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Category 6 UTP Standard is (finally) Here
An anonymous reader writes "This is only important for the networkphiles out there, but the Category 6 UTP specification is finally here. The standard is the TIA/EIA-568-B.2-1. The significance of this is that now you can transmit at 250Mhz frequencies (vs 100Mhz of Cat 5/5e). So 1Gbps is easily achievable. Of course ther's still Category 7 (600Mhz) in development, but I guess we should eventually move to fiber." Who
hasn't crimped cat-5 before?
...When you're wiring about 500 workstations and servers over a reasonably sized office. You run into having to buy literally *miles* of cable when you wire even a medium-sized IT office. At that volume, buying Cat6 or Cat5 is non-trivially less expensive than fiber.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
but I guess we should eventually move to fiber
Usually for me it's the other way around, Fiber gets me movin'.
"Oh no, 3 horny women and only 2 condoms...Thank god I read slashdot"
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From what I understand you can get gigabit ethernet to work on cat5 and at least on cat5e for reasonable distances, so you don't need to ditch your old cabling unless you need something like 100 meter cable runs.
Unless you put your fiber cables in an unbendable channel, it isn't worth the hassle of having to replace a faulty cable because some bozo decided to fold the cable up and break the fiber. I have seen this happen many times.
For the forseable future, gigabit to the desktop is more than 95% of users will need unless computing environments move to server-side VR operating systems that are fully streamed to a user with full motion and sound.
Server back planes and clusters are two of the biggest bandwidth hogs that might possibly need something faster than gigabit ethernet.
A friend of mine was running cat7 in building a few years ago.. odd? I never payed much attention to that at the time, since I assumed it was for real. what I want to know is why wer are still using TP when we have fiber available? we should be driving the price of fiber down, not TP. lets face it, TP can be prone to interference from strong sources, ect. Just my opinion..... If we drive the price of fiber down, maybee we can all get 3l33t fiber links in our homes :)
I was under the impression that the currently available solutions for 1000Mbit over copper worked just fine on Cat5 installations as long as the distance was kept short.
If that is the case, what benefit does Cat6 bring to the table? More distance? Lower bit-error-rates? Something else?
Free your mind!
Does Cat6 really have an advantage over the current network 100Mbit Network that I have at home. Should I buy the cables now now and upgrade to the 1Gbit nics later or should I wait for the prices to drop down?
Now that fiber is here, these advanced copper versions seem silly. The CAT7 standard, at 600MHz, could support up to 600x4 = 2.4Gbps, which is now much less than the 10x jumps we've been accustomed to in copper cabling. Although, I suppose it should be theoretically possible to create a standard that uses just one universal ground wire for a 600x7 = 4.2Gbps rate...
"If at first you don't succeed, lower your standards."
I get redirected to http://www.tiaonline.org/browser_error.cfm.
Browser Requirement Error
To view this site you need a browser capable of suppporting HTML 4 or higher.
Download Microsoft Internet Explorer
(recommended)
OR
Download Netscape Navigator
When it is 12:30 AM, you have 2 computers, Quake II, and a friend, you are near a Home Depot but you don't have the 25 bucks to buy a crimping tool, then manually driving down each contact with the end of a flathead screwdriver is about your last option... then at 2:30, you may begin... ah the memories.
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I worked for a medium-sized IT consulting firm. When we moved into a larger office space, they saved money by making everyone in the office make patch cables. Office Admin., everybody. Glad I was billable :)
My sig sucks.
So we plan to save money on Cat-6 by using two Cat-3 cables in parallel.
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
Well duh! I mean Belkin's been selling it for like the last 6 months. It's been on the shelf at Best Buy for the last couple of months.
Where have you been? Under a rock?
And you're sooo sexy with that coil of ethernet slung over your shoulder like you're Tarzan or something...<giggle>
Morse code was invented eons ago and was one of the first communications methods which ran over copper (or maybe it was "hey Watson my pants are on fire!). We keep on trying to get faster and faster signals down a crappy medium. Why??? Fibre is a much better medium for transmitting data over much longer distances.
.-- --- ... .-.. .. -.-. .
I just wished the PC architecture would be able to keep up with the fibre transmission speeds. Copper in the PC vs fibre on the network and the bottleneck will always be the copper in the PC.
My 0.02 worth...
-
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
I actually SAW CAT6 on sale at Best Buy yesterday. $25 for 25ft.
It's already commercially available and overpriced!
Is this new or something? I was using Cat5e and Cat6 to wire up places 2 years ago.
Cat7 will never happen because each pair needs individual shielding, fibre will be more efficient and cheaper.
