I recently installed shielded Cat 8 ethernet cable in my house during unrelated renovations due to water damage that required opening up the walls. The electrician also installed shielded RJ45 Cat 8 termination plugs at both ends of the cable. At the time I was not at all familiar with shielded ethernet cable.
I have tried using the new Cat 8 cable to connect my Wi-Fi access point to my $30 network switch from Amazon but it's not working. After reading about ethernet cables online, I now suspect this is because the ethernet cable is not grounded as required.
I'm interested in using the installed ethernet cable from my network switch to my Wi-Fi access point and do not want to deal with network patches and grounding of both ends, etc. I would also love to avoid having to replace this shielded cable that's now buried in the walls with unshielded cable.
Is it possible to disable/ disconnect the shield of the shielded Cat 8 cable without replacing it? I found a comment on an audiophile forum that said: "It takes less than a minute to cover the sides of one of the plugs with a piece of tape, and the shield is unconnected."
I do not understand what that means or whether something like this could work. I would appreciate any advice on whether this is doable and, if so, how to describe what I'm trying to do to an electrician so that I can get my buried ethernet cable to work.
