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

One of the most absurd allegations from Anixter ever

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!

Sure, laugh it up!

But this video was created due to a significant difference in cat 6 and cat5e cable specs. In this case, gross margin.

I agree With Richard it's so easy to see the point in this video, they want to sell more cat6 because they make more money out of it.

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 !

Wow, impressive sleuthing (and ribbing) by the IPVM crew!

An explanation which doesn't require anyone to be unusually deceptive:

1. Tech is troubleshooting degraded video problem, like shown above, for camera a.
2. Tech notices symptom absent with identical camera b.
3. Tech notices the only difference between a and b is cable grade.
4. Tech replaces cable on a with cable type on b, problem solved.
5. Tech tells boss.
6. Boss makes video.

Though whether the video was made despite the cummulative effect of a ten-second GOP or because of it, would be an open question.

This has certainly got a lot of people talking! Are Anixter going to comment on this? Just to continue to where I left off; although I mentioned cat 5e can achieve near 1000 mbps, it has not been certified to do this and I would always recommend Cat 6 or fibre between switches. As cameras will very rarely be over 80mbps and commonly no more than 12 mbps, I think everyone can feel safe to use cat5e. Where there are issues on site with cross talk, or there is something that could cause an issue with signal power – then it would be sensible to use cat6. My preference is to install the cable, where it won’t have issues with cross talk. In my experience, the main issues I have seen with H.264, is video decompression. Installers have made the mistake to go for a cheap video workstation that struggles to handle the H.264 streams and decompress into an image for display. Only issues on networks is when inadequate and not fit for purpose Network switches have been installed.

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.

No matter how you slice, from personal experience, Cat 5e will carry video streams from 99.9999999% (there could be some absurd cameras on the market that streams 1 Gb/s at night :) )cameras all day long. I actually have some cameras on run that are longer than 100 meters and they work fine. It wasn't done on purpose I must add: We have an industrial switch and oa few of its ports ports went bad. We used an 8-pin modular coupler and the darn camera worked with not a hitch. Cameras are Vivotek, Switch is Cisco SF-300 24MP. We used H.264, cable, Cat 5e.

So ....