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Coaxial Cable Networking

R

Robotoer

Member
Does anyone know anything about Coaxial Cable networking? My house has a coaxial cable outlet in every room, but how do you network with it?
 
If it is standard television coaxial cable, it's not designed for networking and you won't be able to set up a network with it unless you use expensive, proprietary, and hard-to-find equipment designed for it like this: http://www.tomsnetworking.com/Reviews-139-ProdID-CABLELAN.php.

If you DO set up a network with that cabling, the best you can possibly hope for is 5Mbps throughput speeds (standard ethernet is 100Mbps), and you'll also need special filters if you're using this cabling along with a cable modem. Also, if you use the cables for networking, you will not be able to use them for Cable or Satellite TV at the same time.
 
Actually you can run ethernet just fine. Its how we used to do it.

Only problem would be finding cards with a coax ethernet port.

Its a bus technology so you'd have to figure out a way to get a continuous coax cable running between the computers.

Or use a product like the one posted above.

As an aside, coaxial cable is much higher bandwidth than twisted pair and makes for an excellent network cable. It is still used in high speed applications today - T3.
 
Originally posted by: spidey07
Actually you can run ethernet just fine. Its how we used to do it.

Only problem would be finding cards with a coax ethernet port.

Its a bus technology so you'd have to figure out a way to get a continuous coax cable running between the computers.

Or use a product like the one posted above.

As an aside, coaxial cable is much higher bandwidth than twisted pair and makes for an excellent network cable. It is still used in high speed applications today - T3.
Click to expand...
^^^^^^^^ What he said...

However, you're getting into a tech that's old and not really supported anymore. Besides, you wouldn't be able to use the coax in the walls since, as Spidey07 said, it's a bus topology, not a star topology.

Ahhh, the days of 10Base2 and 10Base5...
 
Originally posted by: Robotoer
Does anyone know anything about Coaxial Cable networking? My house has a coaxial cable outlet in every room, but how do you network with it?
Click to expand...

Short answer: You don't - it's not designed for computer network use.

Longer answer: Same as above. As others have already pointed out, the jacks in your house are designed for use with a cable TV system. Although devices do exist to try to make use of this system, you'd be better off with either a twisted pair solution or better yet a wireless solution if pulling network cables isn't a viable option.

However, if you're still insistent on using the old coax, then take a look at the following link for some excellent info on coax cabling:

http://www.epanorama.net/documents/wiring/coaxcable.html

I really think you're wasting time trying to go back to coax technology. Back in the original "Doom" days, it was certainly cheaper to network computers with coax than to use Twisted-Pair, but thankfully times have changed for the better.
 
Robotoer, the coax cable that is in your house is likely TV cable, that is, RG59 or RG6. Both of these cables have a characteristic impedence of about 75ohms. 10Base2 / thin Ethernet uses RG58CU, which has a characteristic impedence of about 50ohms. That is to say, there is an important electrical difference between TV coax cable and thin Ethernet coax cable, and equipment intended to be used for one will not work with the other.

You can verify the cable type by looking at the markings on the jacket of the cable. Look for RG<x>, and likely values are 58, 59, or 6.

If your cable is in fact RG58CU, then hit Ebay for thinwire Ethernet products. In particular, I would suggest you try to find 10BaseT<->10Base2 transcievers, if such beasts exist.
 
It's not worth trying to make it work, okay? Guess, I need not say much more since other experts here have responded to ya!

If you still want to give it a go, post again and I'll see if I can help, okay?
 
If you can find some old (~16 years or so) Orchid or AST net cards .... you'll get a solid one megabit using baseband over 75ohm coax.

It tolerates taps & splices pretty well ...

I put in hundreds of 'em back in the day.

You could try Arcnet too, but it really wants to talk on RG62 (92ohm). It's also one meg, but it's a Token-Passing protocol ...

Unfortunately, to use either, you'll also need to fall back to DOS ~2.x so the drivers will work and you'd need s device to do the protocol & media conversion to TCP/IP and Ethernet.


Maybe wireless?


FWIW

Scott

 
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