Industrial Networking Solutions Tips and Tricks: Why Do I Need Industrial Rated Ethernet Cable?

Ethernet Cabling (Cat 5e, Cat 6 and Cat 6A) was designed for inner building applications. They are typically installed in temperature-controlled areas, inside the walls or plenums, which are not exposed to the elements of heat, abrasion, flexing, sunlight, chemicals or radiated noise. Whenever you stress an Ethernet Cable, you diminish its performance. But, there is an answer….

Belden makes a line of Industrial Ethernet products that are designed for harsh environment applications. Many of these applications we design today are in: Food and Beverage, Utility, Petrochemical or some other harsh environment. These environments push standard Ethernet cable to the limits, which can result in downtime, replacement costs and failures.

Belden has a Patented Design called Bonded Pair Technology. Bonded Pairs can ensure Ethernet performance in these harsh environments. The concept of the Bonded Pair Design is to “lock” the individual conductor pair together. Thus, ensuring conductor-to-conductor spacing, or centricity. When installing Ethernet cables, they get twisted, pulled, tugged and bent. Any of the normal installation practices creates a “gap” or loss of centricity in a standard Ethernet cable, which will reduce the overall performance of the cable. Bonded Pair Technology eliminates “gapping” which can change the Impedance of the cable. When this occurs, your Ethernet cables electrical performance will degrade, including: NEXT and RL. Lab results show that Non-Bonded pair cables RL can degrade over 12 dB (over 15 times worse than it’s before installation performance). With Belden’s Bonded Pair, the electrical specifications are consistent from Reel-to-Install. Thus, achieving “Installable Performance”.