CompUSA is already advertising the cable in their circular for $25 in 7 feet quantities.
Of course, it's probably going to be cheaper to crimp it yourself, but at over $3 per foot, it's quite expensive.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Out of curiosity- can't they make multi-fiber cables along the lines of stranded copper cable? There'd be higher losses at the endpoints (maybe you'd need to melt the strands together to put a connector on, and wrap with some sort of properly refractive tape), but when you're *not* doing a multi-kilometer run, wouldn't it be Good Enough?
Well, its actually better to wire a connection than to crimp it. Aweful tiring though, and harder to do in the dark ;-)
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
I dont know much about networking, just the basics. Can anyone explain to me what does the frequency of the cable (cat 5 = 100MHz, cat 6 = 250 MHz) have to do with their respective top speed?
It made sense to me cat 5 is 100 MHz since it's 100 Mbps, but then how does a 250MHz link able to transmit 1Gbps? If frequency has no bearing on link speed, then why is it important?
It's about the cost of 5e plenum cable for the CAT6 pvc, so not a big increase.
s p? nxtg=199137_E6D466B508D4B90E&node=&otherForm=n&doS earch=y&advanced=n&searchnode=-1&search=cat6%20cab le
http://www.nextag.com/serv/main/buyer/OutPDir.j
Still, paying over $100 a roll is a little much. Hated to do that for the plenum work I did recently. However, we won't really SEE CAT 6 in installed facilities until the people making the bids for these things start spec'ing it out. It'll be a little while until that happens, as there are tons of proposals, RFP's and bids currently out for CAT5e.
The big bargain will be the CAT5e testers that can't be upgraded/reprogrammed for CAT6 (although I can't imagine there's that much they couldn't be asked/reprogrammed to do. Hrm).
-- There is no sig line, only Zuul.
With Gigabit over Cat-5, and 10-Gbit in the works, that's as fast as I'll need to my workstations for a long long time. I certainly wouldn't recomend fiber to the workstation, unless you've got a hard shell on it, and your workstations are anchored to the desks! Fiber is far too fragile.
For the backbone? Go fiber, of course!
And servers? If you don't need the extremely high bandwidth, distances and reliability of fiber to your servers (or don't like the price tag), don't hesitate about going with copper.
One thing I like to note about fiber v. copper...
You need to get new copper cabling almost everytime the speed of the network increases. With fiber, the fiber doesn't change, just the lasers/LEDs at the ends. So, fiber is nice in that regard, but the fiber NICs/modules are still quite a bit more expensive than copper equivalent... Then again, more hubs and switches are needed with copper than fiber, so you save a little money that way, if you go with fiber.
The advantages and disadvantages of each can even out. I'd say go with copper anywhere fiber is too fragile, and, if you aren't scared by the initial costs, go with fiber everywhere else.
I had this company trying to sell me a Cat6 or Cat7 install. When I busted him by reminding him that there was no such spec yet, He fumbled, insisting they'd comply to the standard which would be out "any day now." I told him if he ever tried to sell me a line of shit like that again, I'd thow him and his installers out immediately. This was 1996. I should track that dork down.
If we've got Cat6 now, and Cat7 on the horizon, this can only mean good things for Joe Average. I don't see a need to move to fiber optic cables. There are dangers and inconveniences such as laser exposure, fiber slivers in the skin or accidental ingestion, and proper disposal. Give me a crimper and some twisted pairs in a jacket, and I'll be happy no matter what the application for a long long time.
Stupid site...
When I try to load the page, it loads fine, then quickly, the page is replaced with text that says "You must have an HTML 4 compatible browser", with links to IE and NS downloads.
Sheesh. No respect.
"If at first you don't succeed, lower your standards."
For the forseable future, gigabit to the desktop is more than 95% of users will need unless computing environments move to server-side VR operating systems that are fully streamed to a user with full motion and sound.
"No one will ever need more than 640k..."
Fiber...man i'd hate to be the one splicing that network!
-Alicia
"Plastic".
Sure, plastic fiber isn't optically as good as glass, but it's good enough for some things. The new 1394B spec, as I recall, goes to 3.2 Gbit over up to 50 meters of plastic fiber. And it's a lot less fragile than glass fiber.
Plastic fiber to the workstation seems eminently practical.
-- Alastair
100baseT is (essentially) FDDI encoded (4b5b); its transmitted at 125 MB/s, not 100 (just ike 10baseT is actually 20 MB/s, because it is Manchester encoded).
The lines are fragile and easy to break. The lasers are cheap and fail not infrequently. The connections are not in a clean enviornment and are very easy to get dirty. If you have access to a line tester, check out the signal strength of a length of regularly used FO cable vs a just cleaned one. Try this on new ones as well.
