flat cables but now I know that they are not reliable and the fact they they are much more harder to diy repair once the rj45 been damage. I ordered Foil shielded cables instead. Thanks!
Flat cables can be bad, but so can round cables. I got some good quality flat cables and can get my full fiber speed (519Mb) over them. Round cables can also be unshielded, or have other problems.
I'm in a wheelchair from the waist down since birth & I'm always running over my ethernet cable with my wheelchair so now I switched to the flat ethernet cable instead so I don't keep running it over with my wheelchair
The convenience of flat cable sure makes them attractive, though. I have 4 devices I need to connect to my modem/router inside my entertainment cabinet, (Smart TV/AVR/AppleTV/DVD) and the thicker cable takes up too much space, have a tough bending radius, and don't lay flat. Also, the runs are really short, most are around 1', with one maybe 3'. Flat makes an easier and tidier organization. Seems like in my environment, well-constructed flat cables are the way to go.
I run flat cables just for comfort because I can’t really drill holes on my brick walls, and never had any problems. However I run one cable over 200ft and I use the regular cable for that.
His conclusion is correct but his explanation is not fully correct. The reason for the difference in performance is that ethernet or category cables have twists in the wires on the inside, which helps with reducing crosstalk and interference. Thats why the "beefy" cable works better, its actually a real cat5e/cat6 cable. Technically if a flat cable says UTP(Unshielded Twisted Pair) thats false advertising because the wires inside the flat cable cannot be twisted.
Fun fact: Not only are they shielded but twisted as well, even in (at least some, if not all) flat cables. But to accomplish this the individual strands inside have to be unbelievable thin. Just cut one apart, strip it down and see for yourself. That said, regular round cables usually are way, way more durable.
Thanks a lot to the video author and all comments in this thread. This makes perfect sense. Twisted but extremely thin wires in flat cables sounds horrible, and it violates the Ethernet standard/specifications. I will pick a round cable.
Personally I own a flat cable that I wedge between the tiny gap between the door and the wall, its getting crushed in the corner, and I'm 100% up to speed and never had any issues with my flat cable. Never going back to regular ethernet cables again! Especially given this looks so much better in my house.
I have a thick cable. And i have put it in the corner of my door in the slighty gap it has. But it is getting slighty crushed by the door. The cable works fine but my question. Will it damage it eventually. Or can i let it between the door slighty crushed
The "thin" flat cables where a throw back to the earlier years of telephone cables and 10base-T ethernet. Brings me back . Anyways. It's not cat 6 if its not twisted pair. So all flat cables are scams. unless they're REALLY short and meant for patching devices in really short runs.
Give it a couple weeks you're gonna start getting drop offs, bottlenecks, etc. Same thing happened to me. IMHO after doing research....flat ethernet cables cat 6 or 7 (lol) do not have the proper twist, shielding, etc. Cat 7 cables you see around are complete fakes. There is no such thing. BTW, I got two cables and BOTH had the same issues. So clearly it was not my internet, etc it was these cables. If you get a cable get a cat 6a at best with the proper gauge. Much better performance. Flat cables are junk, "cat 7" cables are fake.
But the thing is that I do not use my play station all the time and when I used to have nothing it was bad all I need is a smooth connection not crazy wifi
I heard about flat cable a few days ago and I was thinking I should get that for an upcoming project, but then as I thought about it, I started to doubt that would have been the correct choice. That is for the video.
Thanks a lot! I was wondering what kind of cable to buy. To use for online class. I like to buy the thin cable at first but you enlighten me so I would go for thicker ones now. Really helped me a lot! Keep it up sir. More power & keep safe.
Hey man. Nice vid and gets the point across. Thanks for making it. I was actually trying to look up some comparisons on these since IS odd how can they shield their cables in such a form factor, but to tell the truth the ones I found barely cost more than the proper cables so I bit the bullet and bought 2 2m(6feet?) long Cat6 cables where on was normal and the other was flat from the same brand just to test them myself. :D First of all we have a Gigabit connection over here in Hungary and using Speedtest.net with everything disabled I consistently got 55-65% throughput. I literally wouldn't notice the difference if it was 100%, but still this is about a tech guy's principles. Now it turned out that my router was connected to our modem with a simple Cat5 cable so I actually got excited to see what 2 Cat6 upgrades can do to it, but the shocker was that it did NOTHING. I literally did about 2 dozen tests pairing the simple Cat5 with a Cat5e all the way up to a double Cat6 setup and nothing has changed. My speeds were constantly around 60% and the only time it shot up to 70% was at late night when other people were probably not using the net anymore. :P I just wanted to leave this little observation here since even though my modem and router are in a hellscape of power/data cables, lots of clutter, my monitor and an active WiFi connection it STILL didn't matter what quality of cable I was using. Maybe this can start an interesting conversation about all this. :)
Thanks...wish I had came across your video earlier. I had tired to troubleshooting why my Unified AP kept dropping out...WiFi signal was OK...but kept loosing connection. Driving me nuts. Spent a week trying different fixes for Ubiquity Unified AP and settings on the UAP controller. Searching on google.....Then I decide to put shielded CAT6 cable, that I had lying around, on the AP to POE injector to the switch.......No more drop out's...continuous steaming of video from the internet...I have used the flat cables for other devices and no problems. But the Ubiquity Unified AP...., flat cabling was a big issue
You are welcome, yeah I noticed it too when I was trying to do live stream over the internet and keep getting a ridiculous amount of drop frames until I swap back to the regular cables. That's why I made this video to give others the heads up.
