Exterior CAT 5

[Doki]

Does anyone flog exterior grade CAT5 or if I want it outside the building do I have to put it in trunking? Want to link up two rooms above each other but I'd rather not be chasing out walls etc.

[Christian McArdle]

I had a similar situation at my mother's house. I just slung standard Cat5e out the window. This was about 5 years ago. It still works, but is not in use and I must get round to removing it. These days I just use Wifi (and hence swear a lot).

Christian.

[Andy Hall]

One trick, if this is near a corner of the building, is to get a length of matching drain pipe and use that as a duct. It doesn't look out of place....

[Andy Hall]

Why's that?

[Doki]

Probably because it tends to go fucklag. Think it depends on the quality of the clobber you're using, whether your neighbours are using it and how your house is built (ie, anything metallic blocking signal).

[Andy Hall]

Not in my experience.

That's a big part of it.

to some extent

agreed. It's not as plug and play as manufacturers would have you believe.

I've used Cisco stuff, multiple access points in order to create reasonably even signal distribution, and avoid picking channels that neighbours are using. There is only one close enough to be received.

This neighbour is not the sharpest knife in the drawer and has left his access point set to factory defaults.

[TheScullster]

I know it sounds old hat, but I am still an advocate of wired networks. Max real speed of wireless AIUI is high 30s in Mbits for a top spec setup (overheads like encryption and transfer protocols are significant) Rreal speed for wired 100 Mbit network about 80Mbits. Obviously all this is dependent on component quality, switches or hubs, etc. Also it's far harder for someone to hijack and use a wired internet connection either for their own surfing, spamming or maliciously.

Phil

[Christian McArdle]

I wish. I can get 15 or 20 at times.

Christian.

[Andy Hall]

What proportion have no security turned on?

I recently took a train ride from Wokingham to Waterloo and turned on a tool on my MacBook which listens for Wifi signals, logging the channel, strength and security type.

I recorded over 400 access points (none for more than a few seconds from a moving train of course, even at the speeds that SWT manages) and

150 or so had no security turned on. Of course, they all have names like Belkin and Netgear etc. No real surprise.

[Christian McArdle]

I'd guess between about a quarter to a third.

Christian.

[The Medway Handyman]

I had a Belkin router, alledgedly linking a laptop in the upstairs front room with a PC in the rear downstairs room in a 3 bedroom semi.

Only way it worked was to carry the laptop halfway down the stairs. So much for the advertised 300 metre range.

Wires rule!

[Andy Hall]

or Belkin stuff is crap?

[Doki]

Don't be stupid! They gold plate cables and EVERYTHING you know!

[Rumble]

Doki said the following on 27/07/2006 14:22:

to name but three...

? (see product C5ED)

oh, and here's another:

[OldBill]

Theres a young guy in a neighboring house here uses an unsecured wifi link most nights to access the internet. He surely must wonder where all his speed has gone when I latch onto it with my laptop and start downloading big stuff. Yes, I do have my own broadband, but its fun to tease the young. Alas he isn't sharing any files ... :-)

[Andrew Gabriel]

One night I get a knock at the door -- my neighbour. We both work in computing. He had been downloading some large software packages, and much to his surprise, they downloaded much faster than they should have. He went upstairs to look at his wireless router, only to discover it was switched off as something had knocked the plug out. He was assuming he'd gone out over my one instead, and was apologising. However, I don't use wireless, so it was someone else's broadband. I enabled the wireless in my laptop, and also found I could get a link, and made an ssh connection back into my system. This enabled me to see it was going out through someone's unprotected NTL connection.

A previous company I worked for decided to install a wireless infrastructure in the office. In their usual way, they decided you could only use wireless in the office if you got approval from your manager, HR, Finance Director, IT Director, and probably a few more people I've forgotten. Only a couple of days after I pointed out how stupid this was, the company on the floor above put in a completely open wireless infrastructure, which solved that problem;-)

[dmc]

Reading this reminds me of

you ought to try to latch him onto yours and do something similar :)

Back on subject, I've got some normal UTP running down the backwall of our house - full sun in the morning but still works fine a couple of years on. It can still hold it's own at 100MBit and was running fine at GBit last summer. It doesn't appear to be getting brittle or falling apart yet...

Darren