No doubt other problems will arise and I'll be seeking your help, but for the moment the cable is in but I don't have a guide on how to wire the CAT5e (to which pins) can anyone point me to one?
I've checked practicallynetworked and helmig and they discuss theory and the software side but I can't see the hard stuff explained to this detail. Would quite like to get this running this evening if poss. Belkin switch/router and Blueyonder connection to share (once a BitTorrent d/l has finished .... ;-) Anything to beware of generally (not done this before)? Thanks
Errrrrr - but will anyone be using cable (rather than wireless) in a few years time? Doubt it, myself - except in hostile (EM) environments... So why not go wireless now? It's cheap, easy and far more flexible!
Wireless networks are certainly very useful in a number of applications, but there are limitations.
- Taking gross (rather than real) bandwidths, wireless networks are in the 10 - 50Mbit range while wired is in the 100-1000 Mbit range currently.
- The current wireless technology produces a shared network, so the bandwidth is shared among all users. A cabled network can be switched and achieve higher performance. This effect can be ameliorated somewhat by increasing the density of access points and connecting them to switches but this increases the cost of course.
- There are security issues with WiFi that may be at an acceptable level for a home user but are not for business purposes without the use of additional encryption and other security techniques.
So, yes, I think that people will be using wired networks and adding wireless for a long time to come.
Not necessarily.With current technology maybe that's true, but I imagine in the years ahead the wireless options will expand and the wireless devices will be hugely more configurable.
Model aircraft don't have a problem flying together, unless some divot happens to choose the same frequency as someone else.
Don't be dumb. Bitrates on model aircfat are at best 2400 baud, and limited to about 30 channels on the band. Channels are 10Khz apart, so useable BW is les than 5Khz. You won't get 100Mbps on that.
The ONLY way to get higher BW on radio is to use ever higher frequencies
- cellphonse use 900Mhz or 1.8Ghz, WiFi is 2.4Ghz, and even then, its gettng crowded.
Waveguides - be they wire, hollow pipes, or glass fibres, allow the use of the same carriers and the full broadband spectrum without interference. They will ALWAYS be able to carry more signal with less interference than an equivalent broadcast system at similar bandwidth.
You can get at least 8 GBPS down a fiber. The best of microwave technology using large aerials and big towers and highly directional links, is a few hundred Mbps at best.
Wifi as currently constituted is a shared space collison detectieon 'Ethernet' of typically 10Mbps, up to maybe 50Mbps. Any piece of cat 5 will do 100Mbps short range and no collision problems at all if a switch is used and there is no coincidence of traffic between nodes.
You only hgave to listen to e.g. a cellphone qality versus a decent analog or digital phone over landlines, to hear the difference between a clear unobstructed 64Kbps channel and a highly contended bandwidth limiteed compressed to the nth degree and frequency spread system.
Bandwidth is always tight with radio. There is never enough space to do what you want. Sometmes its a cheap way to elimninate wires or fibers, but its never ever the BEST way for a duplex system. Broadcast? yes. It works well for TV and radio, it basically sucks with bi-directional data.
It is however, a very cheap way to work if limited performance is acceptable, and the cost of laying lines is exceptionally high, which is why half of the long haul data in this country goes via microwaves. However, these are getting congested already, and fiber is the answer - it just costs a shitload of money - mostly in terms of obtaining permission - to lay it.
If you have a chance to rewire, lay in cables, or better still, fiber.
I wnxer why we still have TV downleads. Surely we should be able to do it by wireless links :-) In fact, I wonder whay we still use any cables at all. :-) :-)
Cos they work BETTER than most other things at delivering a clean signal through and unpredictable environment.
You can get a whole lot more than that in one fibre! 100x 2.5Gbps channels (wavelength division multiplexing). Way over the top for home use. 10Gbps is probably more in the DIYer's range.
As explained in another post, there's always more effective capacity for shifting signals around if you actively guide them (through cable) than if you radiate them through free space (even if you try to do it directionally). There'll always be an economic tradeoff between fixed wiring (higher up-front cost, larger ultimate capacity, cheaper interfaces, longer-lasting infrastructure) and wireless stuff (less up-front cost, incremental cost greater, data rate limited to whatever you buy first time round). It's naive to suggest that fixed copper/fibre is going away any time soon. For home use, many may find wireless more convenient; but it's kinda self-limiting, as more and more devices crowd into that little bit of "no-license-needed" spectrum around
But it's *important* to use pairs between the right pins, or the crosstalk/interference-rejection performance goes right out of the window. You need a Proper Pair for each of the two sets of outer pins (1,2 and 7,8), a Proper Pair for the innermost pair of pins (4,5), and the last Proper Pair for the remaining pins (3,6). No, it's not intuitive. Reasons are buried in the mists of old-style telecom practice on 4-pin RJ11's (equivalent to the inner 4) and badness of separating pairs too far to carry on the "next outermost pair" pattern when you get to bigget RJ45 plugs. (No BellSystem pedants about Proper Names for RJ11/RJ45, please!).
Once you accept - as you really must - this need for keeping the pairs in order, you may as well go the whole hog and stick to exactly one of the two accepted schemes: from memory, it's blue pair for 1/2, brown pair for 7/8, and then a matter of religion (-A or -B) as to whether your green pair goes 4/5 and the orange 3/6, or t'other way round. *Functionally*, provided you pair consistently, the colours you use, and which way round you do solid vs stripe, doesn't matter at all: electrons are colour-blind. But failing to stick to exactly one of the two standard wiring schemes is pretty well guaranteed to bite a future maintainer - including yourself in a few months' time
This page shows the two T568 variants, and the point about T568-B being more common in equipment that you buy such as patch panels seems to be the case.
I am doing up my house and adding minumum of 2 points on every room. Patch panel in celler for all points. Also at least 1 sat quality coax to every room too. I can use the cat5 for phone, video (via adaptors that are available, which also allow remote control data) hard wire a link etc. All configurable and secure!
But the pairs are physicaly located in a different place in the cable. I suspect this could make a difference when really pushing the abilty of the cable to carry the signal without to much degredation.
Checked the construction of a bit of CAT5, the pairs are arranged:
As can be seen the change in the org/grn wiring is not symetrical in the cable, so a signal on the org pair is now physically closer to the brn pair, like wise more separation greater for the grn/brn.
Now ethernet (10/100Mbps, not sure about Gigabit) only uses two pairs the other two are not connected so it's probably not an issue with ethernet but could be with other uses of CAT5.
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