Re: [MBZ] local area network question - No MB
Ah yes - thin net (ethernet over coax cable) was bus topology. However, the Easy to troubleshoot if wiring problems arise. does not match my experience - any error anywhere on the bus would bring down the intire network. You had to go to each node to find the problem. Proper termination was essential! Bus Topology Advantages Initial installation may use less cable than other topologies. Easy to troubleshoot if wiring problems arise. -- OK Don, KD5NRO Norman, OK '90 300D 243K, Rattled '87 300SDL 290K, Limo Lite, or blue car '81 240D 173K, Gramps, or yellow car '78 450SLC 67K, brown car '97 Ply Grand Voyager 78K Van Go
Re: [MBZ] local area network question - No MB
Ah yes - thin net (ethernet over coax cable) was bus topology. However, the Easy to troubleshoot if wiring problems arise. does not match my experience - any error anywhere on the bus would bring down the entire network. You had to go to each node to find the problem. Proper termination was essential! It was, and troubleshooting was no harder than having an extra terminator in hand and conducting a binary search. But the easiest way was to backtrack off of 'what have you done to me lately?' Faults only took down the one leg from the hub, which was usually only a dozen or so nodes. Taught people to be careful, it did, and that topology was great for labs. Trivial to add more equipment. -- Jim
Re: [MBZ] local area network question - No MB
On Sun, 12 Feb 2006 19:06:14 -0800 Jim Cathey [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ah yes - thin net (ethernet over coax cable) was bus topology. However, the Easy to troubleshoot if wiring problems arise. does not match my experience - any error anywhere on the bus would bring down the entire network. You had to go to each node to find the problem. Proper termination was essential! It was, and troubleshooting was no harder than having an extra terminator in hand and conducting a binary search. But the easiest way was to backtrack off of 'what have you done to me lately?' Faults only took down the one leg from the hub, which was usually only a dozen or so nodes. Taught people to be careful, it did, and that topology was great for labs. Trivial to add more equipment. Ah, yes, 10-base2. We used it at HP in Colorado Springs in the late '80s. Had one office worker who wanted to move her computer and, instead of removing the BNC Tee from the back and leaving the two cables connected, removed both cables. The guys in my (engineering) group running a diskless cluster were not amused. Craig
Re: [MBZ] local area network question - No MB
Ah, yes, 10-base2. We used it at HP in Colorado Springs in the late '80s. Our basement 'cluster' is _still_ wired with it. Goes to the troll under the stairs, the NeXT, some Unixey servers I had a hand in the design of, etc. And to the Mac 7500, the laser printer (LW Pro 630), and finally to a small hub that has the twisted stuff on it for the two newer Macs and the wireless gateway. Had one office worker who wanted to move her computer and, instead of removing the BNC Tee from the back and leaving the two cables connected, removed both cables. The guys in my (engineering) group running a diskless cluster were not amused. Happened plenty of times at our shop too. This was easily blamable on the IT bunch who never seemed to get the point about the desirability of the little plastic snap-over cover that obscured the two BNC connectors that you generally did _not_ want to remove. Our installations that had these rarely experienced any problems. The other huge source of problems was the wretched teflon-coated wire that was required for use in plenums (fire code). Rather than just run the few lengths of that pricey grey stuff where it was required and the regular black cable everywhere else, they ordered _only_ the teflon wire, which was so slippery that a good tug would yank it right out of the crimped ferrule. The black stuff would shred before it would come apart. We had _lots_ of teflon network outages too. Using black wire in the offices and labs and having the proper Tee covers would have eliminated 95% or more of our network problems, putting it right down to what you'd expect with