Shielded cat5e is better than just twisted. But it can be a bit of pig to install. Its usually much stiffer than standard 5e/6e twisted pair. We used to earth the shield at the patch panel as well especially if the pairs were not twisted but I would have thought they will be. We only used shielded in extreme noisy environments where we had lots of three phase mains cables to cross or where there was no choice but to use the mains cable trunking. Walt -----Original Message----- From: staffslug-bounces(a)staffslug.org.uk [mailto:staffslug-bounces@staffslug.org.uk] On Behalf Of Adam Egan Sent: 18 May 2010 11:56 To: StaffsLUG Subject: [Staffslug] network cabling advice Hi guys, My friend has a box of shielded cat5e I could use to flood-wire my new house. I've never worked with shielded cable, and m question is, is there anything wrong with using shielded all the way around my network? I remember hearing once that it could increase the voltage in the cable or something? Wish I'd paid more attention now! Adam _______________________________________________ Staffslug mailing list Staffslug(a)staffslug.org.uk http://lists.staffslug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/staffslug

On Tue, 2010-05-18 at 16:08 +0000, Andy Smith wrote: In similar situations (cabling up a house whilst it was being renovated) I really appreciated the extra strength and rigidity from the screening/shielding as it was quite resilient to twisting or kinking, provided that you weren't doing something really silly. With regards to wiring-up the connectors, the screened variant were quite a bit more expensive so we decided not to bother with it unless a run proved to be noisy post-installation. It was only a house after-all, so nothing mission critical. That was well over a KM of cable, and from what I've heard it still all runs nicely. Tom