Slashdot Mirror
Handmade vs. Commercially Produced Ethernet Cables
An anonymous reader writes "We have a T1 line coming into our satellite office and we rely fairly heavily on it to transfer large amounts of data over a VPN to the head office across the country. Recently, we decided to upgrade to a 20 Mbit line. Being the lone IT guy here, it fell on me to run cable from the ISP's box to our server room so I went out and bought a spool of Cat6. I mentioned the purchase and the plan to run the cable myself to my boss in head office and in an emailed response he stated that it's next to impossible to create quality cable (ie: cable that will pass a Time Domain Reflectometer test) by hand without expensive dies, special Ethernet jacks and special cable. He even went so far as to say that handmade cable couldn't compare to even the cheapest Belkin cables. I've never once ran into a problem with handmade patch cables. Do you create your own cable or do you bite the bullet and buy it from some place?"
Monster cables, dude, Monster cables...
~men are from earth. women are from earth. deal with it.~
You can certainly screw it up if you do it yourself, for example you could forget the signal directional markings and then the signal would not know which way to go. Why do you think there are Ethernet cables at $500/1.5m? You think respectable companies are just trying to steal your money?
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
I think you have a pointy haired boss who can't do anything himself. Thats why he has other people do the IT. I've run into these types of people before. He's probably the kind of guy that staples the crap out of cat cable and wonders why his network is down.
It really preserves the assonitic complexity and quality of the packets when they move from your wall to your router. Cheaper cables let noisy bits through that go all wobbly and clog your connection. I hear their new wifi cables are hella expensive but totally worth it.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Yeah,
But the occasional dud-job does pass by. Then you've got this thing spraying ether all over the walls, the floors, and what-have-you.
Try explaining that one, passing the hallway, with ether dripping from the front of one''s trousers. "It's my handworked cable, you see..." you might mumble to colleagues, to their dubious glances.
I know a lot of you came up while 10 MbPS was standard. The drizzling or atomizing was even comforting - almost acceptable in Cat5. Now, 100 MbPS goes off like a water-cannon. With Gig arriving to the desktop and commodity rack, I don't know if "grow-your-own" is advice that one may any longer advocate with a dry lap or chin!
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
When the only answer slashdotters can imagine is "just pay somebody else to do it," that is the day there is no point reading here.
Hey, that was pretty good. What would you charge to make my posts for me?
Seconded. I make all my own patch ca$lw7 and3@0 datt trd!@m34ssion ha*F aslwts bben3n vereryu reliabl3233e.
um... the commercially cut cables are made of certain length for a reason. If you've taken physics especially emf harmonics, you'd know wanting a specific length without considering harmonics is all kinds of bad because it may result in emi emission, or even worse, cross talk. This happens to twisted pair as well as coaxial due to energy absorption of the copper cable themselves (part of the energy in the inner cable gets converted to heat for coax and heat conversion not equalizing for twisted pair, emf will almost never be 0 as they are in theory).
Where is the "Ignorant" mod tag?
audio grade Ethernet cables
Yeah, I have those. I keep it next to my hydrogen grade garden hose, and my lava grade plumbing.
Get off my lawn.
Damned kids today.
~ a low user id is no indication I have a clue what I'm talking about.
Damn, my mod points expired.
As another EE (who does all their work at about 3GHz), I must say you need to be modded to oblivion for that comment.
Please, just stop.
I think you accidentally a verb.
No, you want to avoid those integer (or half) multiples of your wavelength to avoid setting up standing waves due to reflections in the cable. So go and trim a couple of picometers off those cables you just built and you'll be good to go.
How'd you get ethernet on a classic Newton?
"If you've taken physics especially emf harmonics, you'd know wanting a specific length without considering harmonics is all kinds of bad because it may result in emi emission,"
Let me guess... you work for Monster Cable, in marketing perhaps?
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
I don't see anything 'round' about your distances of 1.8288222384784 and 3.0480370641307 metres.