These things are still too expensive for common use, and too fragile and unreliable for most enviornments. Even in cleaner server rooms they can clog up pretty well fairly quickly.
It's good for long distances if kept sealed and protected, but that's about it.
The standard is the TIA/EIA-568-B.2-1
Of course the rest of the world will use TIA/EIA-568-A.2-1. Isn't it only the USA that uses 568-B?
Their site is framed, or I'd provide an illegal (in Denmark) deep link.
Some sample prices:
CAT6 ENHANCED PATCH CABLE, W/BOOT 3FT, US$2.97
CAT6 ENHANCED PATCH CABLE, W/BOOT 7FT, US$4.24
CAT6 ENHANCED PATCH CABLE, W/BOOT 14FT, US$7.01
CAT6 ENHANCED PATCH CABLE, W/BOOT 25FT, US$10.82
CAT6 ENHANCED PATCH CABLE, W/BOOT 50FT, US$19.33
CAT6 STRANDED 1000' BULK CABLE, US$122.00
CAT5E STRANDED 1000FT, GRAY, US$69.95
CAT5E SOLID, 1000FT, GRAY, US$67.95
Note that all the cables are cheaper if you buy 9 or more (of same color); they come in 7 different colors (gray, yellow, black, red, white, green, blue). Think the 1000' spools only come in gray, white, and blue.
If you search for BULK CABLE you'll find various lengths of patch cables all in a box (not individually bagged); sample CAT5E 7' bulk price is US$1.72 (in box of 100).
At work, I buy certain colors in specific lengths so I can simply tell a student which color cable to grab (rather than which length) for certain situations: 1'=black, 3'=blue, 7'=yellow, 14'=green, 25'=gray, 50'=white, and 100'=something bright (as a professor usually leaves it laying on the floor or across a doorway for someone to trip over and give us a lawsuit, er, a laugh). And no, I don't work for Cyberguys, just have bought many 1,000's of $$ of products over the years (mostly my employer's; I spend less for home stuff).
In the large view of things, Morse code was invented 'just the other day'.
Think about how long communications have been necessary - at least 5000 years and you can bet hundreds of thousands before that.
Copper is a tremendous medium for communications - wider bandwidth than any medium except fiber, including RF.
In fact, when Intel had to make processors faster - it went to copper.
Are you an elitist, or do you really need PC architecture as fast as optical fiber ?
What size array of PCs are you using ?
How fast does your PC have to be to post your lame "0.02 worth" on Slashdot ?
It really gets me when asses like yourself feel the need to point out where "the bottleneck" will be unless they do this or that.
There will always be a bottleneck.
I can see it now - in another couple "eons" to you - maybe 5 to 10 years to us, we will have optical computing and direct optical buses, and you'll post you're "0.02 worth" on how you don't get it that 'Optical in the PC vs quantum in the network and the bottleneck will always be optical in the PC.'
Followed by 'Quantum in the PC vs Precognizant in the network and the bottleneck will always be quantum inthe PC'
Waste your time more wisely.
It seems like most of you all are just talking about the cost of the fiber cable vs a Cat6 UTP cable alone. You need to connect all of nodes (workstations) into something to create a network. Today you can get 10/100Base-TX 48 port switches. I still have not seen a 1000Base-TX in a 48 port switch yet (there could be though). I definatly have not seen a GigE 48 port switch. You would have to buy multiple probably chassis based switches to get up to the port densities in most closets - very expensive and cost prohibitive. This would probably only be done right now for security reasons. So if you connect all of your workstations up with fiber what will you connect them to?
I have been putting together backbones with fiber for years and think that is the way to go there. One question to the people who say that fiber patch cables are too fragile...what were you doing with them? They should be just as reliable as UTP patch cables when used in the proper manner. Just as you should not tie notts in UTP you do not tie notts in Fiber.
I think that a good migration path is to just buy 10/100/1000 NICs for new PCs and Servers and in the future (2-3 years?) you can swtich out your older 10/100 switches for GigE copper to the desktop and keep the backbone fiber.
There are 10 GigE interfaces that are starting to be sold by vendors, but from what I have read the vast magority of them can not do 10Gig of throughput - So give them a couple of years.
Right now it is good to stick with 10/100 because most PC can't trasmit over 4-20 Megabits. Pretty lame huh? The most that I ever saw a PC do was about 40 Megabit. Well below the 200Mb that a NIC set to 100 full can theoreticaly do.
Cat5e can definately do Gig speeds. Just for your info the 10GigE Copper Task Force is/was supposed to start creating the specs for 10 Gig over copper 6 months after the 10GigE (802.3ae) was finalized.
