Transmission distance

Through UTP cables, signals can be transmitted over a distance of 100 m (328.08 ft.) only. This behavior occurs because signals attenuate during transmission through the UTP cables.

Attenuation refers to the dissipation of the power of a transmitted signal as it travels over a cable. Attenuation occurs because signal transmission suffers certain resistance from the cable, which weakens the signals as they travel over the cable. When signals are transmitted over a long distance, signal strength decreases significantly, causing the signal-to-noise ratio to drop below the accepted level. This decrease makes it impossible to distinguish between signals and noise, which results in data loss.

Patch panel and punch down blocks also affect attenuation; that is, they can be a source of issues resulting in shorter distances or data loss.

10GBASE-T connections require Category 6a as a minimum for proper 10G speeds up to the 100m distance dictated by the IEEE 802.3ae standard for a fixed 10GBASE-T port. The JL563A transceiver has a limit of 30m max distance due to limited power available to the transceiver (vs a fixed 10GBASE-T port). Anything less (Cat 6, 5e, 5) will compromise the distance that 10G over copper can achieve.

Shielded Twisted Pair (STP) Cat 6a cable is recommended when using the 10GBase-T transceiver (JL563A). Use of STP prevents EMI events from affecting data traffic carried on the wire - known as Crosstalk or Alien Crosstalk. Large EMI events from electronically noisy environments may be coupled onto unshielded cabling and cause temporary packet errors. Fixed 10G ports have designs to counteract these types of bit error conditions, that the 10GBASE-T transceiver cannot counteract consistently. Using STP Cat6a cables mitigate the errors significantly. All packet loss errors observed in extensive testing are considered recoverable by the host system with the JL563A transceiver.