Anixter: H.264 Video 'Pretty Much Unusable' With Cat 5e

Hum... John, can you try to reproduce the same error in your lab? Using a 100 meters cable?

Also, be sure, when you test (if you do), use UDP for transmission, not TCP, TCP won´t break the image as we are observing in the video, but UDP will if packets are lost

Next week's Anixter webcast: "The world is actually flat."

Integrators the world over are going, "Huh? But I use Cat 5e every damn day and it works fine, Anixter." right now.

This here series is called "Disaster Du Jour".

A disaster a day video is a tall order for anybody, I sure hope they don't let the quality slip!

Not so sure their other videos are much better.

One question for the experts so I can learn what'all the deception is:

Do we not believe that 100m of Cat5e cable would typically have ~1% CRC errors?

Or do we not believe that such artifacts would typically occur even if we had ~1% CRC errors?

Or both?

How exactly do you swap out just the cable by unplugging/plugging just one end?

By doing that don't you necessarily involve a new/different Ethernet port in the path somewhere? Why not just swap both ends, if you want a clean test of the cable only?

I have voted "Usable": there is fire in the video sure but not that much of Fire for the Qty of Smoke..

Both the cables are not Equal and CAT6 is Fully certified for 1Gbe, which mean actuall specification is "more from Cross Talk & Network Errors", the key to remember is all the components have to be rated for CAT6 to complete the 100Mtr Horizontal Run for 1Gbe.

in a nut shell "CAT6 is tested to a higher standard and is capable of 10Gbps over short distances <40Mtrs"

In Surveillance most camera are with 10/100 ports, hence the expecting the OEM's of Camera to put a CAT6 Connector is doubtfull and the Spec Sheets of Camera always says 10/100base-T. So I would not recommend the CAT6 because the whole system is not rated for CAT6. using CAT6 is waste of Money.

Now becuase IPVM is worldwide readership, people in countries where standards are not verified and cost is the only critieria, a sub standard CAT6 is better than Sub Standard CAT5E.? ( I have had cases where 40Mtrs Horizontal of CAT5E could not perform )

from my collection of short notes collected over the years.

--> The general difference between category 5e and category 6 is in the transmission performance, the available bandwidth from 100 MHz for category 5e to 200 MHz (250Mhz) for category 6.

--> This includes better insertion loss, near end crosstalk (NEXT), return loss, and equal level far end crosstalk (ELFEXT).

These improvements provide a higher signal-to-noise ratio, allowing higher reliability for current applications and higher data rates for future applications.

--> ANSI/TIA/EIA-568-B.1 says the consolidation point should be located at least 15 meters away from the telecommunications room to reduce the effect of connectors in close proximity.

--> Although category 6 and category 5e connectors may look alike, category 6 connectors have much better transmission performance.

"at 100 MHz, NEXT of a category 5e connector is 43 decibels (dB), while NEXT of a category 6 connector is 54 dB. This means that a cat6 connector couples about 1/12 of the power that a cat5e connector couples from one pair to another pair. Conversely, one can say that a category 6 connector is 12 times less “noisy” compared to a category 5e connector." -- Quoted for website Information..

CNET has a video, which is quite a clear understanding.. "if you want to be future proof" --Marketing used by cable companies.

Serioooooously! ? !

What are the theoretical reasons why? THe cable carries Ethernet and from the last time i read, Cat # is good enough for most IP cameras. I have never seen a camera go over 40 mb/s using any codec and H.264 actually lowers the bandwidth ...

ABSURD!

Wrong on all accounts... SOme could make a case of this being fraudulent !

Not only perfectly OK, with the right adaptor devices you can run up to 600m (1800ft).

The people who make more money on cat 6 say cat 5e is bad. How could that be?

If you had the right cooked network (good call on the only-one-end-changed comment) you can do anything. If you select the correct crappy camera I think this would be easier. And if you follow the proper trunkslammer principles and never check the network you might get to this.

Good to know their technical department has no clue and it's provable. Sorry, Anixter comment dude, it looks like their tech support is crap. Not an easy reputation deficit to get over if they release videos like this.

So how is this new old guy they're bringing in as CEO gonna help this? If they just rolled some old fogey from the other end of the CCTV retirement home into the executive suite this sort of silliness will likely continue.

I guess maybe Anixter should get a little help ? Video Surveillance Courses

Just an idea :)

As an aside, you will see more and more Gigabit Ethernet IP cameras on the market soon. The cost of going 10/100/1000 is getting smaller and smaller as more commodity items switch over.

There are real benefits to be gained for switching. Many of the problems that he spoke of in the video are related to poor infrastructure choices, but Cat 5E vs 6 is rarely the problem.

H.264 is very 'bursty' when it communicates. I frames are big but few, P frames are small but numerous. The 'instantaneous' bandwidth of the stream can easily exceed 100Mbps even for a 4Mbps stream (heavy emphasis on instantaneous). Cameras are routinely asked to provide multiple concurrent streams out of the camera, so you have this mishmash of I and P frames that are all trying to get through.

What happens is (simplistically speaking) you get a flurry of P frames trying to get out the same pipe, usually over a pretty congested network link. Switches are REALLY cheap these days and do a pretty crappy job of handling a bunch of traffic on their internal backbone. The P frames usually manage to fight their way through and arrive, more or less in the same order and without too much time delayed between the frames.

Then you get a giant I frame that comes along like shamoo on a waterslide. The P frames start to pile up in the camera, causing buffering issues. The aggregate bitrate is far less than 10/100, but when the I frames go through, it can take longer than required to make it from point A to point B.

With just 1 stream and a 1080P30 camera, 10/100 is usually fine. With 8 streams all going into a $30 switch, you can see problems; especially when the switch *itself* only has a 10/100 connection to the world.

The packets all get congested arrive out of order or MIA and you end up with ‘jittery’ or torn video. TCP/IP does a lot to make all these problems invisible to the user, but it’s a major problem.

H.264 is very allergic to dropped frames, so tearing and other badness is not hard to achieve on a congested network.

Consumer applications like YouTube and Netflix solve this by buffering a large time amount of data, so it really doesn't matter if it took 1-2 seconds for the frame of video to be repaired using TCP/IP retransmissions. By the time the data gets sent to the video player, it's all properly ordered and intact.

Security applications try very hard to reduce the amount of latency on the video.

Buffering creates latency. As such, buffers on the playback side (and sending side) are usually as small as possible. Any problems with getting the packets out of order and/or missing, aren't given enough time to be fixed, which results in playback errors.

By going to gigabit, those I frames are allowed to flow through the system like whale $#!T in an ice floe, so there’s less congestion and a lot less problems with dropped packets and other ‘weirdness’ to the system.

Crappy switches are far more of a menace to IP video than Cat 5E.

We have several H.264 cameras (in production) on runs at or near 100 meters on CAT5e; we do not have problems. We test our connections prior to use and avoid getting to the 100 meter mark on any data connection, let alone video or VOIP. In my opinion, this has a lot to do with the quality of the network installation, not CAT5 vs. 6. Maybe it depends on the camera and the quality of the NIC card in the camera, but that is a guess. there are many varibles including terminations, patching, and NIC cards, server NIC, etc. Again, we have not had a problem with cameras from different manufactureres. Its a pretty wide-open statement. But I don't sell wire. Data Rate could be an important variable as would the number of cameras on the overall network and aggregate bandwidth.

Ha! What a joke. This is utter nonsense from Anixter. They must have a large inventory of Cat6 cable they're trying to get rid of.