the later twisted pair stuff. In other words, 95% of the blame for our network problems, and the IT staff's work, came from the indirect incompetence of the IT staff itself. Surprise, surprise. The dickless workstation that we had at the time was in fact one that I designed. It came _that_ close to not having Ethernet at all as it cost an extra $50 per node and we had been told to keep cost to a minimum. But a command decision from the CEO came down, and it turned out to have been a very good decision. At the time Ethernet was just one of a crowd and not the clear winner that it later came to be. Twisted pair variations didn't exist, there was only the talked-about 1Mbps StarLAN (which died and later mutated into 10-baseT), and Cheapernet (10-base2) _was_ the new kid on the block. Fun times. -- Jim
Re: [MBZ] local area network question - No MB
On Sunday, February 12, 2006, at 07:45 PM, Craig McCluskey wrote: On Sun, 12 Feb 2006 19:06:14 -0800 Jim Cathey [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ah yes - thin net (ethernet over coax cable) was bus topology. However, the Easy to troubleshoot if wiring problems arise. does not match my experience - any error anywhere on the bus would bring down the entire network. You had to go to each node to find the problem. Proper termination was essential! It was, and troubleshooting was no harder than having an extra terminator in hand and conducting a binary search. But the easiest way was to backtrack off of 'what have you done to me lately?' Faults only took down the one leg from the hub, which was usually only a dozen or so nodes. Taught people to be careful, it did, and that topology was great for labs. Trivial to add more equipment. Ah, yes, 10-base2. We used it at HP in Colorado Springs in the late '80s. Had one office worker who wanted to move her computer and, instead of removing the BNC Tee from the back and leaving the two cables connected, removed both cables. The guys in my (engineering) group running a diskless cluster were not amused. Craig So it became a cluster F**k -- Clay Seattle Bioburner 1972 220D - Gump 1995 E300D - Cleo 1987 300SDL - POS - DOA The FSM would drive a Diesel Benz
Re: [MBZ] local area network question - No MB
Jim Cathey wrote: The other huge source of problems was the wretched teflon-coated wire that was required for use in plenums (fire code). Rather than just run the few lengths of that pricey grey stuff where it was required and the regular black cable everywhere else, they ordered _only_ the teflon wire, which was so slippery that a good tug would yank it right out of the crimped ferrule. The black stuff would shred before it would come apart. We had _lots_ of teflon network outages too. In my current job I deal with a lot of field-installed BNCs. The crimp-ons just don't seem to be all they're cracked up to be. My experience is that even good-quality twist-on connectors are more resistant to being yanked off than the crimp-ons.
Re: [MBZ] local area network question - No MB
Jim Cathey wrote: Ah yes - thin net (ethernet over coax cable) was bus topology. However, the Easy to troubleshoot if wiring problems arise. does not match my experience - any error anywhere on the bus would bring down the entire network. You had to go to each node to find the problem. Proper termination was essential! It was, and troubleshooting was no harder than having an extra terminator in hand and conducting a binary search. 10Base2 was great for small networks because it was cheap -- no hub to buy, which used to be a significant expense. When you got over half a dozen workstations, though, it started to get too many points of failure, IMHO, unless you were in a carefully controlled environment. Every time someone kicked a cable loose under their desk the whole network went down. Coming up with a bus that would connect every machine while staying shorter than 200 meters could be a challenge, too -- especially if you were dropping down from above the ceiling, forcing you to run 16 feet of cable (8 feet down the wall, 8 feet back up) for each system. Still, it wasn't a bad solution for a home network or small office. What finally killed it was the lack of an upgrade path to 100BaseT, of course.