Well enough of my blabbing. Do whatever makes you happiest.
Andy
I has actually crimped before - but the interesting thing is the actual word. I mean, afaik there is such a verb 'to crimp' in English: but nowadays it exists in Hungarian in the same form 'krimpelni' which means only the act you do with the cable, nothing else.
we discovered a new way to think.
Er, not
100Mhz = 100 Mbit
250Mhz = 250 Mbit
When I was reading recently through the GB over copper spec on cisco's website they said that there were 2 major things that allow 1000baseT to work.
One was the fact that they had a way to run full dupled over a SINGLE pair of wires (as was tested with the 100baseT2 which never made it to market)
The other was that they were using the 10B/8B signaling that FDDI uses to better handle error detection and othr features.
This means that in order to get 1Gb/sec you have to have 250Mb/sec throughput on each of the 4 pairs. Tn turn this means that due to the 10B/8B signaling you have to have a signaling rate of at least 312.5 Mhz.
I was under the impression that Cat5 handled 350 on 2 pairs (orange and green) and Cat5e handled 350 on all 4 pairs. If this is so how does having 250Mhz on all 4 pairs help GB over copper? unfortunately I don't have $226 to buy this stupid overpriced standard, can anyone else see what the distinct advantages of 6 over 5e acctually are?
<This .sig left intentionally blank>
I remember having to wire something up when the power went out (no, not network cabling, more mundane stuff). Well, when the soldering iron got too cold to work anymore (no, I didn't have a battery powered one -- they weren't decent in those days), you start stripping the cables as usual, twist them, wrap them in solder, and use a match to secure the connection. A temporary hack, to be sure, but it worked for as long as it had to.
I will say, that if you plan to do a lot of this, (and "a lot" can be "as little" as retrofitting structured wiring in a house"), get the proper tools: a Greenlee punch down tool for jacks and headend (usually comes with either a 66 or 110 blade -- you want the 110 but it's worth paying the US$15 or so for the other) at about US$45, a hand crimper for RJ45/RJ11/RJ14 (usually comes with a bunch of plugs) at about US$20, a coax wire stripper with RG6 and R59 settings at under US$10, and a decent RG6/RG59 coax crimper: around US$20. Surprisingly. Home Depot has all this stuff, including plugs, structured wallplates and jacks, Cat5e cable, etc. (Having the coax stuff is, less surprising). BTW, crimping cables, particularly RG6 coax connectors is hard on the hands -- do get a good tool.
I retrofitted structured wiring to a house I bought a year ago. (You don't want to do this: putzing around in the attic, drilling through non-load bearing top-plates is double plus not fun -- I hired a guy who had network experience and did residential "cable" and "phone" cabling, but only had him help tie-wrap and pull cable -- it was stilla lot of work and definately a two-person job.)
I pulled two Cat5e ant two RG6 cables to six drops, plus an attic "subdistribution area" (existing cable and telco drops terminated up there) from a headend which received the DSL line, POTS, dual LNBs pointed at two satellites, and a terrestrial SD/HD/analog TV antenna in the attic. There are breakout panels in the headend. So, that's 14 Cat5e jack terminations (headend side is punched down to 110 blocks), and 28 coax terminations, just for primary cabling. Then there's end-cables to crimp, terminating satellite lead-in (8 more coax connectors: one each end of four cables), satellite cross-connect cables (8 more!), and break-out panel to multiswitch cables (yet another 8). 7 cables (14 more coax connectors!) go from the multiswitch to the coax breakout panels. 7 Cat5E jumpers (14 RJ45 crimps) run from the firewall/router to the Cat5e breakout panel, and 7 punched down jacks on that panel to the 110 blocks. There are some odds and ends (line power inserters for the attic-located terrestrial antenna amp) as well. Oh, and if you do this, you will be making jack extention cables (two coax, two Cat5e, around 100 feet long), with four coax and four Cat5e crimps, for testing back to the headend when you suspect the cabling to a jack.
The bottom line is that if you wire, retrofit structured wiring in a home, you will crimp and punch down so much, by the time you're done, you will be an expert. One upside is that you will almost never buy pre-made cables again: you'll just make your own, to length, as required. Oh, and if you run two cables, do get two spools, or you will go crazy running a cable, going back, running another, and so on. Yes, this means you will have two spools of leftover. Save it to make patch cables.
In my case, I bought 2000 feet of Cat5e and 2000 feet of RG6 (the guys at Home Depot thought I was nuts, and BTW, RG6 on the spool gets heavy fast), and ended up using around 1500 feet of each in a 3200 square foot house. I got headend enclosures, patch panels, a multiswitch, diplexers, and misc. stuff from Home Tech and satellite gear from American Satellite.
