I got tired of half a dozen computers being blown up by one lightning
strike, so I did that 15 years ago. Sometimes you can find the hardware
for 10 or 100 mb on Ebay. I didn't need the speed, so for what I needed
10 mb was still more than what was necessary most of the time. At that
time people were dumping the old stuff (that used AUI ports) because it
was to old and slow. Fiber with connectors was fairly easy to find.
I still have a number of Cat 5 lines, however the fiber broke up a
number of long lengths of cable that were more likely to get a
substantial induced voltage from EMP or lightning. For the past 15
years or so I have not lost any more equipment (and the tower in the
back yard still gets hit or a substantial surge from a close strike from
time to time).
Dave
On Fri, 2008-10-24 at 11:46 -0500, Evan Brown wrote:
> now thats an interesting proposition, running fiber through your house
> instead of copper...
>
> On Fri, Oct 24, 2008 at 11:22 AM, David R. Wilson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> wrote:
>
>
> On Fri, 2008-10-24 at 08:46 -0400, Andrew Farnsworth wrote:
> > Running Gigabit ethernet on Cat 5 does work, however, you
> will find
> > that many things affect the performance and you might want
> to keep
> > these in mind.
> >
> > 1) Run length - the length of cable your signal must
> traverse will
> > affect the performance. The longer the cable the worse
> performance.
> > Keep your patch cables to the appropriate length, i.e. don't
> use a 50'
> > cable for a 3' gap.
> >
> > 2) Jack quality - Most jacks will cost about $5 for a
> keystone
> > category 5e jack. As such, don't buy Cat5 jacks, splurge
> for the 5e
> > ones. I have yet to see the house that has very many jacks
> (i.e. >
> > 100) so spending an extra $2 per jack won't cost you much.
> Cat6 jacks
> > won't do you any better then Cat5e if you are still using
> Cat5 wire.
> >
> > 3) Interference - the main difference between Cat5 and Cat5e
> is the
> > number of twists per foot. The more twists, the less
> susceptible to
> > interference. As such, if your cable runs along next to the
> power
> > lines in your house, you may see a gigabit connection, but
> get very
> > bad throughput, even to the point of worse actual throughput
> than 100
> > Mbit due to noise on the line. In a residence, this should
> be fairly
> > minimal as your noise generators are pretty much limited to
> your power
> > lines.
> >
> > 4) Wiring - Gigabit uses all 8 wires in the cable. 10/100
> Mb only
> > requires wires 1,2,3, and 6. Since you are doing the wiring
> yourself
> > you can be sure to attach all 8. Find yourself a good
> wiring chart as
> > the pairing in gigabit cabling must be 1-2, 3-6, 4-5, 7-8.
> Be sure
> > your patch cables are all Cat5e or better as this will
> insure they use
> > all 8 wires, though I have yet to find any premade patch
> cable in the
> > last 5 years that doesn't use all 8 wires, it is better to
> be safe
> > than sorry.
> >
> > 5) Network switch - don't buy the cheapest switch you can
> find. In
> > fact it might be worth shelling out for a decent business
> class switch
> > that has network managment facilitites. These will usually
> cost more
> > but will also give port statistics which will let you track
> down
> > issues. Keep in mind that if you are pushing a lot of data
> around
> > your network from more than just your server, but peer to
> peer or if
> > you have multiple servers, that the internal bandwidth of
> the switch
> > you choose is important. Many cheap Gigabit switches only
> support 2-3
> > Gb of internal bandwidth so if you have 4 machines talking
> to 4 other
> > machines you can saturate your switch. Not usually an issue
> for home
> > networks, but something to keep in mind.
> >
> > To make a long story short, get it all wired up and test it
> out. If
> > you have a specific run that you think is important to get
> full
> > gigabit speeds from, it might be worth re-running that wire
> using
> > Cat5e cable.
>
>
> Cat 5e is typically rated to 350mb.
>
> Make that Cat6 cable.
>
> Cat 6 is also a bit different in the structure of the cable.
> Andy hit
> all of those points correctly. Keep in mind that the twist
> just before
> hitting the jacks can make a difference. Length of the cable
> at Gigabit
> speed makes a big difference. If you do have to run a long
> length of
> cable and it needs high bandwidth switch to fiber.
>
> Dave
>
>
> >
> > Andy
> >
> > On Fri, Oct 24, 2008 at 8:12 AM, Steve
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >
> > As far as cabling is concerned, from my old research
> as I
> > recall, cat5
> > was designed for 100m, cat5e was designed for 1gb,
> and cat6
> > was for
> > 1gb to 10gb. It's all about the wire gauge and # of
> twists.
> > Those more
> > twists are designed to stop interferences. I know
> you're not
> > interested in re-pulling your old cable but if you
> start
> > seeing poor
> > speeds and dropped packets, that could very well be
> your
> > issue.
> >
> >
> > >
>
>
>
>
>
>
> >
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