Bending angles for category 6 runs

[sevtg2000]

Hello everybody. I'm an electrical engineer and I have a project that deals with a public address system. I usually dont deal with signal and networking at all (I studied power systems) so I'm not very familiar with the telecommunication standards. I was wondering if anyone can tell me what the acceptable bend angle is for Cat.6 cables between junction boxes. I'm guessing maximum allowed bend is two 90deg angles maximum (or lower angles in some combination i.e. one 90deg and two 45deg bends). I could not find this information in any reliable format, so it'd be very helpful if some applicable standard is included in your answer. I also believe that it said somewhere in the TIA standards that bend radius for Cat.6 is 4 times the outside diameter of the cable. I would appreciate it if someone could confirm this as well. I have to add that while an answer based on standards would be great, I will also appreciate any practical and realistic answer (say by a contractor based on experience). Thanks in advance everyone and have a good day.

 

[nowwhatnapster]

I have alot of experience with Cat5/5e/6.

Generally if your using cat 5 with the thin plasic coating, not the stuff with hard outer casing 90 degree bends arent going to do too much harm. I'm assuming your staying under the 100foot reccomend run length. I wouldnt be concerned too much with packet loss due to the 90deg bends. If you can avoid a 90 obvoisly that is better, I would not suggest exceeding 90deg.

If your dealing with the thicker wire, 90 deg bend would be out of the question. unelss ample room was given for the bend say 6inches or so should be sufficent.

Again these are all dealing with runs under 100feet. If your planning on over 100feet you need to look into fiberoptics, or signal boosters, or expect poor signals and less than gigabit speeds.

I wouldnt even bother with cat 6 unless your dealing with super long runs close to 100 feet.

cat 5e does a good job at giving gigabit speeds. Although cat 6 does provide better signal quality the difference at under 50 feet is not likely to be noticed.

You should be more concerned with running cat 5 close to electrical wires. Never NEVER run them parallel to electrical wires. This will severely degrade the signal quality. If you have to go near electrical wires, always cross over them and find an alternative route if possible.

 

[sevtg2000]

Thank you for the great advise nowwhatnapster. What I'm doing is, although I have to use Cat6 from the devices (speakers, horns, mics) to the routing units (some PoE switch+PSU/AMP+UPS+etc.), I'm specifying media converts that will convert Cat6 to Fiber so I can run Fiber between buildings as well as to the monitoring/communication stations (2 locations). Then I convert back to Cat.6 and finish the runs to required locations. The main concern I had was running the Cat.6 around in the different buildings to the devices. Your comments seem pretty logical, I'll specify some conservative bend radius requirements to avoid bending the thicker wires to a point where loss of performence is possible. Thanks for the input.