My Favorite Network Patch Cables

If you coil up your long cables using the Over-under Method (used by contractors to coil up long extension cords or hoses) you will be able to quickly uncoil a cable without twists or tangles, or leave parts or, according to wiki, leave part the coil intact while maintaining the total capacitance of the cable.

Love the Monoprice cables. The colors are great and all that I use.

Big fan of the channel, and just picked up a couple of these for my home network. They work great, but I find they’re really hard to take out unless I use a small flathead to depress the pin on the RJ45 connector (this is after adjusting the boot to make sure it’s in the correct orientation). Is this typical for monoprice or did I just get a funky batch?

Have you tried the leviton 6H460-XX and H6A10-XX cables? They are high flex and have in integrated boot. Thin and flexable but you can tell they are still durable. Would love to hear your opinion about them.

I am in the EU unfortunately the monoprice cables are not that available and if they are they are really expensive. There is a austrian company called "wirewin" they are making the "just slim" patch cables, they are really great!

So after this video I am thinking about buying 10 pack of 0,3m Monoprice CAT6A for patchpanel-switch connections. But how about choosing cables for patchpanel-device connections (about 1m for 9U rack I think)? Same? I run shielded 6A in my home, it's a bit too stiff to be run in rack (cracks happen, that's why I want to upgrade) but I am curious if I will be ok with grounding my rack (patchpanel, shielded keystones LSA-RJ45 & RJ45-RJ45 from Ali) and just give up with shielding inside?

dude, my hands have gone raw from unpacking stacks of individually wrapped cables, the worst.

There is reason why cables are round..The flat cables although look cool, they are not electromagnic interfrence which is a lot in a rack.

Was hoping to hear shield vs unshielded discussion.

I'm wondering if the plastic on the Ubiquiti Cable will get "sticky" after a couple of years? Is it that type of coating on them?

Ubiquiti cables are unreliable in my experience

I work in live entertainment (specifically sound) and I love those thin Cat6a patch cables from Monoprice. They also work great with Ubiquiti etherlighting. I would normally never recommend ANY cables from Monoprice but those patch cables are great.

In my industry we need rugged yet flexible cables for longer runs. Cables are treated pretty roughly, especially on tours, and are installed/uninstalled/reinstalled on a daily basis. Van Damme Tourcat is a good example of good cabling made for our industry. Also, the ends are usually terminated with field term plugs or Neutrik Ethercon connectors (which is more of a casing that goes around a traditional RJ45 that makes them a bit more like an XLR connector).

I've been using the monotype slim cables for years and they're fantastic. The "regular" ones are not great as road cables... the spring one you showed is definitely in a different class (and I'll be ordering one for my bag!). But they're great for semi-permanent installs, racks, etc. Just not something that's getting moved around a lot.

For smaller installs I love the 6-12" size patch cables to make everything look pretty. BUT soooo many switch companies still make sub-48 port switches that only use one half of the rack unit, which makes neat cabling incredibly hard... the short ones are too short, and the jump to 12" makes for awkward transitions. I'm really puzzled why some enterprising company hasn't made a set of "fanned" cables in progressively longer sizes that allow nice cabling in that all-too-common scenario. (I wish more 24 port switches used the single row model that Ubiquiti's Enterprise and Max switches do, but even their lower end Pro and Standard switches use that obnoxious "right side" swith layout.

I found a company on AliExpress (which I usually try to avoid) that makes 7.5" patch cables, which have helped a LOT to tidy things up. So far so good, with those. A true fanned set would be so much nicer, though.

And then we get to labeling... heat shrink labels are the best, but none I have found can shrink enough to fit over the connector but still shrink down to skinny cable diameters , so that's just sad.

Monoprices snagless molded strain relief is afaik a copy of the better, more pliable Cables2Go version. I usually recommend cables2go for more price sensitive jobs, otherwise I use certified vendors with warranty.

We always strive to make our racks look aesthetically pleasing to the eye. Clients absolutely love the organized look and issues are more easily solved remotely if a cable malfunctions, etc. Love the cable videos. Cabling and designing network racks is absolutely a art within itself.

We have been using the small form factor patch cables thanks to your recommendations.

i coil even fairly short cables using the over-under technique. that way i can just grab one end and throw the rest, and the whole thing comes undone without drama

I build my own 😊

Interesting video, thanks for taking the time to produce it. I managed a couple research data centers for a decade and the main headache I faces was the quality of the gold plating on the connector. Once a patch cord was connected to equipment, they were connected for the life of the equipment until it was decommissioned. In the early years periodically the connection to a piece of equipment was sporadic even when the link light was on and it turned out the connector pins didn't have a solid "rich" looking gold color. The pins in the connector had a more silvery color. Replacing the cable with the ones I standardized on always solved the problem.

I usually just buy the cheap minopr8ce. They work great.

This is perfect timing, was looking at cables for a rack rewire just yesterday! Thank you!

in my personal experience, all I care about in patch cables is a good availability of several colors and those snagless connectors. I can't live with the broken clips and insufficient color coding! 😁

I own some of the thin Monoprice cables. The rubbery ramp boot piece constantly gets stuck under the plastic clip used to release the cable, making the cables a complete pain in the ass to use. It’s a terrible design. I won’t be buying any more of them.

