Wiring a CAT5e home network

[Dave Liquorice]

There is a lot of information on that page, which bit are you worried about? The T568A/B colours are correct.

[The Natural Philosopher]

You misunderstand. I didn;t say maxiumum fiber bandwidth, I said maximum uK internet bandwidth.

Last time I talked to the ISP's it was a couble of 100Mbps peering links between ISP's in Telehouse etc. I think its getting to be fibers now, but they aren't running their internationals much more than a few hundred Mbps at the moment AFAIK.

[The Natural Philosopher]

AFAICR the center pairs are Ethernet. 4/5 and 3/6. These must be pairs, and must be wired pin to pin etc. The outers are used for telephony in structured systems.

I have used all of them to get a serial signal around - Cisco routers come with RJ45 serial consoles for example.

[Fishter]

Fingers faster than brain ;-)

[Fishter]

And Again! I meant to write 1Gbps (with Gigabit Ethernet).

[Andy Hall]

No I knew what you meant .

The operational internet bandwidth is also considerably more than 10G today for direct transAtlantic links, and if you count bandwidth accessible via peerings to locations elswhere in Europe, even more than that.

Of course the effect that an individual user might see will depend on the destination addresses of given accesses. It will also depend on the transit and peering agreements that the ISP has. In the earlier days of the internet when most capacity was provided by research and academic organisations, routes were determined predominantly on technical "cost" and merit of the routes. Nowadays there is a considerable commercial factor based on peering and transit agreements that determines which routes and capacity are available to given ISPs.

.andy

To email, substitute .nospam with .gl

[Martin]

Haven't come across this before. Can you say a little more about video via Cat 5, please? What adaptors? Where / price? Or a URL?

TIA

[BigWallop]

Eh !!!! You haven't heard of it ? You want to buy a system ? :-))

Seriuosly though, it's been available for many years.

[stefek.zaba]

Baluns, for feeding the 300MHz baseband video signal over twsited-pair. Canford Audio will happily add to your debt burden at about 80 quid a pop (you need a pair, so that's 160 quid; probably plus VAT). Canford Cat not to hand, so price is ballpark from memory. In the spirit of uk.d-i-y, someone (Mr Liquorice, mayhap) may soon be along to tell you exactly which pair of transformer-looking-affairs from the guts of a 45-quid Asda video recorder would perform almost as well ;-)

HTH, Stefek

[AWM]

Just go along to B&Q and buy a home network cabling starter kit -- all cabling bits and tools you need plus decent instruction -- Screwfix and Maplin do similar kits but B&Q are on special offer and they also throw in a free mouse.

[BigWallop]

Is the mouse trained to pull the cable under the floor ? :-))

(so sorry, I'm just being silly. I'll get me coat)

[Dave Liquorice]

Not me squire. I can't see why a video recorder would need video baluns to start with. However on Canford...

They have a range available:

2 x audio =A376.94 4 x audio =A3117.50 1 x video =A336.63 3 x video =A3108.30 1 x video, 2 x audio =A377.85 2 x video, 2 x audio =A392.24 1 x S video, 2 x audio =A3130.70

All above sold as single units, two required to complete a link.

1 x VGA to 1 monitor =A3252.00 1 x VGA to 2 monitors =A3396.20

As a set of send and receive units, inc PSU for the 2 monitor version.

Distances & Bandwidth:

Audio: 750m (10Hz to 20kHz) Video, composite: 675m (DC to 60MHz) Video, Y/C: 600m (Flat to 60MHz) Video, RGB: 150m (Flat to 60MHz) Video, VGA: 105m (Flat to 60MHz) Video, Broadband: variable 200 to 55m (20MHz to 850MHz)

Prices plus delivery and VAT.

[Dave Liquorice]

Nope... The TLC site is broken unless you have a windoze browser, can't be arsed to find the window box.

But anyway the wiring of pairs for ethernet is on that networking information page. ISTR from last night that it's 3/6 and one of the outer ones 7/8 or 1/2 (7/8 rings the bigger bell).

[Stephen Gower]

A technical paper entitled "Non-Data Applications for Category 5 Cable" might be of interest:

[John Rumm]

See the bottom of the page for a krone tool with cutter:

[John Rumm]

This is another site for all things cable, connector, wiring, and pinouts:-

[Dave Liquorice]

day. At least I now know the pins to use if not the cores in the cable...

[Martin]

Will think about that, thanks, but by all means send me one for "field trials". I'll then report back in a couple of years ;-)

Thanks, Pillow Bag and Stephen.

I hadn't stopped to think about the word "video". Have I understood the links correctly in thinking that squirting the (analogue) video o/p from my VCR to a tv via Cat5E is not really feasible?

[stefek.zaba]

It's feasible technically, but the price of the necessary kit is (well) over the top. There's nothing deeply, inherently exotic about the kit, it's little more than a couple of well-built specialist miniature transformers. But they're made in small quantities and used only in "professional"/commerical/industrial situations (where there happens to be a ton of Cat5e already installed) that it's much more cost-effective, for domestic video distribution, to put in a couple of lengths of decent-quality coax, which domestic kit is all set up to feed. If you already have the Cat5e in place, can't face recabling, and fancy a go - by all means spend the money...

Hope that helps - Stefek

[BigWallop]

You can use UTP CAT5 Cable through the SCART connections to transfer video and sound from any other appropriate outputs on other appliances. It is more convenient than running separate coaxial and data cabling if you want to use remote switching of receiver boxes and things, but, as you have already quest, the appliances have to be compatible with each other to make it work fully.

It's also possible to take the output for the Audio and PC monitor, PS/2 or S-Video output to the SCART socket over UTP CAT5 Cable if you want to show DVD's from the PC and save yourself buying a separate player for under the Tele'.