“Shorties“, shielded and unshielded

Particularly short field-installable RJ45 plugs and modules come in very handy in confined spaces. This very often happens in retrofit installations in old building. Short Cat. 6_A plugs and modules are available in shielded and unshieded versions. Both are designed to transmit 10 gigabits per second. Read on to find out where to use which version.

Quite often IT cabling has to be installed where space is at a premium. This causes problems when field-installable RJ45 plugs and modules have to be mounted on the cable: The minimum bend radius of the cable has to be kept, but most plugs and modules are quite long. Telegärtner’s SL series not only exceed the standards‘ specifications by far, the SL plugs and modules are also particularly short and thus leave enough space for adequate cable routing.

Shielded and unshielded SL series plugs and modules exceed the category 6_A specifications for data rates of up to 10 Gbit/s. Both of them are standard-compliant as EN 50173-1:2018 specifies both, shielded and unshielded cabling.

Shielded cabling is common in the DACH region, anywhere else unshielded cabling is preferred. Both types of cabling work well when high-quality component are installed properly according to the circumstances on site. It has to be minded, however, that shielded cabling demands bonding that exceeds the minimum requirements specified by the electrical codes. Especially in old buildings where grounding and bonding meets the specs of the national electrical code but fails the very high demands of bonding for shielded cabling, high-quality unshielded cabling can save the day. Unshielded cabling does not need such extensive bonding as they meet the EMI requirements by design. The electrical cabling that still meets the specs of the national electrical code can remain unchanged, which lowers the overall project cost significantly. Typical projects that benefit from this are old buildings that need retrofitting a powerful copper cabling after beeing connected to the outside fiber network (FTTH) or because a company or an authority wants to move in.

Wherever low-frequency magnetic fields are – e.g. near railways – unshielded cabling is the optimum choice too. Cable shields are protect against high-frequency electromagnetic fields, but they are nearly useless when it comes to low-frequency magnetic fields like the one caused by the electric railway lines operating at 16 ⅔ Hz, and so passing trains cause interferences. Unshielded cabling is protected against such interferences by design as the induced voltages add to zero because of the constant and tight pair twist. Fiber optic cabling would solve this problem too, but it is the much more expensive alternative.

To sum in all up: Wherever an extensive bonding is necessary, where there are problems caused by low-frequency magnetic field or where the budget is more than tight, unshielded cabling is the perfect choice.