I'm thinking of running a cable through the wall between two rooms to carry a gigabit connection between my router and NAS.
Can I simply install two wall plates and connect them with an Ethernet patch cable with the plugs cut off, or do I need to buy an uprated cable? Common sense would say that I could as the router - NAS connection uses a standard Ethernet cable. But common sense doesn't always prevail...
Total distance between the the outlets would be less than 600mm.
Generally speaking, yes you can. The only reservation would be that a patch lead may be made with stranded cable rather than the solid core CAT5E used for infrastructure wiring - so you may find it harder to get a good quality connection to the punch down terminals.
Does the router actually support Gigabit? Most just have 100mb ports...?
With Maplin doing cut lengths of Cat5e solid for a quid a meter I'd be inclined to use the right stuff to avoid any potential mishaps.
Next question, does the router really have a gigabit interface?
Sockets usually require solid core Cat5e cable which is used for installations.
Patch leads are *usually* stranded[1] - the punch down terminations are different to allow for this.
[1] Occasionally not, but these are horrid inflexible things.If you punch sockets onto stranded cable it will work - but it is liable to fail at some random point.
A good way is to go skip diving near any big office developments where there may be offcuts of installation grade cable being discarded.
Thanks, I didn't know that. I had thought I would have to buy much longer lengths.
Glad you asked. No, it doesn't, though I had checked previously and found a reference that said it did. Looks like I'm in the market for an upgrade from a Netgear N150 WNR1000 to run my FTTC broadband.
I wonder if you will need it, even with a very short line and the 80mbps max FTTC product you should just squeeze into a single 100mbps wired net connection. You might welcome gigabit for internal traffic though but that could be provided by a gigabit switch[1] with a 100mbps input from the router.
[1] I'm liking Zyxek offerings atm, cheap, dinky little metal cases and good value. Check out 5 port, 8 port and 8 port with fixed QOS priority for VOIP and streaming applications.
blimey. That's short.
The problem with te flexible cable used to go into the plugs is that its not that easy to punch down reliably onto the krones.
Electrically it would of course be fine.
Or buy a gigabit switch ..you don't need gigabit to the internet.
It's to get the network from one room to another, literally just through to the other side of the wall.
I've got an NAS box in one room for backing up my desktop that resides in another room. Two separate locations so that if anyone decides my computer is theirs they, hopefully, won't go searching elsewhere once they've found the desktop. At the moment I'm using homeplugs but transferring ~500GB tends to be a little slow.
Have you not considered just carefully drilling a hole, push a length of
20mm conduit through, flush to both surfaces and just threading a cable through?It would look perfectly neat once you'd been round the tube with polyfilla and touched up the paint.
fred, TNP, thanks for the switch suggestion. Gigabit is only for internal traffic so it looks like the way to go.
I've found the ZyXEL GS105S and also a TP-Link TL-SG1005D but am not sure which is the better. Opinions would be welcome as would suggestions for sourcing a couple of wall outlets.
I had thought of doing that. It would be much simpler, but I'm not too keen on the sight of wires poking out of walls.
Or put some sort of faceplate-with-a-hole on the wall to make it neat? That is certainly what I would do - fewer connections to make/worry about, easy to replace if anything went wrong (so long as the hole/conduit is large enough for an ethernet plug to pass through).
In a different-but-oddly-similar situation, I snaked the cable into the room behind a radiator. Effectively invisible.
That's an idea, though I'm not sure if there's a faceplate around that has a hole big enough to pass the Ethernet plug through. Anyone?
TP-Link is generally budget stuff, plastic and not that pretty.
I see your Zyxel find is plastic:
Try toolstation for outlets (modular recommend) and don't forget the proper punchdown tool (essential for a proper job), it's the same as the telecom one, TS have one under a tenner. Patches etc, just buy readymade:
Fairy-nuff...
Brush plate. but sinking boxes etc seems a lot of faff not to mention the
4 extra sets of connections to fail.I'd go with the 20mm conduit down in a hidden and thread a suitable patch cable through.
Owain
The slightly more commercially focused TP-Link stuff is not bad actually. I have used a few of their 19" rack mount gig switches and found them pretty good.
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