[MBZ] local area network question - No MB
A question, if I may, from you computer geek types out there. Here is the issue...I just got my second TIVO, and as you folks may know, you can hook your TIVOs to your area local network and transfer movies from one TIVO to the other or to your computer. You can use either a wired network or a wireless network. My understanding is that with a wireless network you may get some pauses when watching a recording as it is being transferred from a remote unit to the one at the location where you are viewing. Here is my problem. I already have a wired router and local network between two computers downstairs, but the TIVOs will be in two separate rooms upstairs. Trying to run the wired network to all those locations would really be a pain. It would seem like the wireless would be the ticket because of that but then I wouldn't get the transfer rates I desire and I'd end up spending some money to change to a wireless network. TIVOs are a bit sensitive on which wireless USB wireless transceivers they will accept so you can't always use the unit with the best price. I was thinking, I know, I know a dangerous proposition, about how DSL uses just a regular phone line to transfer data and wondered if I could use my existing telephone wiring as the data lines in a wired network? We are only using one phone line and the house is wired with a 6 conductor phone cable. Could I use one pair of the unused conductors as data lines? Is this a crazy idea or could it work? I would hook the wires directly to the router and then through a wired network USB transceiver to each TIVO. I'm guessing that I'd also have to put DSL type low pass filters on each of my phones. Barry
Re: [MBZ] local area network question - No MB
On Saturday, February 11, 2006, at 08:34 PM, Barry Stark wrote: A question, if I may, from you computer geek types out there. Here is the issue...I just got my second TIVO, and as you folks may know, you can hook your TIVOs to your area local network and transfer movies from one TIVO to the other or to your computer. You can use either a wired network or a wireless network. My understanding is that with a wireless network you may get some pauses when watching a recording as it is being transferred from a remote unit to the one at the location where you are viewing. Here is my problem. I already have a wired router and local network between two computers downstairs, but the TIVOs will be in two separate rooms upstairs. Trying to run the wired network to all those locations would really be a pain. It would seem like the wireless would be the ticket because of that but then I wouldn't get the transfer rates I desire and I'd end up spending some money to change to a wireless network. TIVOs are a bit sensitive on which wireless USB wireless transceivers they will accept so you can't always use the unit with the best price. I was thinking, I know, I know a dangerous proposition, about how DSL uses just a regular phone line to transfer data and wondered if I could use my existing telephone wiring as the data lines in a wired network? We are only using one phone line and the house is wired with a 6 conductor phone cable. Could I use one pair of the unused conductors as data lines? Is this a crazy idea or could it work? I would hook the wires directly to the router and then through a wired network USB transceiver to each TIVO. I'm guessing that I'd also have to put DSL type low pass filters on each of my phones. Barry Have you looked into Power Line networking. D-Link offers a set-up that plugs into the wall power outlet and a computer. It requires one box per machine. I was going to give it a try but I was remodeling the basement and seized the opportunity to run the cat.5. no speed loss with hard wired network. Johnny B. I Mac Therefore I am
Re: [MBZ] local area network question - No MB
John Berryman wrote: Have you looked into Power Line networking. Does in-home PLN screw up ham radio like PL internet does?
Re: [MBZ] local area network question - No MB
Use a 802.11G wireless... The phone line is not a twisted pair and you would need 4 wires for Ethernet. So basically if you did get it to work over the phone line it would be around 10Mbps which less than 54Mbps 802.11G. Trampas -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Barry Stark Sent: Saturday, February 11, 2006 8:35 PM To: Mercedes Discussion List Subject: [MBZ] local area network question - No MB A question, if I may, from you computer geek types out there. Here is the issue...I just got my second TIVO, and as you folks may know, you can hook your TIVOs to your area local network and transfer movies from one TIVO to the other or to your computer. You can use either a wired network or a wireless network. My understanding is that with a wireless network you may get some pauses when watching a recording as it is being transferred from a remote unit to the one at the location where you are viewing. Here is my problem. I already have a wired router and local network between two computers downstairs, but the TIVOs will be in two separate rooms upstairs. Trying to run the wired network to all those locations would really be a pain. It would seem like the wireless would be the ticket because of