Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I took apart one of the cables that I received to inspect it. As far as I can tell, it meets the ISO spec for CAT6a. Of the three CAT6a standards, ISO's in the most strict. It's worth noting that this is *fully shielded* CAT6a. There are several variations of CAT6a; the more common ones tend to be partially shielded and have an X-shaped barrier separating the twisted pairs. In this variation, each pair is wrapped individually with foil, then all four pairs are wrapped together. This generally yields better protection against cross-talk. There's a catch, though: the metal connectors on each end aren't just for show. They have to be grounded for up-to-spec performance. Otherwise, you just have an overpriced CAT5e cable. This means that you need to have devices that support STP cabling; they need to be grounded and their RJ45 connectors need to have metal around them. If neither of the ends that you are connecting have a metal-housed RJ45 outlet that makes contact with the metal on the cable, you are wasting your money; get an unshielded (UTP) variant instead. Measurements: Each conductor contains 7 copper strands. Individual strands measured 0.142mm in diameter. Theoretical diameter of a conductor when packed perfectly ranges from 0.369mm to 0.426mm. Measured diameter of a conductor was around 0.43mm. This places the wire around or slightly above 26 AWG, typical for this variant. Conductor insulation was typical foam plastic. Shielded appeared to by aluminum and mylar, with the mylar facing inward. Outer insulation appeared to be PVC. Bending radius appears to be about 2 inches--don't bend it too much. Label on jacket of 3-foot version: Cable Matters RoHS COMPLIANT ENHANCED 550MHZ PATCH CORD E213738-Y 26AWG 4PR CM (UL) C(UL) 60°C VERIFIED ISO/IEC 11801 AND TIA/EIA 568B CAT6A