Ethernet Cable Strangeness

[Jim Koepke]

Maybe when you cut the cable in the middle you cut thru the one defect in the cable, quick go buy a lottery ticket.

That was one thought that came to mind.

My first check on projects like this is to test the test equipment.

Some very unpleasant things have happened when people have decided their alarms, instruments or indicators weren't telling them what they thought they should be telling them. Three Mile Island comes to mind.

jtk

[Curt Harms]

Bit of a hijack here. For those of us without expertise in things wire and networks, there may be a simple alternative - MOCA. It does require somewhat modern coax installed in a 'homerun' configuration I think. I don't know that daisy chained would work, it might. Splitters need to be capable of higher frequencies than cable systems use and this doesn't work with Satellite. Satellite systems and MOCA operate at similar frequencies so can't share a cable. I have a wired network that should transfer about 700 Mb/sec, the work involved was to buy and install 2 or more little black boxes. They have one input, one output and an RJ45 jack. Run a patch cable from the 'modem' to the RJ45 jack on one box and plug an ethernet enabled device or switch into the other box. Viola, wired ethernet network.

https://www.actiontec.com/wifihelp/w...-do-i-want-it/

[Jim Becker]

MOCA is certainly convenient as long as the home has RG6 with appropriate splitters as noted and not the older RG59 cable that's unfortunately in a lot of homes, but it's top speed is capped and not a great solution for folks who have "actual" high speed Internet...about 200gb up to 1gb. To get a MOCA connection much north of 100gb, the "latest and greatest" version of the standard AND hardware has to be used.

[Curt Harms]

I spent some time yesterday on a MoCA trade organization web site. According to that site (I didn't bookmark it) MoCA will work over RG59 cable though not as fast. I wonder if the WiFi guys used to rate Sears shopvacs. There's apparently a pretty good gap between what's claimed throughput and what it will actually do. I've seen user claims where actual Mb./sec was about 25% of what was claimed. There are numerous factors what affect the speed of WiFi. That's why I prefer wired over WiFi when practical, be it ethernet, MoCA, powerline networking, whatever. There's also security, there are a few 'kits' out there that enable someone to crack WPA2 WiFi connections.

[Jim Becker]

Yup...it's absolutely a case of "your results may vary"...

I'm all wired Ethernet here for most devices. The only exceptions are our phones/tablets and our younger daughter's SmartTV as getting a cable to her room would be a major exercise. Wireless is a mesh system with the nodes all hard wired back...it was the only way to get reliable coverage because of the nature of our home's physical structure which has 1750s, 1950s, 1980s and 2008 structural "features". Only the latter really works well with wireless. I have a node in my shop because it also doesn't pass wireless through the walls very well and that node also is hard wired back to the house and has a hard wire connection for my CNC setup.