Monoprice:
They have a good warranty on their cables. Had a really low failure rate on their patch cables. (Wasnt worth shipping them back, had maybe 30-60 cables out of some 12000 that has issues over 5 years.)

I don't get why no one can make DAC and fiber cables short like that...

Need to try and find some great British alternatives.

I have been using monoprice 0.5m cables as well as Ubiquity ones.

I just placed an order for a pack of 35 etherlight cables for my max switches

I switched all of our cables out to the Monoprice ones a few years ago. They are great!

I like the ones you do, I also for customers will also use Cable Matters and Amazon Basics in addition to Monoprice because not everything available in the US is available here in Canada and/or a decent price because of the 30-40% exchange rate

We finally just got the green light to standardize on 1ft mono price cables and my god am I glad.

Have you heard of Kordz? Their Pro and PRS patch range is fantastic. Every PRS patch cord from Kordz that rolls off the production line has a full certification check performed by a Fluke DSX-5000. Fantastic patch, AOC, RCA and HDMI cables. Structured cabling very good too!

I've been using the Monoprice thinline since they came out, no issues at all. They are so nice looking and the color variety is bonus.

While we’re on the topic of cables, does anyone here have any recommendations for USB-C cables that don’t tangle easily? (Bonus points if they might offer faster data-transfer speeds than plain ol’ USB2.)

Thanks for an interesting video about something I would have never considered important before watching. I am BRAND NEW to this kind of stuff but I would like to build out a ubiquity network to replace my existing Orbi mesh system. Do you have any content that you would recommend for beginners? I am currently considering a system with 2-3 APs (I currently have Eufy cameras but I'd like to switch to POE cams with better resolution), and add some hard-wired access for smart TVs/home office). Thanks again!!

the monoprice cables are great!

In terms of eth cables, I normally run with ugreen. Yeah their stuff can be pricey at times but I've only ever had one eth cable fail on me but that was from my missuse of the cable.
Their other stuff is good too imo. Depending on the cable that I need, ill flip between anker and ugreen

If you have structured cabling that are almost 100m long, Good (sometimes bulky) patch cable is needed, actually all connectors need to be properly terminated also to pass TDR FEXT and NEXT test, some place may need screened (shielded) patch cable.

Personally I don't like very short cable, the shortest one for me usually around 0.5m, shorter than that the only way it usable is your switch is directly below or above the patch panel and align almost perfectly to switch ports, which usually not the case for large installations that may need chassis switch or 2RU switch. Also I usually don't place the switch directly under/over patch because the back of switch may damage patch connections during installation and maintenance.

I've had success with the FiberStore slim cables that look similar to those Monoprice ones; my only complaint is that they need to sell the 6" version in bulk packaged bundles of - let's say - 48, because tearing opening 48 individual plastic baggies is not exactly my idea of a good time. (Edit: what do you know, it looks like they've already started selling 24 packs that appear to come in a single bag, so maybe, problem solved?)

I do love these patch-cables especially if you need SHORT AF cables, they are perfect.

I bought a bunch of those monoprice cables because I was seeing them everywhere.... loved them until I had my first unifi AP EVER die (I've installed at least 30 of them) a few weeks after installing it with a monoprice thinline patch cable. It absolutely could be coincidence but it just didn't sit right with me that the first time I ever used these patch cables was the first time I ever had a unifi AP completely fail. I also had 2 of these brand new cables that simply didn't work.
Since then I've been buying the vertical cables cat6a "slim" cables and I'm a huge fan of those. They are a slightly larger gauge (28AWG vs 30AWG) while still being considerably thinner than traditional twisted pair cable. I've not had a single issue with these and I would HIGHLY recommend them. They also transmit the light from etherlighting switches pretty well. The only thing to be aware of is the little plastic release can sometimes get pulled over the top of the ramp (same problem demonstrated during this video with the monoprice ones) but that's easy enough to correct.

Rhino Cables on Amazon (UK) are my current go to brand for all my cabling needs. Not just network, but USB, display, etc., too.

Bi-Directional data transfer rates at different power levels and counting any transfer errors is the way to test these thin wire cables.

I have used those from cisco, the flat one and they suck. At least cisco covers them if they break which they will quickly. I changed over to a "whatever cable deal i can get cheap that works"

Learn how to wrap cables properly, try over under method.

I don't really understand why people, especially in North America are using unshielded cables.

Spot on.

Recently i had an install with about 400 15cm etherlightning cables and to unpack these is way more difficult as the 50-pack 15cm white regular ones. They come in a bag in 10s wrapped with small strip

I would recommend using the same vendor for your structured cable patch panels and patch leads.

arguments a bit kinda stretched.
- I have an flat cable, which caring POE++ as well on 2.5G speed to my AP's. No problems so far for 4 years, easy to stick it to any surface and stack them if needed. I doesn't had a problem with scissors, as i never tried to cut them tho.... so they working fine.
- for some reason, Ubiquity cables were not ashamed for being thin, however they could be cut as easy as flat cables. Boomer for me...
- and there was no cut test for more bulkier cables.

Jokes aside, the whole topic is a question of taste and particular application.

I think all these cables share one problem: they lack metal tips and will fail certification tests. A missing ground can also cause other strange problems. I am using Leoni MegaLine or Metz Connect cables. Their only downside is that they do not come in very short lengths, requiring extra cable management. For a perfect fit, get a patchbox.