So I just ordered a flat ethernet cable because I need to run it under 2 doors and a round cable is just too thick for that. I'll try to come back to this comment and report how well the cable does compared to my wired connection with a round cable. I'm switching from wifi because it's just too unstable when I play games or livestream.
OK, it's been almost a week with my flat ethernet cable. When comparing the flat cable with a round cable plugging directly into the router, they get the same speeds. Running the cable throughout the upstairs and connecting it to an ethernet port there and gives a little slower speeds, but nothing noticeable. Overall happy with the purchase.
I had a slight decrease in performance with gigabit Ethernet and flat or ultra thin cable rated at cat 6. A full sized cat 6 (unshielded or shielded) was slightly better at 3m length. It made a difference when using VNC, but otherwise I wouldn't notice the difference. A good quality NIC can also handle poor quality cables better.
I have the exact same problem as this guy and it took me two years to find out that it's actually my flat cable that was sucking. I'm a streamer. I have heavy traffic flow daily over my network.
Lol, I just got my flat cable right now and I saw your video. I should have researched before buying. I bought it because I saw some reviews that it is good. Btw. Thanks
after a few months using a slim cable it started stuttering and makes my laptop lag and thank you for this comparison video i'm gonna plan to buy a thick cable/regular cable
My original package was 70mbps and I was running everything just fine until comcast bumped everyone up 20mbps. 70 will stream 4 TV's, 3 cell phones and browsing... You need to buy separate modem and router (good, mesh routers) like eero.
I’ve always been told that the tighter the twist in the pairs the better. That’s why cat6 is better than cat5. Flat cables don’t have any twist hence the loss.
@@southrncadillac most amazon reviews of flat cables indicate they are not suitable for crimping. If you need to fine-tune the length you need to extend them with a female-female plug (and attach another cable)
Could you pls make a video about ripping off both the flat and round cables so that we can a closer look at the inside of both of them?? Will appreciate that
@@ChardTheTechGuy watch this video about comparison between flat and round cables and then tell me which is better ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-u1WeLwVg7VI.html
The flat cat 6 cable i bought was also giving me issues. So I decided to unsheath the flat cat 6 cable and I found that the individual wires in the cable are not twisted at all. So that said I agree with chard stay away from flat unshielded cable.
The cat 7 flat cable you got is either UTP or UNShielded or it is CCA wrapped 1 of those things i just mentioned will cause huge signal derogation .....I saw you bought it at wally world ( BAD CHARD....lol)......they are normally only sold UNShielded @ W.W. until late 2017 but it was on the website only ....not sure if any is in stores by now ANYWAY ..... Get on Ebay or Amazon Young Man and Buy a Cat 7 Flat Double twist Shielded Cable FTP and they will run over 600 Mhz (class F standard).....Now if you really want to Future Proof your home use the NEW CAT8 cable 40 Gbps ......the cat 7 is Rated at 10Gbps and the Average consumer will most likely never exceed it unless you have a BIG home and plan to run POE security cams over the large distance. Good Luck and Dont ever BUY WALMART unless you want cheap Shit IN & OUT !!!!
Yes Im1CrazyCow, I should have know better - but I was really testing to see how well it will work, more of an experiment, so I took one for the team. Thanks for the info 🙂
Its All Good Young Man!!! Its kind of Funny & Sad Chard that I still come across Electricians & Pro Installers of Tech... Who dont even know Cat 8 has been approved and is on the Approved Compliance List for the UL & S&P, etc! I tell them the IBEW frowns on you Youngn's not reading your News Letter especially since most of what im talking about is over a year plus been approved by now...lol Anyway Be Safe and Have A Merry Christmas & A Happy & Safe New Year!!
Sad I already bought my flat cables and the only reason I came here was because I wasn’t feeling like I was getting the consistency I should’ve been getting😫
Sorry to hear that, I made this to save people from the headache I experienced, I wish you saw this before purchasing. I don't use them anymore & would not recommend them.
Chard The Tech Guy Yeah man thank you ... Actually the one I bought was a Flat Cat 8 Cable too ... And so then I figured that something had to be wrong since the Speeds that I was getting through it wasn’t consistent even compared to my Cat 5e.
Also what sort of lengths were you working with, if you remember... Thing is, my router uses a thick HFC (coax) cable and it comes through my room's glass slide door, which means I can't slide it closed because of it. A flat cable would fix this, and I really don't need more than maybe 3-5 meters (10-16 ft), so maybe there isn't much difference for such a short cable.
