KevinBeaver   7610 pts.  |   May 19 2009  3:23PM GMT

I’ve made and used really short CAT5 cables that worked just fine so you may be able to do that - or order a a custom size. I can’t imagine this is anything a couple of zip ties couldn’t resolve.

Stiltner   205 pts.  |   May 20 2009  6:55PM GMT

Agree with Kevin. As long as your quality control on the cable and the connectors is good, I can’t imagine anything could be too small. My suggestion is one of “test and find out”. At the worst case scenario, you waste a few dollars in cable, a few dollars in connectors, and maybe a small amount of your time making them. But in the end, you could have a cleaner, much easier to manage work area, and that pays off 10 fold for the testing and troubleshooting you can do to make sure the cables are sufficient.

I’m betting you’ll find something around 0.5m is going to work just fine, and possibly even smaller if necessary, since I imagine you’d doing switch or interior rack interconnections, you should be fine. Finding them pre-made that small is difficult, making your own that small obviously is just a matter of time / effort.

here’s a link to a highly regarded vendor of cables selling 0.5ft (0.15 meters) cables in Cat5e variants

So, i think you’ll be just fine

BlankReg   11280 pts.  |   May 22 2009  6:52AM GMT

I think you will find that the 2.5 metres was from the old thin-wire ethernet days, and think-wire actually had markers at 5 metre intervals so you knew where to put the traps.

As with the other responders here, I have used patch cables of all sorts of lengths, with no problems. And if you suspect a problem, try a differnet length of patch and see if the problem goes away. (and report back here to prove us all wrong !!!!).