Extending cat5e

[Tim Watts]

What is *rather* interesting, is I've just got one of those "3" MIFI widgets (PAYG, 1G/month = £10 after initial purchase cost) for use on my otherwise tedious "3 hours on a train" roundtrip commute.

At *some* points on the line from Robertsbridge to London Charing X I can pull 4.5Mbit/sec down and 1.5Mbit/sec up. Even the speeds in my village are respectible (and half the other mobile operators can't even get you a decent phone signal).

My home ADSL+ does 6.5Mbit/sec down and 0.8Mbit/sec up.

Which could mean ADSL's days are numbered if you have good tower coverage.

[Tim Watts]

Might be AMP. But I could be wrong. RS sell them because they are favourite too.

[John Rumm]

Depends on the usage a bit. 3G etc still gets pricey if you want more than a few gig / month. Now the kids have discovered iPlayer, and I shlurp the couple of hours of TV/week that I watch from over the pond, on top of normal use for all the machines here, its not uncommon to get through 20 - 30 gig during the day, and as much or more again off peak.

(My co-director just got a note from our ISP to say he can have fibre[1] now for £16/month, with predicted speeds of 43Mb/sec. Not that I am envious... honest! ;-)

[1] I presume FTTC rather than FTTH at that speed, but still a step up on the 13Mb/sec he's getting on ADSL/2+

[dennis]

Unlikely to happen soon.. The ~7.5 M speed they quote is shared by all the users unless they allocate more channels which costs money. If you are lucky you can get all the bandwidth to yourself and then its quick. If lots of users use it rather than ADSL you will never get decent speeds.

The other thing they can do is make the cells smaller but that also costs cash so don't write off ADSL yet.

[dennis]

It really depends on what its used for..

A few years ago it took a week to download a video then along came broadband and it took a day. Quicker, but not enough to make any real difference you still had to plan days in advance what you wanted to have downloaded.

Now there is fast ADSL and you can download a film in 15 minutes but start watching it after 30 seconds after selecting it on sky. Does going from 18M to 50M actually make a difference to such a service?

I don't think 50 or 100M makes any difference, now if Intel get their 10G to the home going that is a game changer.

[Dave Liquorice]

Aye, I often attend places with lots (few 10's of thousands) of people that turn up a few hours after I do. Data rates are acceptable but fall through the floor when the crowds arrive. And this is at venues that get very regular crowds and often have multiple cells attached or very close by.

[John Rumm]

Well 13 to 43 reduces an hours download to 15 - 20 mins, and since it costs no more, not much reason not to have it. For me 3.5 to 43 would quite a significant improvement. (the uplink was also about 4x quicker which can have more of an impact at times)

[Andy Burns]

LightPeak/ThunderBolt you mean? That'll be handy for people who live

*inside* phone exchanges ... maximum cable length 3metres

[dennis]

That's over cheap copper.

[Andy Champ]

There are an awful lot of people around the country who don't get anything like 18 megs. I get just over 2, which is barely enough for streaming video. There's probably more market for 10 megs in more places than there is for 100megs in a few. (all bits of course)

Andy

[Ron Lowe]

Not if you use cat6 IDCs.

Most cat6 networks terminate in a punch-down block near the switches using IDCs. The wall faceplates are all connected using 110-type IDCs.

My home LAN is entirely wired with IDC connections, using Systimax faceplates, cable, and punch-down blocks and is fully cat6 compliant.

These do generally have a better cable entry arrangement which maintains the twists in the pairs right up to the actual IDC blade.

[Ron Lowe]

Ah, yes, and there's the problem.

The major players ( mainly BT ) will only roll out newer tech like FTTC to locations where they are hurting due to competiton, ie well-provided areas. They then complain about low up-take, because the market is already well-served.

They seem to think they have no incentive to roll FTTC out to where it's

*really needed*, like poorly-served more rural areas, where the up-take would be much higher!

[Dave Liquorice]

But what defines a "cabinet"? I don't think there is one in our line, 2.5 miles from the exchange. Several joint torpedoes in small holes in the ground but no above surface green box. One also assumes that FTTC needs power at the cabinet, power isn't easly available along the roads where the phone lines are, it's all overhead, in the fields, at 11kV.

What might be interesting is who buys and starts to use the 800MHz band that will be auctioned off next year. That is supposed to be for mobile data connections, now if that can provide 10Mbps (peak/burst) download at 10 miles from a cell site and support 500 users @ 2Mbps each concurrently (each cell needing at least 1Gbps back haul) BT will have a serious threat in rural areas where ADSL runs out of puff at 3 miles.

[www.GymRatZ.co.uk]

[www.GymRatZ.co.uk]

:¬) I'm not a fan of soldering either. Just a smidgen too much heat for too long and the insulation may melt back where you don't notice it. Also... I have found the soldering solution when applied to fine multi-strand wires makes a very weak spot at the junction between solder and original wire. Even the slightest vibrations or cable movement will have this fragile junction fracture sometime down the line. 8¬O

Handy usenet thread for future reference though. :¬)

[www.GymRatZ.co.uk]

Doh.... just checked my drum of Cat5e and it's solid single cores.

[Dave Liquorice]

I was just about to say that "installation" CAT5e is solid core. "Patch" cable is multistrand.

As to soldering and melting back the insulation, thats just bad technique or an iron that is too hot. Occasionally you will find insualtion that shrinks back at finger temperature but not very often. Anyway each joint will be sleeved...

[Adrian C]

It's me life that the most readily available Cat5-type cable I get is Solid Core (nearest electrical wholesaler) and the most readily available RJ45 plugs are for stranded cable (Maplin). Even a carefully planed order to CPC ended up with the wrong plugs.

FWIW I've never (yet) had problems crimping and continuity testing them, but the installations are fairly static. My crimp tools (3!) are the simple squeeze afair, but I've just spotted a cheap Draper one with a ratchet on Amazon which looks worth a shot.

[Ian Jackson]

Any recommendation "to solder" obviously assumes the person being advised can actually solder!

As for an iron being "too hot", it's more likely that the soldering technique is wrong, and the solderer isn't quick enough. There's nothing worse than an iron which isn't hot enough.

[www.GymRatZ.co.uk]

:¬) I'd also agree that the iron not being hot-enough is more a problem than too hot .... touch touch remove - job done.

However trying to get 2 free ends in the right place while floating in mid-cavity either requires incredible finger deterity or the abillity to operate a soldering iron by mouth with the precision of an armless christmas card artist. There will almost certainly be pokey-out bits of either wire or solder. The abillity to solder is not the issue it's the location of the joint and the the fact there are a lot of joints that will make all except the first one or 2 extremely hard to marry up for a clean joint.