Cat6a Cables – When is Grounding a Concern?

cablecablingethernetlayer1utp

I'm educating myself on how to terminate Cat 6a cables. I've seen some articles talk about "grounding" requirements because of the "shielding" in the cables. But is grounding a concern if I'm just connecting two devices directly?

If I have a spool of Cat6a cable and I crimp on my own RJ45 shielded connectors, and then I use this cable to connect a router and a switch (for example), do I need to care about grounding? I'm not going through a wall jack. The two devices would be connected directly together.

Apologies if I'm misusing terminology and making this question unclear or confusing.

Best Answer

Category-6a cabling is UTP (Unshielded Twisted Pair) cabling. If your cable has a shield, it is something else. Any shielded cable must be properly grounded. That requires connectors and equipment that properly ground the shield, at least on both ends. Improperly-grounded, shielded cable will be a problem because the shield will exacerbate the problems it is meant to prevent.


If you really want to learn how to do this correctly, you will need to get (buy or rent) a very expensive cable tester to see if what you terminate actually passes the Category-6a test suite. Building Category-6a patch cables is something I have never seen even experienced installers be able to do and get it to pass the test suite. I have only seen factory built patch cords be able to pass the test suite for Category-6 and Category-6a.