Topic: Ethercon snakes

[tourtelot]

Cat5e is four twisted pair and one shield with a drain wire.  In the analog XLR boxes, that shield is common to all four pair on Pin 1, and serves as the conductor to allow P48 on those four pair as well.

D.

[GLouie]

What Doug says, assuming you have "shielded" CAT5/6; the shield is over all the pairs, not individual pairs. Unshielded is probably more common (UTP, unshielded twisted pairs) since it seems to have been the original standard and is cheaper and easier to put connectors on. As noted previously, there are CAT snake boxes that use unshielded CAT cable but can only do 3 channels with P48, or 4 channels without P48. Buyer beware.

[bluegrass_brad]

I have been using these on occasion for a couple of years now with no issues.  I have the LyxPro brand. I use a shielded CAT7 cable and have no issues with phantom or noise. I have used them with cable up to 50' long with no issues at all. So much easier to run a single ethernet cable.

[kuba e]

I was thinking about an ethernet snake a year ago. I ended up buying a classic snake. I was worried that the ethernet snake would be fragile and I would damage it by winding it up frequently. But the advantage of ethernet cable is attractive, light, easily replaceable and low price. I am posting links here. These adapters should be able to carry phantom according to reviews.
https://www.thomannmusic.com/the_sssnake_cat_snake_3fc.htm?reload=1
https://www.thomann.de/gb/the_sssnake_cat_snake_3mc.htm

They also sell an ethernet cable, but it looks like it can't carry phantom because the cable cat6e has no shielding.
https://www.thomannmusic.com/pro_snake_cat6e_cable_10m.htm

If I understand correctly, the shielding (used for the phantom) connects via the external metal connector, not the ethernet connector (RJ45 is plastic and has only 8 pins).