that but then I wouldn't get the transfer rates I desire and I'd end up spending some money to change to a wireless network. TIVOs are a bit sensitive on which wireless USB wireless transceivers they will accept so you can't always use the unit with the best price. I was thinking, I know, I know a dangerous proposition, about how DSL uses just a regular phone line to transfer data and wondered if I could use my existing telephone wiring as the data lines in a wired network? We are only using one phone line and the house is wired with a 6 conductor phone cable. Could I use one pair of the unused conductors as data lines? Is this a crazy idea or could it work? I would hook the wires directly to the router and then through a wired network USB transceiver to each TIVO. I'm guessing that I'd also have to put DSL type low pass filters on each of my phones. Barry ___ http://www.striplin.net For new parts see official list sponsor: http://www.buymbparts.com/ For used parts email [EMAIL PROTECTED] To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://striplin.net/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_striplin.net
Re: [MBZ] local area network question - No MB
The phone line is not a twisted pair and you would need 4 wires for Phone line has _always_ been twisted pair. But whether it is Cat. 5 or not is the question. Our house, wired in the 70's, certainly isn't, though it's run with the same three twisted pairs that you might get in a modern cable. No foil wrap is the chief difference. Ethernet. So basically if you did get it to work over the phone line it would be around 10Mbps which less than 54Mbps 802.11G. That's the raw in-frame transfer rate, but something tells me that the normal throughput is quite a bit less. Our wireless panel to our ISP (miles away) is 11 Mbps, but we're lucky if we get 1.5 in effective throughput, even with protocols that stream nicely. A reliable 10 Mbps link will kick the cookies out of a faster one that drops more than the occasional frame. -- Jim
Re: [MBZ] local area network question - No MB
On Saturday, February 11, 2006, at 08:02 PM, Mitch Haley wrote: Does in-home PLN screw up ham radio like PL internet does? No idea. Johnny B. I Mac Therefore I am
Re: [MBZ] local area network question - No MB
John - Sounds interesting. I sent the following message with my special concerns to Netgear and a similar message to powerlines communications. It will be interesting to see how they respond. I would like to set up a wired network using your XE102 units between my PC and a couple of TIVO DVR units. Do you know of any compatibility issues with TIVOs? I am also using Leviton DHC X-10 units extensively throughout my home. Do if you know if the XE102 and the X-10 units can successfully co-exist utilizing the same wiring? Because an X-10 transmitter and the X-10 receiver that is being controlled may be on opposite sides of the input power supply buss, it is required that a special filter be installed across the two power legs coming in from the power pole. This lets the X-10 signal pass without shorting between the two sides of the input power buss so the units can talk back and forth across both sides of the power buss. This also keeps my X-10 commands from traveling through the power lines from my home to all the other homes that are fed by the same step-down transformer on the power pole. How do you folks handle that situation? Barry I found this though. Have a look. http://www.powerlinecommunications.net/powerlinenetworking.htm
Re: [MBZ] local area network question - No MB
On Saturday, February 11, 2006, at 10:47 PM, Barry Stark wrote: John - Sounds interesting. I sent the following message with my special concerns to Netgear and a similar message to powerlines communications. It will be interesting to see how they respond. I would like to set up a wired network using your XE102 units between my PC and a couple of TIVO DVR units. Do you know of any compatibility issues with TIVOs? I am also using Leviton DHC X-10 units extensively throughout my home. Do if you know if the XE102 and the X-10 units can successfully co-exist utilizing the same wiring? Because an X-10 transmitter and the X-10 receiver that is being controlled may be on opposite sides of the input power supply buss, it is required that a special filter be installed across the two power legs coming in from the power pole. This lets the X-10 signal pass without shorting between the two sides of the input power buss so the units can talk back and forth across both sides of the power buss. This also keeps my X-10 commands from traveling through the power lines from my home to all the other homes that are fed by the same step-down transformer on the power pole. How do you folks handle that situation? Barry That ought to do it. Johnny B. I Mac Therefore I am
Re: [MBZ] local area network question - No MB
Thanks folks for all your help on educating me and setting me straight. Well I'm pretty sure that the phone line solution is out. First of all I don't have enough conductors, and then the potential for damaging things is not worth the risk. I'll look a little more into the system that uses the house wiring, but the wireless really seems to be the ticket. Barry That ought to do it. Johnny B.
