[orra]

This is sensible advice. They are very convenient.

However I will clarify that although you can get great speeds with a flat Ethernet cable (thanks to modern manufacturing?), you must not use these to carry power.

I want to make this clear because first cables tend to describe themselves as Cat6 or whatever. This may be close enough in terms of signal/speed, but these don't use a thick enough wire guage to do PoE (Power over Ethernet), let alone PoE+.

(I am reasonably sure real Cat6 cables must support at least PoE, but it is hard to be certain when standards are behind paywalls.)

[somehnguy]

For smaller draw devices it may work fine. I powered 2 Unifi ac lites via Poe with a 25ft and 50ft flat Ethernet cable for a couple years, no problems.

[orra]

I am glad that worked for you. The reason I flag it is: it may silently appear to work, but be heating up the cables without you realising it.

[somehnguy]

Oh no, yeah I made sure that wasn’t the case with my setup. Monoprice 30awg flat Ethernet cables in 25-50ft with a 6.5w power draw from the devices, no heat at all.