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Cat6a patch cables

The 10 Gb copper category — Cat6a cords filtered by length and jacket colour, or searched inside the page by brand, length or part number.

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Specifications are read from the manufacturer product title as supplied to us; where a value is not stated it is left blank rather than estimated. Every line is screened for TAA country-of-origin and NDAA §889 status before checkout.

About Cat6a patch cables

Cat6a exists to do one thing Cat6 cannot: carry 10GBASE-T across a full 100 metre channel. It gets there by being tested to 500 MHz instead of 250, and — more importantly — by specifying alien crosstalk, the interference one cable induces in its neighbours inside a bundle. That is the failure mode that limits Cat6 to roughly 55 metres at 10 Gb and can pull it back to about 37 metres in dense pathways, and it is the reason a longer Cat6 cord is not a workaround. If a 10 Gb link has to cross a building, Cat6a is the copper answer; below about 55 metres, Cat6 is genuinely enough and cheaper.

The cost of that performance is physical. Cat6a is a thicker cable with a larger minimum bend radius, so pathway fill, cable managers and the depth behind a patch panel are the usual surprises on a retrofit — measure before committing a whole floor. The other decision is shielding: F/UTP and S/FTP constructions resist alien crosstalk and external interference well, but they only work as designed with shielded jacks and panels and a bonded path to ground, and a shield that is not bonded at both ends can perform worse than none at all. In most enterprise environments unshielded Cat6a is the simpler and better-behaved choice; shielded belongs where the environment or the specification demands it. Higher-power PoE is a point in Cat6a's favour either way, since its larger conductors run cooler in a bundle. Lengths on this page are shown in feet, converted where the title printed metres, and every specification is read from the manufacturer's own title.

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FAQ

Cat6a patch cables questions

When do I actually need Cat6a?
When a 10GBASE-T link has to run further than about 55 metres, when cables are bundled densely enough that alien crosstalk is a real risk, when you are running high-power PoE over long runs, or when you want the cabling to outlive two generations of switches. For a short 10 Gb hop inside a rack, Cat6 — or a DAC assembly — does the job for less.
Shielded or unshielded Cat6a?
Unshielded is the simpler choice and is fine in most enterprise environments, because Cat6a already specifies alien crosstalk performance. Shielded constructions (F/UTP, S/FTP) earn their place in electrically noisy environments or where a specification calls for them — but only when the whole channel is shielded, with shielded jacks and panels and a properly bonded path to ground. A shield left floating can be worse than no shield.
Will Cat6a fit my existing pathways and panels?
That is the question to answer before ordering in volume. Cat6a is thicker with a larger bend radius, so conduit and tray fill, cable managers and the space behind a patch panel are all tighter than with Cat6. The jacks and panels have to be Cat6a as well — the channel only performs to its weakest component, so Cat6a cord into a Cat6 jack is a Cat6 link.
Is Cat6a backward compatible?
Yes. It uses the same RJ45 connector and works with every slower Ethernet standard, so a Cat6a cord will happily serve a gigabit port today and a 10 Gb one later. Just remember that the whole channel performs to its lowest-rated component, so mixing categories gets you the lower category's limits.

Specifying Cat6a for a build?

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Cat6a Patch Cables — Uniqcli