I literally just bought some flat ethernet cable cuz there was no round available where I bought it and didnt want to go anywhere else. I'm really hoping I dont have this issue you're taking about! Thanks for the info though, I'll know if my internet is dropping that's what's going on and I'll change to rounded wire
LOL, I just found this, and could spend hours replying! However, I will limit it to the logic of Big fat cable must be better than little skinny cable. :-) No, Big fat cable cheap to make, little skinny cable expensive to make. But seriously, for you guys thinking about using flat (for obvious reasons) or round, if you don’t need to go through those small space or behind those skirting boards, the flat cables work just fine, but if a connector breaks, re-jacking the flat cables is near to impossible. FYI, I am now running a 10Bbit Lan over flat CAT6 just pray I never need to replace the jacks, because you can’t! Maybe he bought some cheap crap?
Just ordered 30ft cat8 .Using verizon fios g1110 router wifi with a NightHawk extender and getting 231 upload and 210 download but i know ethernet is better for gaming
Fuck me, I’m getting the cable installed all over my house as we speak. Fingers crossed i don’t face any issues, I’m upgrading from cat 6 cable. It’s too late now, I hope the one I have isn’t dodgy.
Only if you're scammed. If you have a Cat7 flat cable (600mhz), it MUST conform to all Cat7 compliances. Twisted cables. Foil shielding. 10Gbps. That's why I go with Cat7, anyways. To get the foil shielding. Amazon Basics actually makes some of the best cables.. no matter what type of cable (USB C, Ethernet, etc.) because they HAVE to pass all quality tests and qualifications. Zero issues out of my Amazon Basics Cat7 flat cables. I've got 30 foot ones and a 50 foot one. Notta issue. Zero drops. It should only be about the spec (Cat 6e, Cat7, or Cat8 if you need 40Gbps :-P), but many companies skimp on parts and don't truly sell you what you think you're buying. So if you're having issues with a flat Cat6e/7 cable, it's a cheapo cable that probably didn't use twisted pairs, let alone foil wrap.
Having said that, that's why I prefer flat cables in Cat7. It doesn't matter that they're thin... they're still twisted pairs AND they're shielded with foil. Not even a microwave oven is gonna mess your speeds up. They are 10Gbps cables, my router only does 1Gbps, my Ethernet port on my mobo is 2.5Gbps, so I'll never see anything over 1Gbps, BUT.... they'll be here when the day comes AND I know they're quality and have the shielding that Cat7 is supposed to have. I even have a Cat8 going from my PC to Router just because. It's not flat, though. I just figured.... why not? I turned off all my 2.4/5ghz Wi-Fi and have a stealthy home security system, now. That's why I have so many cables. Got a network smart switch coming tomorrow to put my other cameras that were running on 2.4ghz onto Ethernet (with the flat Cat7 cables). I got flat because I have to route them through the house and through all kinds of odd places. Easier to hide and work with...
Lastly... WHY did I go wired? Because I can hack anything. I can crack any password. I can wireless radio tap without being on your network and capture all of your packets, get your encrypted data and crack it with my graphics card/GPU. MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256.... doesn't matter. I don't do that to my neighbors, but I was able to hack my own network without being connected to it. I was able to get my username and password during the EAPOL handshakes. Wireless is going EVERYWHERE... it's not a "beam" to the item using it. It's going 100-200 feet in every direction on 2.4ghz. If you MUST use wireless, turn the signal strength down as low as it can go. It'll still reach all throughout your house if you have a good router. Mine is too good. Even on low, I can grab 2.4ghz in the basement with my router upstairs... but at least none of my neighbors can see it. Still, though, I don't want anyone with a laptop and proper wi-fi adapter capturing my packets via wireless radio tapping by parking in my driveway while I'm at work or anything. Ethernet is the most secure way you can make your LAN. The only way someone can get on your network is breaking in your house and finding your router and physically connecting to it. And at that point, why not just steal your PC, monitor, TV, etc.? But wireless? I can "break into your house" without leaving mine. It's because you're sending signals into my home via Wi-Fi.
Truly the last thing. The best passwords that would take me billions of years to crack are LONG passwords. An 8 digit password like "8vJ!FJ7&"? I can crack that in 15 seconds. But a password that is "mypasswordispasswordokay?" That'd take around a billion+ years. So use phrases that you can remember. "Bid3nisadementedcrimn@l" would be a password that would take millions/billions of years for the BEST GPU to crack. There's a website you can use to test your password and see how long it takes the fastest hardware to crack the password. It's about length, not scrambled letters. NEVER use just 8 characters for a password. I recommend 16 characters minimum. Anything longer than that is just the cherry on top.
Read people's comments. He is right. Flat cables use very thin wires and almost no shielding or twisting. This makes them very susceptible to interference.
@@BenderdickCumbersnatch There are shielded flat cables and there are round ones that aren't. Just depends on what you get. The form factor is not the problem.
Oh yeah, it's defected. Well, I didn't want to keep wasting money so I switch back to regular cables. I had some of the viewers of this video confirm with similar experiences. Some people recommend getting a shielded flat cable.
@@ChardTheTechGuy I think I heard once that the more tightly twisted the wires are, the better the cable. Can't find source but i was curious when I saw the flat ones in the stores too.
@@regi7121 It is Jadaol Cat 6 Flat Ethernet Cable. But both him and I recommend getting a cable that isn't flat because the flat ones start performing worse over time.
