Do I need to ground Ethernet cable run beneath a pier & beam house?

Question

I'm fairly amateur when it comes to home networking, though I get the basic concepts.

I bought a 1000' spool of this Cat6 Ethernet cable, simply because it was the only outdoor-rated cable sold by Monoprice.

My plan is to run it along the underfloor beams of my foundation, then up into the house through the existing 1" in-wall vertical drop pipes placed by the home builder. I'll terminate it at keystone jacks in wall plates in each room.

The cabling will thus be entirely contained within the outer walls of the house - i.e., it's beneath the subfloor but I'm not running it underground or out to another building - so it's only "outdoor" in the sense that it's exposed to the air beneath the foundation.

A couple of questions:

1. Is this cable suitable for this type of installation, or should I have bought something else, e.g. STP?
2. The cable includes a drain wire outside of the main jacket. Do I need to terminate/ground this somewhere? If so, where/how do I attach it?

Answer 1

1. The cable you bought looks fine. You don't need STP (shielded twisted pair) wire. From what I've heard, it's mostly used in industrial environments with a lot of electrical interference issues. Won't really apply to residential environments.

2. I don't think that's a drain wire since the cable is not shielded. That extra wire is not copper in the picture, so I doubt it's a ground. My guess is that it is there to provide pull strength when fishing the cable through conduit. Cat6 is stiffer and less flexible than Cat5, so it will have more stress when pulling.