Re: [MBZ] local area network question - No MB
On 2/11/06, Barry Stark [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: A question, if I may, from you computer geek types out there. Here is the Barry, I have a couple of caveats for you that I have not seen mentioned yet. Just something to think about, really. First, the idea of using the same cable your telephone service is on will not work for a couple of reasons. The largest being how phones themselves work. Unless you took special care when the house was being built, it is almost a certainty that your phones are full serial connect. This is extremely bad for what you want to do. When my house was built, I took special care that Cat 5 was run for both data, and voice to each and every room. All cables come back to a central punch down block for maintenance. The phones are punched down currently to work in serial as most all homes work. The reason that when you receive a call all phones in your home ring is that they receive the current at the same time. It runs in a loop, kind of like an old string of christmas lights. Phones are not network devices. Trying to run a network signal in this way will not work from a star, or Ethernet, topology. You'd have to completely convert to hub, like token ring, topology and use a bridge to put the token network onto your Ethernet network. Very complicated for what you want to do. If however, your house was built as mine, and the cable runs back to a central punch down (for all cables, in serial means that it's run in loop so you only have the single set of pairs back at the NID) you could in theory rip them out and rewire them to punch down in network style so the pairs needed for 10MB would be available and then you could do what you want. However, you would want to leave a pair (which is in telephone, oddly enough, the center pair for line 1) in the series block to keep your phones on. To have your phones in network style would mean the requirement of a PBX and internal extensions. Basically, large large headache, and your house is almost certainly full serial unless you specified to have it specifically wired as if you wanted a PBX installed at a later date. Ergo, not an option. The power line networking gear has a caveat as well. At least it used to, and if they still operate in the same fashion, then it is true now as well. The gear, as well as X10 gear, *only* work on wiring that is also in series. Your house has a breaker box. That breaker box has several divisions in it. Let's say that we can assume we know you have a breaker for your kitchen, a breaker for your living room, and a breaker for bedrooms. (My house has 15 separate breakers so we are over simplifying here) If you plug a piece of X10 / Power Line gear into your kitchen outlet, it will be unable to hear any thing that is plugged into your bedroom. The gear works by modulating the frequency of the AC current. Kind of like changing radio stations. AC current operates in a specific frequency band. The gear introduces signalling in a separate band, sometimes higher, sometimes lower and uses that the nudge the AC current one way or the other freq wise. The devices you plug in count on AC current fluctuating, so doesn't care that a dip or a spike happens in a very limited range. But the other Power Line networking gear does, and uses it to pass traffic back and forth. The PL in the bedroom can not hear the PL in the kitchen because they are on completely isolated separate circuits (to keep your house from burning down) I know that power companies are playing with offering net access across power lines, but that is basically changing the freq of the entire house, by changing it at the main meter before it enters, and is divided, at the breaker. Unless PL gear has come along way since last look, it can not do this. Meaning that if you can shut off a breaker for Bed/Tivo 1 and Bed/Tivo 2 doesn't care and stays happily lit, the PL gear doesn't do you any good anyway. Basically, you are back to your own conclusion that you want to change. You either need to run your own Cat5 to both rooms and all the way back down to your router, or you need to use Wireless. (Though, if the Tivo can take advantage of the new proprietary WiFi standards, this might be best. Linksys, for example, has a standard that is their own, piggy backed on the regular WiFi standard. So if you use all Linksys gear, per se, it can offer double or triple the regular speed because it's talking it's own code.) Your Mileage May Vary, but I hope it helps. -- Knowledge is power... Power Corrupts. Study hard... Be Evil.
Re: [MBZ] local area network question - No MB
currently to work in serial as most all homes work. The reason that when you receive a call all phones in your home ring is that they receive the current at the same time. It runs in a loop, kind of like an old string of christmas lights. Phones are not network devices. I don't know telco terminology, but the phones are all in electrical _parallel_. The cabling is probably point-to-point as you say, not a star (hub) topology. _Every_ string of christmas lights I've ever seen is cabled point-to-point, though the electrical connections can be series or parallel depending on the bulb style. I like to distinguish between the electrical wiring and the cabling style, as they are different. Assuming they're not can lead to confusion. Trying to run a network signal in this way will not work from a star, or Ethernet, topology. You'd have to completely convert to hub, like token ring, topology and use a bridge to put the token network onto your Ethernet network. Very complicated for what you want to do. Token ring networks I was exposed to had extremely complicated connectivity, and were series-connected with point-to-point links. Not hub-like at all. But that was back in the days when it was not clear that Ethernet was going to win. The power line networking gear has a caveat as well. At least it used to, and if they still operate in the same fashion, then it is true now as well. The gear, as well as X10 gear, *only* work on wiring that is also in series. Your house has a breaker box. That breaker box has several divisions in it. Let's say that we can assume we know you have a breaker for your kitchen, a breaker for your living room, and a breaker for bedrooms. (My house has 15 separate breakers so we are over simplifying here) If you plug a piece of X10 / Power Line gear into your kitchen outlet, it will be unable to hear any thing that is plugged into your bedroom. Speaking only for X10, this is wrong. The 180 kHz signal has no trouble at all reaching any outlet in our house that is on the same winding of the power transformer, it's the outlets that are connected to the _other_ side of the transformer that are spotty. One solution for this is to install a bridge across the two legs of the usual 220V center-tapped transformer so that the signal can migrate _around_ the transformer rather than through it. I don't know anything about PL networking gear. -- Jim
