No one anywhere in this thread said the jacket hermetically sealed the end.

Further I should point out that the only problems I had with EZ involved network data, and balun connections, all of the Russound, RTI connecting block, keypad etc.. type connectors that are EZ I have installed or come across still work fine.

Use what you want.

I guess this is simply one of those things you will have to eventually experience for your self. I was just as fussy as you are, years ago when people told me not to use EZ's I thought the nay sayers were full of BS, so why should I expect any you to feel any different.

The concept was pretty clearly implied though the word was not used, and Mario's interpretation of what was said as "hermetically sealed" pretty well matches up with the meaning.

For everything you say a comparison rod has to be held up: you're in New Mexico!


I don't agree. "Stagnant" itself implies a lack of movement, and in water that means that critters and crap can grow; water that's non-stagnant is constantly moving and being replaced, thus is cleaner than where junk can grow.

If air flow were reduced, then the chemical elements present would react as much as they are going to, in the process using up the supply of those elements; corrosion would then reduce. Introducing fresh air flow would introduce a new supply of corrosive elements.


Yet I've seen speaker wire where the connection is slightly exposed to a humid environment for years and the copper is covered with black for several inches inside the insulation.


A friend used those connectors in a large restaurant on the beach in Malibu. By "on the beach," I mean the water flows up onto the sand for a good twenty feet, some six feet below the slab, at high tide. We'll see what we have to replace. Maybe there things will corrode.

I lived at the beach in Malibu in my 20's. Everything corrodes there, nothing ever completely dries.

I stand corrected on my use of terminology, it was not my intent to imply an air tight seal in any way.

The only hermetically sealed connector for cat I have heard of is gel filled. However, you make a good point about the black oxidized speaker wire and how resistive the oxidation is to conductivity. I think we have all seen this and it makes a pretty strong statement to how corrosive elements can creep up the end of an exposed copper wire, now yes cat 5 /6 is solid not stranded like the speaker wire, but you have to admit that with EZ connectors the bare end of the wire is right there outside the connector open to the environment.

Related story.

About 14 years ago I saw a satellite box in a rack that was completely fried apparently from water exposure. Although no source of the water could be found and nothing else was wet at all. As impossible as it sounds I finally discovered that the water had entered through the dish F connector on the back via the cable itself. The cable ran through the structure of the house and then outside and up a 3 story wall to the roof where it was spooled up in a big pool of water on the flat roof. I found a small nick in the jacket on the submerged portion of the cable.  The water had over time seeped into the jacket around the braid and I believe built up enough weight from the 3 story drop that it was able to force itself through another 50 feet of interior cable up to the sat box and in though the F connector.

Moral of the story,

Man can’t beat Mother Nature; he can only delay the inevitable and subsequently replace that which is consumed by the elements and time.
 

In the Fluke DTX class they explained that it's about avoiding cross talk between pairs. The higher certification speed of the Cat6 spec means crosstalk is much more important, as the faster data rates are more susceptible to signal degradation due to it.

The big difference between cat5 and cat6 connectors should be in the sizes of the grooves that hold the wire, as cat6 is thicker. The pin should theoretically be slightly longer, and the jacket crimp not as tall.

RJ45s are insulation displacement connectors, which means that if they are properly fitted and crimped, the pin should have a contact area with the wire that is completely sealed off from the environment. The seal is created when the pin crushes its way into the wire, through the insulation. Punch down terminations work the same way, for the same reason. 

The issue with EZRJ45s as I've been taught is that the cutting action tends to ovalize the conductors at the tip, squeezing and thinning the insulation in between the conductors. This can lead to crosstalk at the tip, even if the cable does not show a full short on a continuity tester. Try cutting the tips yourself before crimping. That way you don't even need an EZ crimp tool.

Dude, that's an awesome story.
We discussed something similar here about 6-8 months ago where guys on the east coast are finding cables that are corroded many, many feet 'upstream' from where the water contacted the end of the cable.
It might have been Sandy related thread, but I can't remember now.

Hey I was completely shocked, after I figured out what happened I just sat there with a dumb look on my face for about a half an hour trying to process everything. The worst part was I had to figure out how to describe what happened to the customer, obviously the cable was shot it was a mess.
 

I ran into the same issue on a high rise Directv MFH-1 job, dish was on the very top of the building on the elevator shaft roof. That roof had really bad drainage so there was always a puddle there and the cables where just laid across the roof with no support.

The RG-6 ran about 150' down the stairwell down and around various things and ended up frying the power inserter. I replaced the power inserter without investigating it any further. It's when I went back a week later to replace the power inserter for a second time is when I discovered the water intrusion.

I will have to do some digging around and see if I can find some pictures.