You could've hired me.
A few years ago I purchased 1000' of CAT 5e rated at 350MHz for around $50 to install in my house. I guess the cable is at least as good as CAT6. It's a real pain in the butt for crimping connectors, though, since each twisted pair is bonded together (like a 2 conductor ribbon cable) and must be separated.
-Aaron
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
You know, there's a big difference between the word "ever" and the term "forseable future". I have to agree with him as well. Fibre to the desktop is a waste in 99.999+% of situations.
And just remember, nobody is ever going to use more than 640K of memory. Isn't it a little shortsighted to claim that anything is too much speed, and always will be?
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
You use all 4 pairs with Gig so it does equal 1 Gig. Do your research.
AndyMcL
One solution that I have talked about with friends, would be be to use an analogue signal with a reference sine wave as the 'clock' and distortion reference. In theory any interference happening to the data line should also effect the sine wave in the same way. To correct the signal error, you simply need to fix the data signal with the same distortion correction needed to make the sine wave correct. I haven't tried to prove whether it works in pratice, but the theory sounds okay. This way you would be able to put in a lot more values in a single clock beat.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
....
why?
Seriously;
I have my cable duct taped to the outside walls of the house, CAT5 is very VERY malleable, goes out window, window still shuts and all, down side of house, in window.
Done.
All of about a 3 minute run if that. Why the, err, fuss?
If you are worried about looks, go wireless, has been around for quite some time, though I can understand you not going that route if it was not accessible when you where doing things.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
It doesn't matter if your local bang and bolt electrician can slap in some Cat5 and push 1Ghz down it, it's still not going to be _certified_ as Cat6. For those of you that work in government agencies, this is a fact of life, or should be.
t .storefront/420780614/Catalog/1459
And to be certified, 'crimping' should not be a part of your vocabulary, 'terminating' should be.
For some good info, check out the Nordx/CDT stuff at http://prodshop.solutionxpert.com/cgi-bin/nordxcd
-- I care not for your foolish signatures.
Except this is several orders of magnitude different. Most officeworkers today don't even really need a 10Mbps connection, let alone an 100Mbps or 1Gbps (a very large percentage just browse the web and send email). So saying that 1Gbps will be enough for the forseeable future would be like saying in 1980 that 8 megs of RAM would be enough for the forseeable future -- and it was.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
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Even without the super fancy compression,
45Mbps is still sufficient for a Hi-def video stream. It's pretty hard to watch more than one
video stream at a time, so most people won't even need over 100 Mbps.
But although 100 Mbps may be all people need, they will still want more.
Once bandwidth is cheap enough, we'll all keep everything on our personal servers.
P2P piracy will take 30 seconds at Gig-e speeds, for a single film.
Sharing my entire library would take hours.
-- this is not a
First /. post that's made me laugh in more than a week...
I think 4x and 12x Infiniband use multi-fiber cables. In practice, everyone uses copper for Infiniband, though.
Who hasn't crimped cat-5 before?
I haven't, you insensitive cretin!
Why bother.
Aside from the problem of exposure to elements, this might be fine for a single Cat5 cable dropped from an upstairs room to a downstairs one, but running two Cat5 and two RG6 cables makes for a messy bundle. Even the combined cable you can get is 3/4" thick. A single RG6 cable is about 1/4" thick. To do this right, you really have to run a steel conduit on the outside (one inch diameter to accomodate the cable -- this gets visible and ugly), and drill through the wall.
Why the, err, fuss?
Neatness counts. Maybe not for you, but it does for me.
If you are worried about looks, go wireless, has been around for quite some time, though I can understand you not going that route if it was not accessible when you where doing things.
Wireless is still expensive, and puts everyone on the same (or a few) contention-based networks. I like my 10/100 Mb/s switch. Still, it is a good idea for mobile devices and the odd room that you can't reach by pulling a cable.
Finally, you want something that adds value to the home. I figure my $1000 investment and sweat equity added $5k to $10k to the resale value of the home.
You could've hired me.
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I just had my new house done in Cat 5e. Now I'll have to do it all again to stay 1337
If my call is important, why am I talking to a recording?
I have not seen a 48-port GigE switch either, though Extreme does make a 32-port GigE switch (total of 32 10/100/1000BaseTX copper or 1000BaseSX fiber ports).
s /summit7i.asp
http://www.extremenetworks.com/products/datasheet
64 Gbps switching fabric and 48 Mpps switching performance... you're not going to find this at CompUSA and I think the list price would scare me!
