Saturday, January 11, 2020

This box of Cat-6 has a bare copper wire on wht/blu pair! WTF?

Network admin here, have never seen anything like this, wondering if anyone here has. Ran some wire, started to strip ends to punch a patch panel and noticed that on the white/blue pair, the white jacket is missing, it is bare copper. It is not clear/transparent, it just looks like the machine ran out of material or someone forgot to load material during manufacturing. The orange, green, brown pair conductors all have insulating material, no exposed copper. The blue-blue of the white blue pair is covered in blue material as you would expect.

Pic: [Cat-6 with bare copper conductor on wht/blu pair!] https://i.imgur.com/EJ33tOK.jpg

Can/should I even punch these runs down or re run all new cable? Not too concerned about the Keystone jack station side, but worried about patch panel side since more length is visible and close to other adjacent wires on the back of the patch panel. I know PoE doesn't run on that pair, but I believe data does for Gigabit Ethernet.

The box of wire is Cordata Labs (a Superior Essex brand, made in USA) Cat-6 sold at Graybar. Emailed their support asking if this is a QC issue, but it is the weekend so probably wont hear back until Monday if at all. Other boxes of Cordata Cat-6 cable bought that day are ok, the conductors have white and blue on them as they should.

Thank you, Squelchtone



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