I am curious about the "best practices" for using shielded cat 6 cable.
Deep subject. In short, it depends on what you want to achieve. eg:
a) keep electrical noise (emissions) from radiating
out from the cable. Important in low-noise applications (which yours isn't)
b) keep electrical noise from reaching
in to the conductors. Important in a noisy environment, like near flourescent lighting, motors, or running in parallel with AC lines.
c) Providing a chassis ground (different than logic ground or circuit ground). This requires connecting the shield at both ends.
For a & b, often connecting shield at one end
or the other will give best results. If both ends are grounded, then small ground currents on the shield can increase radiation or susceptibility.
A shielded cable that doesn't have shield tied to ground at
either end
usually performs worse than unshielded cable.
Almost every situation is different when emissions or susceptibility are involved.
NoloC asked about "best practices". In your case, houndog, you're not getting into critical territory.
The female RJ45 on the camera pigtail is the "unshielded" variety. Even if you terminated the Monoprice Cat 6 cable with a
shielded RJ45, which uses a metal shell around the plastic RJ45, it wouldn't connect the shield to the camera.
Shielded RJ45 connectors are a pain.
I don't think you will need them.
You terminated your own Cat6 cable, and then it didn't work. And then we got to discussing shield and drain. The root problem is terminating a cable so it works. That has nothing to do with shielding.
I don't use shielded Cat cables at
home, only at
work. We made cameras and NVRs for mounting in armored suburbans used by the DoD in the "Stans". (Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, etc). The suburbans had sensitive ECM equipment (Electronic Counter Measures). The ECM would pick up radio signals, IED radios, even someone walking with a cell phone. So my camera and NVR had to be VERY quiet, ie: lower emissions than FCC class B (and way less than class A). It was tricky.
So hound dog 911 and NoloC, don't sweat the shield....
Fastb