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Question by Tim Braes posted 20 Jun 2007 | | STP vs UTP | I am starting to cable my house. I've doubts using UTP vs STP. STP is slightly more expensive.
I would use CAT6.
Anyhow, any pro's / con's? Within an STP cable you see the grounding in the connector, where is it actually grounded to? to the chassis of the system e.g. to the electrical grounding? Will it be grounded at switch + computer side? Wouldn't that cause issues?
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Answer by Dmitri Abaimov posted 20 Jun 2007 | Dear Tim,
You've touched upon a sensitive subject that stirs the industry for as long as I can remember. My personal opinion is that shielding of telecom cables creates more problems than it solves and all at your additional expense, which makes even less sense.
To perform as designed the shield has to be grounded on both ends and the shield has to be continuous, starting from shielded patch cable in the switch to the shielded patch cable to the PC. You are absolutely correct, grounding on both ends does create grounding loop problem and thus noone actually grounds the terminal equipment end (PC). This practice pretty much negates all the positive shielding effects that might have been created by installing shield in the first place.
We actually have more on cable shielding here and even more here
You are welcome to browse our site for more because, as I said, this question keeps coming up.
So, to round it up, I would argue that there is no good reason a shielded cable should be used in residential environment.
Sincerely,
Dmitri Abaimov, RCDD
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