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1.4mm Thick Gigabit Ethernet Cable
TheIonix writes "Flat network cables aren't anything new, but I'm pretty sure ones like this are. Japanese accessory king Elecom today announced the "LD-VAPF/SV05" network cabling, coming in at 1.4mm thick." Also here's their press release if you can read Japanese.
I'm not sure if it's out yet or not, but Flatwire has talked about this at least a year ago.
Google Translation of press release.
I'm a big tall mofo.
Can't wait to see them bringing down the ceilings in old campus buildings. (We always run stuff in the plenum. :) 0 )
I'm still not sure I'm okay with the potential for interfreaence in these... it's just too thin... I'd love to see how many u can stack on top of one another before they break.
-=fshalor
If the pics are accurate, and you can really shut the window (sorry I don't read Japanese), then this is some cool stuff. I can see it being used to hide cabling and make it less obtrusive.
Other than that, they had better be selling it for close to normal cable prices, or I can't think of anyone who would buy very much of it.
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But surely a large file will not fit through such a small cable? You'd need to hammer them down first, which is an unwanted chore. Easier than making them small enough to transmit wirelessly, I guess.
I guess I don't understand what's the point in this article other than "informational". We have optical fiber cable in my office, it can't be any thicker than about 2 mm's.
I really appreciate the fact that people are generating new technologies, to make things thinner, however, this is where stuff should be going, not groundbreaking news.
... is not thickness, it's the cable ITSELF I think... I'd rather see some important research on WIFI than this kind of invention...
Im guessing they took that into consideration and have developed it to withstand physical damage and such. From the looks of it, it can be closed in a door and have no damage, and walked on with no damage. Hopefully you are wrong and they got this right so I can finally run cable from room to room and be able to close my door.
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the whole point of making such announcement would be that you would have solved that shielding problem.
the real novelty of this thing(if you watch the pics) is that you can run it through thin places(like windowstills.. no need to bore a hole to the wall).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
"We are disrespectful to cable of girth. Can you see that we are serious? Join me or die. Can you do any less? For special lucky data, use Elecom LD-VAPF/SV05 network cabling."
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
The U in UTP is Unshielded. Standard Ethernet doesn't use shielding. But it does use the twists in the cabling to combat interference.
It looks like this flat cable is only for very small sections, for which you can probably get away without the twists if you've got another way to handle the interference.
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OK first off what is an Ethernet cable? You can not buy one at a store. You can buy a CAT5, CAT5E, CAT6...cable at nay computer store.n /0,,sid7_gci213234,00.html/
Second twisted pair UTP)is not shielded. http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/sDefinitio
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Most ethernet cable used today is UTP... which stands for 'Unshielded Twisted Pair'. Their is no 'EM protection' built into the cable other than the arrangement of the wires to prevent crosstalk in the individual strands.
If they can provide enough 'twists' and correct pair placement then they can easily provide just as much protection as standard Cat-5/Cat-6 that we use today.
PS People should also NOT use shielded twisted pair... in most environments it actually hurts signal quality do to it's jacket effectively being a single strand of conductor to pick up stray noise from 110V, ballasts, etc...
Telcos have alot of dark fibre in the States. Most people assume that's optical fibre...but it's actually moral fibre.
I do not read Japanese, but can imagine
1) this cable is rather expensive
2) the loses/reflections are higher than for normal cable
This is speculation, of course, but probably you don't want to make your entire home network from these cables...
Did anyone else read the subject and think "Thick Ethernet? What do we want to bring that back for?"
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Well, if you are going to use STP you need to be using equipment designed for it. Equipment designed for STP needs to have a good ground plane and needs to bring that plane out to each port. Between the grounding of the jacket and the twisted pair STP cabling should not be worse performing that UTP, and in some environments is MUCH better. Of course in any invironment with enough RF noise to warrant STP I would just use fibre and not have to worry about the RF at all =)
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The National Electrical Code requires that wiring in a plenum has a special teflon cladding that won't burn and fill the ducts with smoke in the case of a fire. I didn't see this mentioned in the article...
The twistedness actually is there to cancel out crosstalk. There isn't really any shielding for RF (either receiving or sending). The twistedness attempts to create pairs of wires that always appear to be 90 degrees in reference to the other wire. Any PCB designer knows that to get the least interference from lines, you try to cross them at 90 degrees, so they only "overlap" at a very small point. Parallel lines act like capacitors to eachother, and that's why we get crosstalk.
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It's not just crosstalk. Twisting improves "Common Mode Rejection" because the twists cause any interference to be picked up with opposite polarity on any signalling pair.
Obviously, IANA EE.
We are so proud of you. Now go roll over your fiber optic cable with a chair. Now bend it around corners. What? It doesn't work anymore?
