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My electricians messed up and installed some sort of camera (or very old cat3?) cables, instead of the requested ethernet cables (see picture). Now I have two of those, running for about 15 meters behind walls and recessed ceilings, making it replacing them very costly.

Is there a way to still use them - grabbing 8 of the cables for gigabit connection and the remaining 4 for a 100mbps connection or some sort of other arrangement?

camera cables

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  • That looks like "phone wire", but they're the wrong colors for US standards. It could also be audio cable, or simple signal wire (for thermostats, etc.) It is absolutely not ethernet cable. If your contract specified ethernet cable, you might want to involve lawyers.
    – Ricky
    Commented May 2, 2023 at 18:32

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That three-pair TP(?) cable doesn't look like any cable category, more like a basic signalling cable - a giveaway is an unmarked cable. It might not even have properly twisted pairs.

That's not very likely to reliably run a network connection. A short run could perhaps transport 10BASE-T and possibly even 100BASE-TX. It requires proper pairing in any case, you can't just pair any two wires. But that's not anything a professional network could use. I'm afraid you'll need to replace.

While you're at it you should consider using empty ducting to enable easy cable replacement.

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  • I see - so I can't just grab 6 cables and call them 3 pairs - they need to be twisted trough all the cable length - so I basically have 2 cables with 6 wires .. not pairs. Thanks for your answer!
    – dpnv
    Commented May 2, 2023 at 12:26
  • Without twisting they'll be useless for networking, even at only 10 Mbit/s. With twisting they might be of limited use.
    – Zac67
    Commented May 2, 2023 at 12:47
  • I'd bet they can run 100 megabit if they are not too long. 15 meters might be pushing it though and it will probably be prone to errors. It's not ideal but it might work. Personally, I would try to use the cable as a pull string. It should not be stapled down or secured inside the walls. Carefully attach the correct cable to the one you want to remove and then try to pull the bad one out and see if it moves easily and pulls the new cable in to replace it. Commented May 2, 2023 at 14:25
  • @FrameHowitzer If that cable's what I suspect then you'd barely get a link up over 15 m. Anyway, there's definitely no professional, on-topic way to operate it as a network link.
    – Zac67
    Commented May 2, 2023 at 17:32
  • I agree it is no a professional way to do it for sure but you sometimes have to work with what you have, especially when doing the home setup for yourself. If this is a question of a contractor having to deal with what another contractor did then the one who messed up the cabling needs to come back and replace it with cables that are to spec regardless of the cost and time involved. Commented May 2, 2023 at 17:35

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