A D-link Network Storage Enclosure
Given Mr Firth claims to work in IT, a bit of a worry?
Ahh! that looks like the type of kit I need, I've just downloaded the Data sheet and Manual for later reading .
One of my computers has old but legally purchased software on it, do you know if it would be possible to load this software on to the D-Link and run it on any of the other 2 computers?
Thanks Don
There are two issues. One, whether it's physically possible and also whether the license terms permit it. Only you can answer the second question.
If you have the installation medium available it's probably possible to install the software on a second machine. If you don't then it could be very difficult. If the software predates Windows then you can probably just copy all of its files across and they will work on the new machine or on a file server. If it is a Windows application then there may be files scattered in various system directories, not to mention registry entries. Getting these right without going through a proper installation process is likely to be difficult at best and probably impossible without substantial knowledge of Windows.
You face the same problems if there is a problem with the laptop's disk. You should be able to copy the entire contents of its disk, as a disk image, to the file server.
You can get surprisingly far with cat 5/6/7 type cables and ethernet. I did some work on dropping such cables in BT ducts. You can't get anywhere near a km, 200m is quite easy. If you could get 1km BT would be delivering Gig ethernet to homes by now. The project failed, mainly because Valance said "if we put new copper into the ground instead of fibre the press would crucify us". Not everything is dropped because it wouldn't work or economics.
Apart from the many circumstances where a switch will not work there is little difference between a switch and a hub as far as functionality at level 2 is concerned. As nobody has stated where the switch is likely to fail I don't see how it has helped the OP at all. I'm not going to here as it will only confuse more people.
And then seem to misunderstand them. You're quoting maximum segment length, not maximum transmission distance which is at the simplest 2x the segment length. Also the 100 metre limit is, IIRC based on 10dB attenuation, yet at 300 metres Cat 5e has an attentuation of about 20dB and still has an acceptable BER provided that one is not looking for Gigabit performance.
FWIW, the industry that I worked in until recently uses Cat 5e for TCP/IP comms with devices spaced between 100 metres (minimum) to 2.3km maximum. For longer distances the line is split into two 1.2km segments. No, it's not gigabit but it's perfectly usable at acceptable error rates if lightly loaded.
Ethernet devices? Presumably you'll have no problem providing a reference to these devices?
More likely line drivers.
I'm quite willing to believe you can exceed the distance limit and get away with it, I've pushed 100base-T to about 120m. The ethernet spec isn't actually in terms of a distance, rather various losses across specified frequencies and from cross-talk
e.g attenuation (dB) from DC to 100MHz
I had a bit of a poke about yesterday to see who had tried exceeding the limits, this guy did some tests at 150m
With cat6, 10Mb worked perfectly, 1000Mb with very low error rate, but
100Mb had high error rate.
I'd be quite happy with VDSL.
I assumed something similar, Mr Firth's garden path seemed quite obvious ...
You have obviously never tried to use a hub when two of the other boxes on it are FTPing video files or similar to each other.
You obviously haven't tried multicasting video with the switches typically found in routers.
These look quite handy
and can't be bent in as tight a radius so that if you're fixing it down along skirting boards etc. be careful not to bend it too sharply.
Terminating blocks in wall sockets and patch panels should also be rated for Cat6 if you are picky about the quality of service but short runs at gigabit Ethernet (1000Mbps) rates will be OK even if they end up in Cat5e blocks.
Patch leads, the ones with plugs on either end are used to connect computers to switches and broadband routers. Cat6-rated patch leads don't cost much more than Cat5e patch leads and it's worth spending the money for the better-specced leads.
For short distances Cisco 2950s but also some cheap Chinese clones used to connect devices over approximately 100-300 metres configured to half duplex. The QoS settings limit the bandwidth to 1Mb/s but that's done to restrict the upstream load. Physical restrictions mean that the shortest cabling run possible is 200ft but geography adds to that with a typical run being 440ft. Switches are positioned to service four devices at approximately equal distances. For the longer distances Cisco 2950 LREs.
I'm told that the CRC failures are "acceptable" and certainly the devices attached work perfectly well. The only place that I'm aware of any problems is where a railway line ran parallel to the cable and caused massive induced voltage spikes.
LRE was a cisco proprietary ethernet-like protocol never an IEEE Ethernet standard.
I don't see how you can claim this counts as "being rated" above 100m, using only 0.5% of the bandwidth and accepting the consequent errors is well into "pushing your luck" territory, no problem with that provided the user is aware, but they could hardly have raised a support call with Cisco if it had stopped working could they?
Hopefully no safety critical data involved?
No provider of Ethernet kit is going to be interested at all if the first thing you do is tell them you're running stuff out of spec.
Ethernet is like a sausage: you can squeeze it here to get a better performance of some aspect but it will pop out there. And once you do that, the behaviour is *unpredictable*, in general. You can squeeze the sausage but you better know what you're doing.
Dunno about you but I doubt most homes have the four separate fast devices necessary for this to be a problem.
Andy
Well, LRE was only used for the kilometre+ segments. I can't recall for the life of me who suggested that ethernet could be pushed to 175metre segments but it worked, total length 350 metres as previously stated.
Umm well, you see, like umm. That's a statement that I couldn't entirely make with a clear conscience. So I won't.
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