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
Here's a better link.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
See, this is exactly why I adore /. Name one other popular site where you'd get ten bites on a troll that 99% of the population doesn't even understand.
Right down to the Where is the "Ignorant" mod tag? signature. 10/10 for you, sir.
Last post!
This is a CYA issue. Your boss does not want to explain to HIS boss, when a cable goes bad and the company is losing $large_number per hour until it is diagnosed and fixed, that he authorized one of his tech guys to use "homemade" cables.
I absolutely agree. You can't trust an IT professional's "homemade" cables any more than you can trust a cook's "homemade" meal. That's why you should always buy your work instead of doing it yourself. I went to Outback Steakhouse yesterday and ate the best steak I ever had, and do you know why? It was because THEIR COOKS DIDN'T MAKE IT! They did the sensible thing and took my order across the street to McDonald's, returning to me (at a marginal reseller's markup) a quality steak from a trusted manufacturer. And if the steak had been bad, the cooks had done their duty to their job security and could just say to their boss, "Hey, it came from McDonald's! And I'm a valued employee that has skills you need, like being able to run across a busy street during a dinner rush and buy something from another company! So you should definitely just blame McDonald's and let me get back to flirting with the hostess!" Bingo! The boss is happy, the customer gets mediocre service and quality at insane profit, and the cooks don't have any value to the business at all! That's exactly how every business should operate! Because if you trust your workers to do the jobs you hired them for, you're just setting yourself up for disappointment. Because since you weren't able to purchase your employees at an employee store and instead had to choose them yourself, they obviously must be as unqualified for their jobs as you know you are.
perl -e "eval pack(q{H*},join q{},qw{70 72696e74207061636b28717b482a7d2c717b343 637323635363534323533343430617d293b})"
Mod parent up!
I'm an EE (non-practicing) and he's right. This is even worse with twisted pair 'cause the EM emissions come out all twisted and curvy and can cause serious interference with other cables.
It's also important to always cut your cable in multiples of 30 cm if you're going to use Gigabyte Ethernet to make sure your wave always gets to the other side in phase - you don't want a phase mismatch to happen.
Don't forget to terminate everything - i can tell you that the actual speed of a cable where one of the sides is neither connected to anything nor properly terminated is ZERO bps.
Last but not least, always make sure that both sides of the connection send equal amounts of data so that the cable doesn't get a transmission fatigue problem due to the electrons always going in the same direction.
Here you have it, the secrets of professional cable making and usage at your fingertips: don't waste them!!!
They did the sensible thing and took my order across the street to McDonald's, returning to me (at a marginal reseller's markup) a quality steak from a trusted manufacturer.
The truly sad part is that I'd probably eat a McDonald's steak. Mmm. Charred cow flesh.
But I'd never admit to it. Oh, wait. Crap.
"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana." --Groucho Marx
That is exactly what any self-respecting BOFH would do. Except that he would find a way to have the boss pay for the materials as well. Double.
Inferior piece of shit.
I only use this - http://www.amazon.com/Denon-AKDL1-Dedicated-Link-Cable/dp/B000I1X6PM
We all put our pants on one leg at a time... Maybe use Heat-shrink tubing for more ruggedness (if required) but that's it.
You put heatshrink tubing on your legs? Where the fuck do you work that you need to do that?
So what is it that you have against robots, anyway?
Orange and white, Orange. Green and White, Blue. Blue and White, Green. Brown and White, Brown.
Just Remember: OverWeight Olga Gives Willingly, But Betty White Gives Bitchin'-Wild Blowjobs.
So sayeth Tim.
So what is it that you have against robots, anyway?
They took our jerbs!
We have a T1 line coming into our satellite office
Strap a cart onto it and you'll have a space elevator!
As another EE (who does all their work at about 3GHz)
You must drink a lot of coffee to be that jittery. I can't even begin to understand how you'll get any work done at 3GHz...
The view was horrible and the smell was even worse; Julie severely regretted becoming a proctologist.