4 wire telco vs CAT5

[mrbubl]

Does CAT 3 or > a "better" signal than standard 4 wire TELCO cable? If one was to rewire from the NIB-NIC with CAT wire will their electrons travel better?

[mfreak]

Also depends on how long a run you're making..

[larry]

If it's the old red/green/yellow/black wire (not twisted as two pairs) it would be questionable for use as door bell wire. ;-)

If it is used for two phone lines (one on r/g and second on y/b) it will have a bad case of "crosstalk". You will hear conversation from the other line on the line you are using.

If you plan on adding adsl internet service, it would be best to run a cat 5 cable from the telco network interface to your computer (dsl modem). Cat 5 cable is twisted-pair and will have minimum loss and interference to the dsl signal. Place a dsl filter at the interface that feeds the telephone voice service wires (your existing rg/yb cable).

The dsl modem will "train" for the best speed it can pass thru the cable you are using, which could be 1/10 of the speed that is available at the network interface. If there are many jacks on the old cable, the extra "open-ended" cable will look like a short circuit to the RF signal that is dsl.

10/100/1000 baseT network cards are not as forgiving, if the signal has loss or distortion from the unpaired cable, they just won't communicate or will have many errors. Use cat 5 or better for computer network cabling, end-to-end, no splices or taps, not even crushed or kinked cable is allowable.

If you can get access, replace the old station cable with goof cat five cable, and pull a second cable as well if you plan on voice and data everywhere. It will serve you well for years to come, for new services like video.

-larry / dallas

[Mike Hartigan]

That's quickly becoming old school. Wireless is getting faster, more reliable, and, arguably, more secure than cable. And it's way easier to pull through walls. Granted, you'll need high quality cable to get the signal to the WAP but, once there, you're done.

[AZ Nomad]

You're out of your mind. Wireless has always been much less reliable, much slower, and much less secure than cable.

Wireless makes it possible to connect to the household LAN without ever entering the residence. Connecting to the wired lan would require breaking and entering.

Wireless is prone to signal degredation and dropouts. Wired is rock solid reliable.

Wireless is limited to 20-50mbps unless you join channels (read: expensive proprietary single manufacturer solutions). Wired networks can do gigabit with inexpensive hardware without proprietary hacks.

The only thing you got right is that wireless is easier than pulling cable through walls.

[Dave Martindale]

I believe Cat5 is good for 100 baseT, but you want Cat6 cable for gigabit Ethernet.

Dave

[Dave Martindale]

Even 100 Mbit wired Ethernet is in practice much faster than wireless if you have more than one computer.

For example, 802.11g has 54 Mbps total bandwidth to share among all users, not counting the amount that's lost to protocol overhead. When one computer is transmitting, no others can. It's like an old single-segment Ethernet using coaxial cable, or a bunch of computers wired together using a dumb hub where every computer's output is sent to every other computer, whether they care or not.

But no recently-installed 100 Mbps hardwared network is likely to have a hub on it. Instead, it will have a switch that routes packets only to the computer that is interested in receiving them. If you have a

4-port switch and 4 computers, computer A may be sending data to computer B at 100 Mbps, and computers C and D will see none of that traffic. Meanwhile, computers C and D can be talking at 100 Mbps between themselves without affecting A and B.

And, in fact, the links are 100 Mbps in each direction, so A and B may be talking at 100 Mbps both ways simultaneously, if they have traffic going both ways. The typical 4-port 100 Mbps switch actually has 800 Mbps internal bandwidth so all ports can be running in both directions at 100 Mbps without the switch being a bottleneck. If you have more than 4 computers and buy a larger switch, it will have more internal bandwidth, up to 1600 Mbps for 8 ports.

Meanwhile, wireless-G has only 54 Mbps to share among all computers no matter how many there are. And if some of the computers are far enough away that the signal rate drops down below 54 Mbps, then there is even less bandwidth available.

Dave

[mfreak]

You're crazy.. Unless by 'arguably' you mean 'freakin impossible', then I agree.. Wireless can NEVER be more secure than a hardwired connection. The only difference between wire and wireless is the physical medium. You can run the same encryption over either medium. WEP/WEP2 are easily crackable compared to SSL, no matter how strong your WEP key is.. WPA and WPA2 are a lot better but far less common, and still not up to SSL standards..

With a wired connection I'm not broadcasting my traffic to everyone within x feet, I can guarantee than nobody even knows there IS traffic unless you are physically in my house. In my neighborhood I can see a half dozen wireless networks, most using WEP, one wide open.

Not even considering the fact that the encryption scheme sucks, and that they're set up EXTREMELY insecure by default most of the time.. Just the fact that your packets are available for everyone to see makes it less secure by definition. The physical security is gone, and that's the only real difference.

[Mark Lloyd]

At first.

I notice the manuals for wireless devices normally have something about repositioning the antennas in the event of interference. This condition is more likely to get worse than to get better (increasing complexity of networks, more networks in area, etc...). You may have to reposition those devices several times a day (maybe you haven't had to YET. You never know when you'll have to). This problem is a lot less frequent with a wired network.

[Mark Lloyd]

Which is more of the total bandwidth than with wired. If you want to check it, measure ACTUAL transfer speeds.