I am presuming everyone actually means fibre....spell checkers ahoy!!
I hope someone with gobs of real ethernet experience and know-how can post some meaty tech specs and info for the 99% of those of us here that only know the basics. I've run Cat5, I have a couple switches and an old hub. I know that Cat5e and Cat6 are better than Cat 5. But that's about all I know, aside from a few brief searches on Google for some gigabit info. Perhaps someone can clear up some of the many misconceptions, myths, and marketing BS by explaining the current state of ethernet in terms the average Slashdotter can understand and respect!?
most PC can't trasmit over 4-20 Megabits. Pretty lame huh? The most that I ever saw a PC do was about 40 Megabit. Well below the 200Mb that a NIC set to 100 full can theoreticaly do
I can't relate to modern PCs as I mostly work with Sun and SGI workstations... but... I have never had a problem pushing about 12 MB/sec (96 Mb/sec) between most of my machines (Ultra 30, Ultra 60, O2, Octane). My PC can do about 4 MB/sec (32 Mb/sec) but it's a rather old P233 running Windows with a slow hard drive and a cheap NIC.
Also, I belive the max thruput of 100BaseTX is 100 Mbps x 2 (full duplex)... meaning that the fastest a fellow will ever see is 100 Mbps sending and 100 Mbps receiving at the same time.
$5-$10k? Haha. Not likely.
You make patch cables out of the same cable that you run through your house? While you might have gotten lots of experience crimping cables in doing your house, you obviously didn't do very much research. If you are going to lay semi-permanent cable through your house, you should be using solid-cored cable. First of all, it is less expensive than stranded cable, which is important since you're using it for long lengths. Secondly, the keystone jacks and punch-down blocks are designed to cut through the insulation into SOLID cable. On the other hand, the knives in the crimps for patch cable are designed to cut down into STRANDED cable. If you try to use one type of cable for the other's purpose, you can end up with poor connections at the crimps and the punch-down blocks.
When I wire offices, I always make sure I have a spool of each type of wire.
I've never crimped a cable before - I am an engineer, after all...
--
Backup not found: (A)bort, (R)etry, (S)uicide
I work for a DataComm company (the monkeys at run the cable and terminate it), and highspeed copper solutions have been available for awhile. NORDX/CDT IBDN 4800LX passes @ 300Mhz with very little crosstalk.
:)
This is just a standard - a paper giving a standardized way of manufacturing and installing the cable. This doesn't really change anything for the network admin, or user, but it means I'll be able to get a Cat 6 cert. in a couple months.
http://www.nordx.com/public/htmen/pdf/Ds4800LX.pdf
People don't need over 100 Mbps.. Nice idea... in theory. However, don't forget that 100Mbps means each cable can run MAX 100 Mbps, ethernet however saturates at 60% so you can only get real transfer of about 60 Mbps
Now you say people don't need to run more than one video at a time.. maybe but 45 Mbps only leaves you 15 Mbps on that wire.. now if the video is comming from the central server and someone else say... plays a CD from the server in a different room in the house, tries to copy a file between two machines (which also have to traverse the same core cable) while watching the film... You've rapidly run out of bandwidth.
I say roll on Gigabit, for my needs I won't run out of that any time soon... however currently I often curse my slow 100 Mbps network because I can't transfer data around quick enough when watching video on my PC :(
If you ever drop your keys into a river of molten lava, let'em go, because, man, they're gone.
Aside from the problem of exposure to elements, this might be fine for a single Cat5 cable dropped from an upstairs room to a downstairs one, but running two Cat5 and two RG6 cables makes for a messy bundle. Even the combined cable you can get is 3/4" thick. A single RG6 cable is about 1/4" thick. To do this right, you really have to run a steel conduit on the outside (one inch diameter to accomodate the cable -- this gets visible and ugly), and drill through the wall.
....
Eeew, how many computer do you HAVE running in that place?
Wow, just did a search for RG6, never knew there where so many types of Coax. . . . LOL. I've had such crappy experience with Coax I've pretty much given up on it, you know what the friggin quality loss on that stuff is after the first 50 feet? Ick. (ok so it was being split through a 10yr+ old splitter and such, but still, heh. The stables used to attach it to the wall likely didn't help to much either. ^_^ )
Neatness counts. Maybe not for you, but it does for me.
I didn't have much of an option, either that or routing it through a story of drywall, which was, err, put up by my friggin drunken grand father (gee thanks ga'pops) Yeesh. Boards spaced pretty much randomly throughout. . . . ick.
Oh, and to refer back to the first line of your reply;
exposure to the elements? Well besides perhaps acting as a bit of a mini-lighting rod, not much has happened actually. Kind of surprising considering the wind and rain storms that happen around here, but hey, it keeps on working!