I'm in the category cable industry and would be weary of using this cable for Gigabit Ethernet. The release only mentions that the cable is rated at Cat 5 (Not Cat 5e) which means it is only good for speeds up to 100 Mb/s. You need a true (verified) Cat 5e cable to run 1000 Mb/s (Gigabit) ethernet.
That said, this would be find for most home networks.
No, the twisted wires aren't twisted to cut capacitance between those two wires. It's the crosstalk between parallel channels that you want to cut down on. The twisted pair itself is basically a poor-man's transmission line, with characteristic impedance of 93 Ohm or thereabouts, depending on the twist pitch. Each twisted pair contains signal and ground (ie, it's return), and ideally should have zero net current flow within the pair (like coax). Ie, the current flow in the pair goes 'there and back again' for the signal/ground. By twisting them you effectively couple them together better, so they're less likely to crosstalk to the other pairs, either through capacitive or mutual inductuve coupling.
While there is definitely capacitance between the two twister pair lines, there is a roughly constant mutual inductance that lets it approximate a tramsission line w/ real impedance (ie, no filtering to first order). This is how typical 50-Ohm and 75-Ohm Coax cable works too, but they're better shielded and have a better-defined characteristic impedance. (Ie, you can form a TEM wave in coax, but not so well in twisted pair).
So by twisting you are forming a more-isolated transmission line channel, which will reduce crosstalk between the other twisted pairs, not between the two wires in the pair, as they are ultimately tied together.
Two conductors of small cross-section in intimate proximity carrying equal currents in opposite directions make a very poor antenna.
..... the whole of engineering is really just about finding the best compromises between incompatible "ideal" requirements to produce a solution that will work under real-world conditions.}
Small cross-section isn't a problem. Opposite directions are easy to arrange: all you need is a resistor on the far end, bigger than the resistance of the cable {which depends on the cross-section; more area == less resistance}. Equal currents require differential drive arrangements {one goes high while other goes low -- think motor reversing circuit -- not hard} and that the terminating resistor on the far end is smaller than the input resistance of the receiver. {Spot the conflicting requirements here
Intimate proximity is traditionally ensured by twisting the wires together, but bonding them side-by-side in a flat configuration works almost as well, if you can live with the fact that there is actually going to be some directional antenna functionality, but it's very directional.
Twisting helps to cancel this out somewhat, by ensuring that any radiated fields tend to cancel one another out: somewhere further along the cable, a signal will be emitted with the opposite phase; and if the twists are close enough that the conductor is in intimate proximity to its opposite counterpart, the two will cancel out.
Exactly how close is "intimate" depends on the wavelength, of course.
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Well, wireless lans are at a much lower power output than cell phones, and they are typically operated much further from your brain (although with the wifi voip phones this doesn't apply).
If you are worried about wireless, move to the mountains or put on a tinfoil hat.
OK first off what is an Ethernet cable? You can not buy one at a store.
A google search for "ethernet cable" finds 682,000 pages that disagree with you.
By your argument, I guess you can't buy a car either... you can only buy a Honda Civic EX 1.5 5-sp Manual, Toyota Corolla CE 4-sp Auto etc.
The National Electrical Code requires that wiring in a plenum has a special teflon cladding that won't burn
PVC itself is fairly fire retardant, but it releases Hydrogen Chloride when heat is applied to it. Plenum rated cable burns, but it doesn't release HCl when it does so, and thus is required to be used in environments where air will be circulated.
Just in case you are wondering where you can get these cables, they should be available for pre-order from our site within 24 hours:
http://shinza.com/
Availability is expected within 3-4 weeks.
If closing dors is a problem then I must assume that you live in a rental thatdoes not allow wiring to be pulled. Take a tri to your local home improvement store and look at what networking hardware is avaliable. For about US $100 I was able to pull 2 phone lines and 2 network drops to 3 bedrooms and the kitchen(8 new lines of both).
Then only special tool I required was a fishtape. I already had the utility knife, drill with 3/4" spade bit, and screwdriver.
The RJ-45 connectors that go into the wall do not require special tools to assemble. I still went to Radio Shack for patch cables. Home Depot charges 2x as much. I COULD have bought the connector tool and gone blind reciting "Orangewhite orange greenwhite blue bluewhite..." but the tool is almost US$50 for the cheep one!
Since I am only using 2 of the drops I pulled (now at least) Getting the tool to make my own patch cables is too expensive. If I get more than 3 network devices at the same time I will probably get the tool and break even vs premade cables. That would be 6 new cables of various length.
In any hoot, I'll have to upgrade way beyond my 4 port 10-base hub before that happens. The point is I'll be done, and never need to pull new cables again.
Oh, per my eletrician consultant leave about a foot of slack in the wall at each end so you can replace the ends several times when they go bad without pulling new wire.
Have fun!
Phil
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