A cable either passes or it does not, and the tester says which. But when a client’s consultant asks for the report, or a run fails and you need to know why, the numbers on the page matter. Here is what they mean, in the order they usually matter.
Insertion loss
How much signal is lost along the run. Driven by conductor size and length. A long run on thin or aluminium conductors fails here first. Measured in dB; lower is better; the limit line falls with frequency.
NEXT — near-end cross-talk
How much of one pair’s signal leaks into its neighbour at the connector end. Driven by the twist and the termination. Untwisting more than 13 mm at the jack, or a poor punch-down, fails NEXT. Higher is better on this one.
Return loss
Signal bouncing back from impedance changes — kinks, crushed sections, tight cable ties, a coupler in the middle. If a run fails return loss at one distance, the tester will usually tell you how far along the fault is.
Delay skew
The difference in arrival time between the four pairs. Matters for gigabit and 10G, which send on all four pairs at once. WIAN cables are rated at 45 ns per 100 m or better on the datasheet.
What the WIAN report shows
Our CAT6A U/UTP channel test report, run on an AEM vector network analyser in May 2025, is on the Downloads page. It shows a complete 100 m channel — cable plus connectors — passing the CAT6A limits with margin on every parameter, including alien cross-talk. When a tender asks for "third-party test certificate for CAT6A channel", that is the document.
Three habits that pass tests
Keep the twist to within 13 mm of the termination. Never exceed the bend radius — 8 times the cable diameter on WIAN cables, which is about 50 mm for a CAT6A. Use cable ties loosely or use Velcro; a tight tie is the most common return-loss fault we see on failed runs.