Also, wireless can have much less bandwidth than 54M. It operates at lower speeds when the signal is weaker. Expect falloff is much lower distances than under those "ideal conditions" they use to for testing.

From what I hear, that new "n" wireless standard offers (in some cases) better speed and range, with significantly increases risk of interference. You could actually get worse instead of the better you expected.

[Mike Hartigan]

Ok, maybe I didn't think my response through before I posted it. Let me correct and qualify some of what I said.

While wireless may not be faster, more secure, or more reliable than wired, in the context of home installations, it's fast enough, secure enough, and reliable enough for virtually any application, including video. In terms of speed, a wireless LAN far exceeds any mainstream broadband connection you're likely to encounter today (that's significant if we're talking about video delivery). In terms of reliability, I assume that we're talking about error recovery (dropped packets, etc). Over the past three years or so, my $10 router has *never* reported more than zero. With regard to security

- if my neighbor is anal enough to crack my encryption so he can watch 24 without an antenna - that's his problem, not mine.

You make an interesting, almost comical observation of 'other' networks in your neighborhood. I typically see about six, one of which was unsecured, and called "Smith Family Network" (name changed to preserve Jim's reputation). And, yes, I could see his C:\\ drive, to the extent that Windows permitted. I sent a letter to him via his printer and he's since fixed it :)

My bottom l> > Wireless is getting ... arguably, more secure than cable.

[AZ Nomad]

THe problem is nonexistant with a wired network. Between the two ends of my 1600 sq. foot condo, I can only manage a little over 10mbps no matter how I arrange the antennas. Too many walls in between.

[Thomas Horne]

Mike Hartigan wrote: SNIP

I know this will sound like I'm up to no good but that really isn't the case. I have too unsecured networks in my neighborhood and I'd like to warn them before someone uses there network to do something that the Feds might take exception to. I don't need anyone breaking down doors in my neighborhood looking for criminals that were just driving by and spotted an open FIOS connection. Oh hell my son set up the wireless access for his sisters laptop on a different subnet and using the best encryption currently available to people who don't have control of Taxpayer purchased Crays. I'll just ask him to do it.

-- Tom Horne

[Mark Lloyd]

Which is, of course, less that the "common" you get with wireless. I use "less frequent" rather than "nonexistent" only to acknowledge that perfection doesn't exist.

[Mark Lloyd]

Strangely, those 2 little words, "SO FAR" get left out all the time.

Also, some people's wireless networks may work fine. Others are a continuing source of problems. Something to consider when you're thinking about setting one up.

And insignificant for anyone who has more than one computer (that's increasingly common) and wants to transfer a file from one computer to another. If this doesn't apply to you NOW, will it EVER? No one can know that.

Notice how that word is totally inappropriate most of the time. Does anyone actually want to take a shit on your computer network?

It's often business-oriented cracking now. They could want to use YOUR network to send spam for something you'd find totally offensive.

Somewhat. Although it is an observed fact (any comedy was not of my creation). BTW, since then one of those networks has been shut down. It could have been something serious.

[Mark Lloyd]

BTW, one of the networks around here (one still called "links", and with on security at all) has had it's SSID changed to "I'm so insecure!".

[Douglas Johnson]

I'm actually running gigabit Ethernet over Cat3. It's a short run, about 20' and nothing likely to interfere nearby. I made the mistake in the mid 90's of saying "10 megabits is plenty, I don't need to spend the extra money for Cat5."

Not recommended, but it works for me in this case.

-- Doug

[Dave Martindale]

What actually matters is how much the signal is distorted at the receiver, and whether it can reliably recover the data bits. You could use speaker wire or alarm cable or just about anything else if the run is short enough. But if you want to transmit gibabit data 100 m, the right cable becomes important.

I once had to connect three workstations that used "vampire tap" transceivers that mount on coax, without any coax. I jury-rigged something out of a few inches of wire, sub-D connector female sockets, and two 50-ohm resistors. It wasn't shielded and it wasn't a cable, but it had the correct DC resistance and the total length was far shorter than the wavelength of the data bits on the cable, so the AC impedance didn't matter. It worked fine, until the coax showed up several months later.

Dave

[X|n]

are easily crackable compared to SSL, no matter how strong

lol agreed.

Username: admin Password: password (or just run a lil brute forcer on it for a day~)

[dnoyeB]

are easily crackable compared to SSL, no matter how strong

Oh contrarie mon frere. WEP is more security than ethernet which has NO encryption. Of course with ethernet you need physical access. So the security question is, is it harder to gain physical access to Ethernet, or to crack WEP?!

Either way, Ethernet was not designed to be secure. Wifi more than likely was also not designed to be secure. Undoubtidly some genious decided it was a good idea to make wifi 'secure...'

Given physical access to ethernet, it becomes less secure than WEP. A corporation can not assume nobody can gain physical access.

Ethernet has no encryption.

You can have just as lame passwords in ssh if you wish. And some fool was brute forcin my sshd for years before I finally changed the port...

I run an "open" connection mostly. WEP/WPA is too much of a headache for me. My network is protected by a firewall, and any access to resources from the wifi connection must be through ssh.

I have to believe wifi was never intended to be secure. Ethernet is certainly not secure. And all wifi was designed to do is provide the same thing ethernet provides.