The maximum length of a cat5 run is supposed to be 100m (330ft) so you're exceeding the maximum length by reaching 400ft. A quick hack could be to force your switch and squeezebox to use 10mbit instead of 100mbit and see if that helps.
Other solutions: If you put, say, 2 lengths of 200ft each with a switch or hub in between, you should be able to make it. The switch will retransmit the signal allowing you another 100m. You'll probably need to use solid core cable, though - you're not supposed to use more than 10m of stranded cable per run. What type of cable are you using? Do you know if it's solid core (solid core is more difficult to bend than stranded cable)? Alternatively, get two switches with fibre uplink (100BASE-FX) and do it that way. This will give you a maximum run of over 1000ft so you can have one switch at your server and one in the shack. You should be able to find used switches cheap, though I couldn't tell you how much the cable will cost. If the cable breaks, it will also be significantly harder to fix than ethernet (which can be rejoined fairly easily). Your wireless solution may or may not work - the only way to be 100% sure is to try it. Though, the length of the network cable leading to the switch does not affect the wireless range. The weather will affect your wireless range, however, so it may not be very reliable. -- tass ------------------------------------------------------------------------ tass's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=1231 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=79322 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
