Up to 60% of economy patch cords do not meet the Cat 5e standards according to tests undertaken by networks equipment supplier Krone.
The tests, conducted as part of Krone's competitor evaluation programme, led to such "appalling" results that the firm has decided to expose the shortcomings of some patch cords being sold in the marketplace.

"Installers assume when they buy economy products that, while they will not have the performance and headroom of top tier products, they will at least meet the Cat 5e standard," comments Stuart Reeves, Krone's technical manager.

Krone purchased 280 unbranded products from seven distributors and tested them using the new patch cord test head for a Fluke DSP cable tester. The best result obtained was a 70% pass rate – 30% of cords from one distributor failing to meet the transmission performance required. For the other distributors, the failure rates were between 32% and 56%.

"These non-conforming patch cords certainly will reduce performance in terms of increased bit error rates, data throughput, system margins and network down time," concludes Reeves.

Source

Electrical and Mechanical Contractor