I worked at a job yesterday with a gym about 75 feet from the house. The contractor had run an RG6 and a cat6 between the buildings which was needed, but I discovered the cat6 was stranded.

I think I knew that stranded existed, I thought it was mostly in premade patch cables. I used my typical RJ45 ends and I have functionality, but I wonder what the long-term effects will be. Is the speed likely to be mediocre, will the connections degrade over time, and so on?

There is a difference between the ends made for solid conductor and stranded conductor. And there are also ends that claim to work on both.

The stranded conductor ends have straight teeth, that pierce into the middle of the cable.
The solid ends have staggered teeth meant to wedge the solid core (much like an IDC connection).
The ones that claim to work on both are usually a 3 tooth version of the solid. And I personally think its sketchy they market it like that.

As long as you got the correct ends on the cable, shouldn't be a problem. Get the wrong ends on and you might get it to work now, but it might not work in the future.

As far as the cable goes.... Since stranded is usually for patch cables, I don't think I have ever seen a stranded cable rated for outdoor use (direct burial or otherwise). So I think it likely that cable will end up needed to be replace in the coming years. Unless it is something I haven't seen before and is rated to withstand the elements it will face.

Working on primarily boats, we use stranded whenever possible.  Essentially all of our cable runs are patch cords that we've made ourselves and we haven't had any issues over the 10+ years that we've done it this way.

I will say that finding stranded/shielded, cat6 in bulk is impossible. (someone will call me a liar and link a product and probably miss the part about being both shielded and stranded) So we've ended up sticking to cat5e shielded/stranded cable except for products that specifically call for Cat6, then we'll run solid if we must.

"The contractor...." is the operative part of the sentence. Might be time to have a little conversation with them about the proper cable types/ends and have them terminate some of the cable they installed with the ends of their choice. Then, they can find out that they don't know what they're dealing with.

Don't your cables also have to be LSZH (Low Smoke Zero Halogen) on the boats you work on? That's got to be some expensive cable, even in bulk. What brand are you using that has that in stranded?

Aside from the connector issues, stranded Category cables have higher attenuation than solid cables, this is one of the reasons the TIA spec limits patch cord length.

not on our boats. maybe SOLAS compliant vessels require that, but i've never heard of it in our application.

Wisdom.


But if you mentally categorize it as patch cable wire, sooner or later you'll need to think through a wiring problem where your focus will be on the "need for flexibility" rather than on "what is used for patch cables," and you might forget to include stranded in your list of possible solutions.

Let's focus a bit here on the intended use: I'd say that stranded wire is usually intended for use where the wire must bend in a small radius, or be able to live through vibration much worse than what solid can contend with.

And it turns out that those needs happen to be exactly what patch cables need.

So I think it likely that cable will end up needed to be replace in the coming years. Unless it is something I haven't seen before and is rated to withstand the elements it will face.

Can I ask why? is it a vibration thing? a just "its easier to run" thing? other reason?

it's part of the electrical standards for wiring boats. we don't pull solid power wires either. pretty sure it's a vibration thing

Vibration, slamming into waves and wakes.....

Have you seen manufacturers using NMEA OneNet, or are they still avoiding entering the present (Raymarine)?

I have yet to see it in the wild.