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The purpose of cable shielding is to create a barrier in order to protect the cable from any external interferences like EMI or electrical interference, and to prevent the cable signals from interfering with the surrounding cables.

The use of shielded cables is becoming more common, even though they are not required in all environments. At start, shielded cables were only applied in the installations in spaces with high concentration of electrical equipment and projects with secure communications applications. Today, we see shielded cables being used in any space such as healthcare, government and education institutions buildings.

There are a number of acronyms in the market to describe shielded cables and some of them are used interchangeably with each acronym having a unique meaning and property. Below are some of these acronyms with some explanation of what they mean.

CABLE SHIELDING TYPES

UTP

The most common shielded cable type in the computer and telecommunications industry is unshielded twisted pair (UTP) cat6a plenum cables. Inside a UTP cable, conductors which form a single circuit are twisted around each other to cancel out possible electromagnetic interference (EMI) from outside sources. UTP cables have groups of twisted pairs coupled together with color coded insulators.

F/UTP (FTP)

The F/UTP or FTP is basically foiled with unshielded twisted pair cable. This type of cable features an overall foil shield that is wrapped around the UTP (unshielded twisted pairs) and a drain wire. If the drain wire is connected correctly, it can redirect unwanted noise to the ground offering an extra protection against electromagnetic interference.

S/UTP

The S/UTP also referred as STP cable is either an overall braid shield with unshielded twisted pairs. You can identify and check your cable whether it has an overall shield and/or individual pairs’ shielding.

SF/UTP

The SF/UTP cable shielding type provides both an overall braid shielding (S) and foil shielding (F) with unshielded twisted pairs (UTP). It is also called as STP cable. It has very effective protection from EMI entering or exiting the cable.

S/FTP

The S/FTP cable offers an overall braid shield (S) with foil shield twisted pairs (FTP). The shield under the jacket is braid and the individual pairs are wrapped with foil barriers. This individual foil on each pair helps limiting the cross talk between the pairs.

F/FTP

This cable has an overall foil shield (F) with each twisted pair foil cat6 plenum screened. The F/FTP is commonly used in 10GBaseT applications

U/FTP

Unlike the F/FTP the U/FTP has no overall shielding but the twisted pairs are foil screened (FTP). This cable is also common use in 10GBaseT applications.

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