Ok so granted at one point I was pinging 200 to a computer on my own LAN but. . . . hehe. ^_^ (now it is down to 25 or so)
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No he didn't. Even if he had, it wasn't his decision. If you knew anything about the PC architecture, this would be obvious.
Who says so? Half-duplex ethernet may saturate at 60% for a large number of users, but on a single connection (like 2 cards connected back-to-back with a crossover cable) you may achieve near 100Mbps. Even on a larger network, you may get the near-100Mbps figure for a single connection, provided it's using a switch with a non-blocking switch fabric and no other connections are made to any of the two hosts.
Though, I have found that using solid core cable with RJ45 plugs designed for stranded cable works fine: the biggest issue is flexibility of the cable vs. that of stranded.
You could've hired me.
So, if that's what a homeowner wants, it's either gonna cost for a custom job, or you'll suffer with a retrofit. (No, the builder generally won't let you on the site after the framing is complete, but before the sheetrock goes up -- though I've known of, he he, "exceptions").
In general, when home prices dip, things like that prevent them from dipping as much as other comparables, though in a rising market they neither add or subtract anything.
You could've hired me.
Right now, only two: my Athlon XP1600+ and an old Pentium 200 Mhz acting as a bulk data server (1/4 terabyte of uncompressed music). But there are plans for computers in the kids rooms, an STB-type system in the family room (so I can route music there), and possibly systems in the game room and spare bedroom.
There is an HDTV terrestrial/satellite receiver in the family room, and a plain Jane satellite receiver in one kid's bedroom. Another one is slated for the other kid's bedroom when he gets old enough.
The point is, if you're going to wire, you may as well get it all done and over with at one shot.
Wow, just did a search for RG6, never knew there where so many types of Coax. . . . LOL. I've had such crappy experience with Coax I've pretty much given up on it, you know what the friggin quality loss on that stuff is after the first 50 feet?
Loss varies with cable, distance, and frequency: higher frequencies are attenuated faster. That's what RF amps and tilt compensators are for. RG6 is sctually pretty good compared to run-of-the-mill RG59.
I said, "Neatness counts. Maybe not for you, but it does for me."
I didn't have much of an option, either that or routing it through a story of drywall, which was, err, put up by my friggin drunken grand father (gee thanks ga'pops) Yeesh. Boards spaced pretty much randomly throughout. . . . ick.
Any kind of retrofit, particularly between stories (as opposed to attic to top floor and basement/crawl to bottom floor) is going to be a pain... and older homes have fire breaks between the studs (what fun!).
Oh, and to refer back to the first line of your reply;
exposure to the elements? Well besides perhaps acting as a bit of a mini-lighting rod, not much has happened actually. Kind of surprising considering the wind and rain storms that happen around here, but hey, it keeps on working!
That's pretty good, then.
Ok so granted at one point I was pinging 200 to a computer on my own LAN but. . . . hehe. ^_^ (now it is down to 25 or so)
I see ping times of around 0.367 ms.
You could've hired me.
What ping utility gives times in ms to 3 decimal places?
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I see. There's a practical reason why it's unoptimal to do this, though.
If you look at the knives in the ends of the RJ45, the ones that cut through the insulation, you'll see that for each conductor, it's a single knife that cuts through the middle of the wire.
With stranded cable, this works perfectly, since the wire is soft and it cuts right into it.
With solid cable, the knives rarely cut directly INTO the table, but instead just slice into the insulation and fall to the SIDE of the conductor. This leads to a relatively fragile electrical connection. The ends also fall off much more frequently.
If you see how the knives are designed in 110 patches, you'll see that there are TWO of them, forming a v-shape that the conductor slides down into, cutting in on two sides, and wedging it there. Quite clever. Stranded cable has a tendency to be sliced completely in two by these knives, though.
Ethernet does NOT saturate at 60%. With switched full duplex I regularly acheive >95% of theoretical limit over udp.
Maybe back in the day of co-ax or half duplex hubs, but modern ethernet is a differnet story...
You're right about using up the bandwidth though - 10Mbps, 100Mbps, 1Gigabit... no matter how much I have, I want more.
-- this is not a
My rant on the whole fucking pile of shit called the internet is this:
Untill these bad mother fuckers can be purchased, then whon the mother fuck cares?
