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OP here, I looked into it. For legal reasons I will neither confirm nor deny any marketing claims here and let the experts decide. I will merely list the equipment I bought. [0] [1] [2] [3] [0]: https://www.amazon.de/dp/B01EXDG2MO - "TP-Link TL-SG108 V3 8-ports Gigabit Network Switch" [1]: https://www.amazon.de/dp/B07WG8TNDL - "CSL Cat 7 Network Cable, Gigabit, Ethernet, LAN Cable, PiMF Shielding With RJ 45 Connector, Switch, Router, Modem Access Point, White" [2]: https://www.amazon.de/dp/B06XCYC4K7 - "deleyCON 5 x 0.5 m Cat7 Network Cables, Short, 10 Gigabit, RJ45 Patch Ethernet Cable, Copper, SFTP PiMF Shielding, LAN, DSL for Switches, Modems, Router, Patch Panels, Cat6, Cat5 Compatible, Black" [3]: https://www.amazon.de/dp/B089MF1LZN - "Amazon Basics 30.5m White Flat RJ45 CAT7 Gigabit Ethernet Patch Internet Cable" One copy of each would run you around 75-85 euros in total by my napkin math. Sticking with standard CAT 6A would have probably been 10-15 euros cheaper, and since I'm only aiming for 1 Gbps, not 10, I might have been able to get away with CAT 5e, even. I suspect that the additional hours of time I would have had to spend actually doing my research here to make a fully informed purchase would have made this a slightly net negative decision financially. But that's mostly because of the small size and modest needs of the network I was wiring up. If I were wiring up anything that scaled beyond my own apartment it would have been valuable to know this, so thank you, my career will go better as a result of this correction. |
That switch does have metal around the ports but I could not find any indication in a datasheet that it designed to accept shielded cables. I also don't know what other devices you are connecting to the switch. Proper usage of shielded twisted pair needs the shielding to make contact to ground on both sides of the cable. I was taught years ago that using a shielded cable with neither side grounded or just one side grounded had the potential to turn the shielding into an antenna and make interference worse than with an unshielded twisted pair cable.
The flat cable is concerning. Flat cables are not part of any twisted pair spec. There tends to be two kinds of flat ethernet cables. The first being completely flat with no twisted pairs at all and the second kind having each pair twisted around each other but then the four pairs are parallel in the falter sheathing. The second kind is better and from the pictures that cable might be the second kind. However 33 meters is very long for a flat cable. Ideally you shouldn't use them but if you have to keeping them very short like under 2 meters is ok.
The pages for the other two cables never even show the cables but what looks like 3d renderings. I personally do not like that and it makes me think less of the vendors. I doubt any of the three cables would pass a full qualification test for Cat7 but they are probably completely indistinguishable from qualified Cat5e (since you are only using 1g) unless you are using them next to high voltage power conduits or next to a high power broadcast antenna. This just comes down to "Cat7 consumer products are a marketing scam."