Leftover cat6a cable

I have installed some Cat6 cable, but there is some leftover length. If I wind it up in a spool my network speed drops to 100Mbit, if I let it loose it’s 1GBit, but looks ugly as hell.

I don’t want to cut it short as I might move furniture around and I’d need some extra length, and it was a nightmare to install it in the first place.

What is the best way to stow away the leftover cable, in a way it don’t loose speed and doesn’t take up a lot of space?

Is the cable solid copper core or straight-thru rated?

It’s this thin flat cable:


Easy to hide, works great, except the leftover part.

put it into a figure 8. if you coil it, you’re making an inductor and defeating the twisted pairs. Its the same principle behind a transformer. Changing magnetic fields induce current. Coiling cables creates an effect like windings on a transformer.

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Yeah, let me try that, something like this, right: wikipedia > Bifilar_coil

No, you dont want a coil at all. It will make it sensitive to any EM.

you want it like this

Also in the future, you should avoid those flat cables where possible. The pairs are twisted together but they arent twisted around themselves which is part of the problem you’re having. The twists reduce the cross talk from pair to pair but also help to shield outside interference from magnetic fields. Without all the pairs being twisted around each other you miss out on some of the inherent shielding effect.

It sounds like black magic, and in some ways it is, but once you understand inductance you realize why draping your cable over that wall adapter is a bad idea :wink:

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Second on the flat cables. They are usually form over function.