A star filler (also known as cross filler, splines, separators and crossweb fillers)
is a type of plastic insert in
Cat 5 and
Cat 6 cable which separates the individual stranded pair sets from each other while inside of the cable. It increases the thickness and density of the cable but reduces
crosstalk
In electronics, crosstalk is any phenomenon by which a signal transmitted on one circuit or channel of a transmission system creates an undesired effect in another circuit or channel. Crosstalk is usually caused by undesired capacitive, in ...
and is commonly used only in higher-performance Cat 6A cable, but is also sometimes seen in Cat 5e. A major reason it isn't used widely in cable in the consumer world is that it is not only typically more expensive than regular cable, but it takes up more room, it is harder to bend, and very difficult to manually crimp compared to Cat cable without the star filler. In the
IT world, it is often used in cable that is deployed in noisy environments such as
datacenters or machine shops.
See also
*
Spacers and standoffs
References
Plastics applications
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