Cat 8
Being in the tech industry, I sometimes attempt to nudge myself towards new technologies that I haven't been exposed to yet. In my position, sadly, much of the technology I deal with is already a generation behind, due to low bids, and the time it takes to plan and implement a project with government funding.
My home network is likely about 2 generations behind, but I try to keep it professional. It is not sloppy at all, with rack mounted 48 port POE gigabit switches and such.
I was thinking to myself: "Self, I've been installing a lot of Cat 6 cabling lately. What about Cat 8?"
So I purchased a 6ft Cat 8 patch cable, and decided to use it between my router and cable modem. My Cable modem has been working great for years. The uptime reliability was great on that thing. But not anymore!
I believe when I used the Cat 8 cable for that connection, it created a ground loop thru the shield of the Cat 8, and damaged the cable modem. As within hours the modem began cycling in a unrecoverable reboot cycle.
Shit... All my years of working with professional audio equipment, and I forgot about ground loops!