Cheltenham, UK — A network connection supplier has slammed cheap competitive products and says that its tests show up to 60% of economy patchcords do not meet the Cat 5e standards.

The tests were carried out by Krone UK using Fluke Networks' latest DSP-4×00 cable tester. It purchased 280 so called 'white label' or unbranded products from seven distributors and says the best result it obtained was a 70% pass rate. Other failure rates were between 32% and 56% and says there were even examples where the cords failed on a simple wire-map test with the wires in the wrong pins.

Krone admits the tests were completed on a relatively small sample of only 40 cords from each of seven distributors but says the scale of the problem may be enormous.