Terminology

[Andy Burns]

We're talking cat6 here, my drum has a plastic 'X' at the core keeping the pairs apart ...

[Harry Bloomfield]

Bob Eager laid this down on his screen :

I paid around £6 for mine ebay, from China, complete with crimper and a bag of plugs. It has sockets for two plug sizes in each unit. Just a two speed on switch on the larger unit, it then cycle through each core showing a sequential lit LED, on both units. It checks for shorted cores, open cores and the correct cores used at each end in a couple of seconds. You just need to check the LED's run through in the correct sequence at both ends. It takes a PP3

I couldn't make one for what it cost, though before I spotted it, I was thinking to design one.

[Bob Eager]

But not when I made mine!

[Terry Casey]

We used to use those labels in large numbers but we didn't have a apecial pen!

My approach was to create an Excel template with the cells required for each label outlined, thus making it easy to cut them to size.

All the idents were entered which Excel automatically propagated down each pair of labels - thee times to each label

- and the sheet was laser printed before going to site.

A blank label were placed on the cable and the paper insert placed over the white section as the plastic label was wound over the top.

The result was a clear, well protected, non-fade label, clearly legible from any angle.

[tabbypurr]

last time I looked cat5e delivered as much data rate as cat6, and is much easier to work with. Has that changed since then?

NT

[Tim Watts]

Cat6 can do 10gig and Cat6a can do it over longer distances (and is actually certified to do so).

[Andy Burns]

Not very much ... you can do 10Mb, 100Mb, 1Gb, 2.5Gb or 5Gb ethernet over 100m of cat5e, if you want 10Gb you need cat6 and are limited to about half the cable length, but I've always used fibre for 10Gb.

But AIUI, the cable is already installed.

[Tim Lamb]

Yes. At the time of purchase, I had not appreciated the connection downsides. I suppose future proofing can be claimed but was not included in the decision:-)

[T i m]

If only you could redirect the cable that currently goes study to A's cupboard to study to lounge cupboard you would have a pretty stock star (the cable between cupboards would still work / apply).

Any chance ... even if the cable needed to be joined / extended in the loft to be long enough?

The reason I still ask is because the only real 'cabled' connection you might need is the one between the lounge and the study (for the PC). I say 'might' is you could probably get away with a WiFi card in the PC or the router on the study and be directly connected and everything else WiFi?

Not suggesting you don't carry on with the bounded networking, just that it can be de-prioritised (for now at least)?

Cheers, T i m

[Tim Lamb]

In message [e-mail], T i m [e-mail]> writes

Too late to pull it back! That cupboard is now boarded shut and the cable clipped neatly around the timbering.

We could cut and joint it to a fresh length in the loft.

I have a switch to send the signal on to the study.

If CPC get their 3-5 day act together, I can do the terminations Monday.

[T i m]

<snip>

Ok. ;-(

Ok, so do you still have access to the lounge cupboard cabling?

Not sure if you can get a Cat6e punch down type connector but if the loft access is ok I'm pretty sure a soldered / sleeved connection would be good enough for your data needs.

I know. However, I'd still prefer to do it the 'right' way, even if it means a bit more work. It would make much more sense to know that the lounge cupboard was the hub for all your networking. With a patch cable connecting the two sockets on A's cupboard you would have the same thing functionally, just not as 'neat' or flexible a solution.

Cool. ;-)

Cheers, T i m

[Tim Lamb]

In message [e-mail], T i m [e-mail]> writes

Yes. Loft access is now impeded by a pair of very heavy bunk beds but not impossible. Surely the second switch will be needed anyway for fixed equipment. PC, TV?

Google says cat6 in line couplers are two a penny!

[T i m]

<snips>

Ok.

Yes, IF they are present and don't work equally well on WiFi. Even then, it would be 'better' to have the study link as a straight star off your central point rather than *having* to take it though another switch. The second switch fails, you lose Internet in the study for example. You can still have the second switch in A's cupboard, as / when you need more than one wired device there (which could be straight away etc).

Inline that require RJ45 plugs crimping on (and we don't do that do we <g>) and even more mechanical connections in the line to possibly oxidise / fail? ;-(

I've ordered a couple of Cat6 punch down in-line junctions boxes. ;-)

Cheers, T i m

[Tim Lamb]

In message [e-mail]>, Jim K.. [e-mail] writes

This is rural Hertfordshire not the Canaries.

[T i m]

<snip>

I was at Tims chatting a while back and he mused that 'If you drove round this estate it would take you all day'.

I said, 'Yeah, I had a car like that once ...' <boom tish>. ;-)

Seriously though, I would love the space Tim has there [1] and would happily live in his smallest shed. ;-)

Cheers, T i m

[1] Or would when I was younger and the kids were growing up. A place for them to ride off road bikes, learn to drive in the Landy etc. ;-)

[Dave Liquorice]

+1

My gut feeling is that linking all the drain wires together would be a "bad thing". I suspect that you ought to use a patch panel designed for STP cable rather than UTP as this would accomodate the drain in the correct manner.

TBH Cat6 STP seems decidedly overkill for a demoestic installtion. Cat5e UTP will do gigabit. Want anything faster use fibre...

[T i m]

This was my question / concern Dave. As I mentioned elsewhere, when I installed an office full of Cat5e STP points, as you say, all the earthling was done at one end in the patch panel (I think). We also used STP patch leads to the 'STP Switch' etc.

I believe Tim was guided by some advice given (here?) at the time and / or what the electrician ran in (unconventionally, semi-ring rather than star) and using whatever cable was deemed to be the most 'future proofed' at the time?

I have dealt with Cat6 before, via a mate who has a fairly big distributed video / network system in his house but found the cable pretty 'awkward to handle. I've also had to replace a hand made Cat6 patch cable (solid conductors) with a production Cat5e one (stranded cable) because one of the directly-crimped RJ45 connections became intermittent then failed.

Now Googling about I think I found Cat6e cable may all be screen so not an *option* to go STP over UTP as with Cat5e etc? <shrug>

I'm also not sure what the consequences are of using screened cable in a non screened environment (and hence why I think Tim was thinking of earthling the screens rather than leaving them floating etc).

I've not played with much of that outside my BT training at Martlesham Heath and some short inter-server duplexing links. ;-)

I have a mix of Cat3 and 5 / 5e here and most of the infrastructure kit is Gb.

I actually started with flood wired Thin Ethernet with some short sections of 4M Token Ring and some Arcnet (mainly for play when I was an CNI).

Most of it is accessible as to me, that was more important than having everything invisible, especially when it comes to upgrading or adding a new service / technology.

Cheers, T i m

[tabbypurr]

Yup. But 10M seemed like wild overkill in the 80s, no-one wants a mere 10M now.

NT

[Dave Liquorice]

10 Mbps is 3 Mbps above our ADSL2+ sync speed (throughput is slower...).

Have several Pi's and other systems that are 10 Mbps without problem.

Gigabit is going to be fast enough for quite a while IMHO. How many people routinely shift so much data about their LAN that 10G is required. Video streaming is the biggest consumer of data but who has sources that would saturate 100 Mbps let alone 1 Gbps... And what sources are on the horizon that could?

[The Natural Philosopher]

On 05/01/2019 23:15, Dave Liquorice wrote: who has

All of us do.

If you transfer a video across your home lan to e.g. put it on the laptop for viewing on holiday you will wish you had 1Gbps so it only took 32 seconds instead of 5 minutes per video

see above.