Second of all not to sound anti"PC" but it's the fact this pile of mother fucking shit can't get their heads out of ther mother fucking ass insist to AoL mother fucking hell/Time may I see him in hell with me Warner uses standards and let my fucking modem dial for fucking me
when I can purchase a subscription for it at 30 flat monthly and or a 200 doller LIFETIME subscription then a honestly hope the hole load of shit crashes and burns
We have cheap massporductable ways to send a signal at at least 9*10^10th MPSand what the fuck do we get? "Oooh you can up fucking grade FROM a modem to TCP/IP" and "Yes america despite the fact that every sane uneversity has been using this for the last 40 years, and despite the fact that most of the people that wrote this shit are dead and or retired living off roylties when anybody farts PPP and FTP SLIP you still use a realy shity bulliten board system, at a nailes fucking pace thus ensuring your monthly bills for your phone are around 100 smackers", wake the fuck up people! Tell your ISP: if it aint TCP/IP kiss my ass. And if your last mile solution aint ISDN or 64k coax suck the dick of me and all of my friends. CAT 5 = lan party CAT 6 = IT CAT 4= what I use to strangel the mail man with and CAT 3 is my ass floss OK? Get on the fucking clue bus slashdot, stop using fucking copper Tin, Metal, Ti, Fe, FTE, or NTE, and just tell them: No, go fuck yourself if your' not using STCP/IP (Spectral TCP/IP) for your backbone, and i'm proud to be a fucking mac user, and aren't microsofts little bitch. I'm proud to use fucking standards and you should to call this number again and i'll pipe bomb you and your friends and your family.
According to this website, Cat5e is 350MHz and designed for gigabit ethernet. What am I missing? Is Cat6 or 7 needed for gigabit?
Er, the standard ping that comes with Red Hat Linux 7.2.
You could've hired me.
Your point is noted, but I haven't had trouble. Fortunately, bad patch cords are easily replaced.
You could've hired me.
ethernet however saturates at 60% so you can only get real transfer of about 60 Mbps
At 10Mbps with a 3C509B (nice card if 10Mb ISA is your bag), I get actual transfer rates of ~1.14MB/s (1,200,000bytes/sec (96%)). I guess the rest is protocol overhead.
On my 100Mbps connections (iBook OS X - PII300 OpenBSD) I get 9.8MB/s with ftp transfers.
Where did you get this 60% number?
War crimes, torture, lies, illegal spying... Would someone give Bush a blowjob, already, so he can be impeached?
It's what's called a RPN (Rectal Projection Number)
More commonly known as a number pulled out of one's ass.
When I started my home network and needed just a single cable (20m crossover was not available crimped at stores) i decided to save the cost of a crimp tool. I found out that you can crimp a plug with a thin flat screw driver easily. Failure rate: 0%.
This sig is a true statement, but I cannot prove it.
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Well that sucks, Windows only does it to +/- 10ms, feh.
Remind me to strangle somebody down at Redmond HQ for including the most minimal Ping util that they could. . . .
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Compare that to SysV ping:
$ ping yahoo.com
yahoo.com is up
$
The 60% number is based on the wait times after a collision on a non-switched ethernet segment. After a certain usage you collide so often that the waits slow your usage down.
*Not a Sermon, Just a Thought
*/
Not the RJ45 plugs I buy. They're labeled "for solid" or "for solid or stranded" and they have three knife points in a _-_ pattern. They bend around the wire core and work great.
I've had a lot more trouble with patch cables I've made from stranded wire and "for stranded" plugs. I'm willing to admit the possibility that this is due to other factors - quality of the cable, or my relative inexperience at crimping - but in any case, once I switched to solid cable I haven't looked back.
"How can you claim that you are anti-crack, while still writing a window manager?" — Metacity README
Hmm, FreeBSD4.0 gives me 3 decimal places too. Of course in both the FreeBSD and GNU/Linux case, I see three decimal places when the ping time is under one milisecond.
You could've hired me.
I have crimped hundreds of cables. I was just trying to whore a few Funny points.
Why bother.
Hello fellow computer wizzes. If you know a lot about network gaming this question is for you. I am looking for a new and original idea in order to make network gaming faster. I can use current technology or I can use what I believe is going to be near future technology. Some ideas I have come up with are the following: 1) Have a huge proccessing unit in the middle of the two systems that are running on a network. This takes away the dilema that each unit is processing the same things at a different rate. Everything that will be processed by both units will instead be processed by this one central unit. 2) My second way was to use photonics and Wavelength Cross-Connects (WXCs) to connect the systems to each other this makes a much faster connection. Also, photonics can be used to solve the speed barrier of computers or game systems in the future by making the processors of each unit faster seperately. This would also increase the speed of network gaming. Please if you have any feasible, intelectual, or cutting edge idea to the solution of making network games faster please post things or E-mail me at nurples_100@hotmail.com . Thank you very very much. Tony