In article ,
The Natural Philosopher writes:
On 02/09/13 11:01, Mike Tomlinson wrote:
En el artÃ*culo ,
escribió:

It does seem I'm not missing the obvious, anyway - I wonder why they are so hard
to come by, compared with other types of cable reel?
I can think of a few reasons:

* putting Cat5 on a reel would make it more liable to kink as it is
wound and unwound. Kinking Cat5 cable is a no-no; it can have a serious
adverse impact on performance.

* it would need to be stranded cable. Solid cable would (eventually)
fracture. Stranded cable is only intended to be used for patch leads of
short length (up to 5m ish) between e.g. the wall outlet and the device.

* a partly-uncoiled reel might be more prone to picking up external
interference as the loops form an antenna

* the rated length on an 100mbps ethernet link is no more than about
10m which is scarcely worth putting on a reel

100m actually.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]