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 Category 6 cable (Cat 6) is a standardized twisted pair cable for Ethernet and other network physical layers that is backward compatible with the Category 5 cable, Category 5/5e and Category 3 cable standards. Cat 6 must me ...

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 (XT) is a 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, ...

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.

References

Plastics applications {{comp-hardware-stub

See also

References