Here's one for ya... CAT 5

[dmurray14]

OK,

Here's something that I've been wondering for a while. If I remember correctly, ethernet uses only 4 of the 8 wires available on a CAT5 wire. Telephone uses 2 per line. Say I have CAT5 run all through the house for telephone, with two lines - 4 of the 8 wires are used. Is there any way to use the other 4 for ethernet to one computer? This would be a big help if so.

Thanks,
Dan

 

[JackMDS]

Sure you would have very clean and nice Telephone line.

The network only will get wacky every time the phone is used, and when the phone rings and all of this Voltage Spikes are running in the wires. Oh Boy I do not want to be an electron in the Network.

In other words do not do it.

 

[rw120555]

Just as a matter of curiousity, what are the extra 4 wires for? Some future use, or some use that never materialized? Or is it for an alternative use, e.g. you want to use cat5 for either phone or network but not both?

Would cat6 be ok to use for both phone and network?

 

[dmurray14]

Hmm...thats no fun.

Oh well, guess I'll have to find a way to run another cable.

 

[AWEstun]

Originally posted by: rw120555
Just as a matter of curiousity, what are the extra 4 wires for? Some future use, or some use that never materialized? Or is it for an alternative use, e.g. you want to use cat5 for either phone or network but not both?

Would cat6 be ok to use for both phone and network?

You dont' want to mix phone and network in the same cable.

shelbY

 

[Rwalter63]

Dan


Your phone lines really only use two wires inside CAT5. When you are wiring your network you should be wiring to either of the two standards, 568A or 568B. Either way the only to wires are used for the telephone lines are pins 4 and 5 in a standard 8 wire jack. So technically you could split off the the wires, and run phone and a network on a single cat 5 cable, but I would not do it because of the potential for crosstalk between the strands in the cable. The cost of Cat5 being so cheap just run another strand. If it requires ripping up walls I would recommend a wireless lan, either 802.11b or g should be fast enough for most home applications. If your only using the network to share an internet connection you slowest connection speed will always be your limiting factor, that being your internet connection. DSL/Cable speeds for most everyone are usually under 1.5 mb/sec and dialup are only 56k.

 

[Fatt]

A & B are termination types. Color sequence. As in crossover being A on one end and B on another.

Anyway, there are terminations you can buy that use all 8 lines for two ethernet connections in one "pipe"

Or you can make it yourself. Problem is that the more wire you untwist the more NEXT and FEXT you get.

Cat 5 is also used as a serial cable on a lot of the mid to high end cisco equipment. You just get different hoods and make what you need.

 

[ScottMac]

The use of Category-rated cable in a structured cabling system is to acommodate a variety of applications, not just data networking.

Structured cabling systems can be used for everything from video and audio down to serial (RS232, etc) connections.

High-speed data transmission would be degraded by adding other signalling in the same cable.

Can you do it, yeah, sure ... it's your cable, you can use it to wire a lamp if you want (!!NOT RECOMMENDED!!), but there's a trade-off in performance and reliability. Some of the ugliest bugs to shoot in a network involve improper cable usage/out-of-spec/bad termination. They're glitchy, intermittent, mess-with-your-head kinda bugs. The only bug that approaches "bad wire" for PITA is power problems (noisy, glitchy, power spike/dip, overloaded circuits, crappy grounding ...).

You're gonna have to trust me / (some of) us on this: it's way up there on the "Bad Thing" list. The actual Category rating on the cable doesn't matter - when you are that far out of spec, it's just so much plastic-coated copper, there is no rating. Ignore the 'I did it, no problem' crowd: with rare exception they're ignorant of proper cabling techniques and have no actual idea of what their real network performance is.

JM.02 / FWIW

Scott

 

[dmurray14]

OK, sounds good. I'm stuck running another network cable, then, and its going to be a PITA, but worth it. I already have a wireless network in place but I'd rather have a physical connection for this computer, as I need the improved speed of the wired network.

Thanks for your help!

 

[dmcowen674]

Hmmm, no one mentioned Networking over the phone line.

http://www.homepna.org/

As everyone pointed out Horizontal frequency sharing doesn't work because of crosstalk in the human hearing frequency band. However once you go above 3500 Hz (Vertical Frequency splitting) it's a whole new ballgame. Voice, DSL and Networking can all share a single pair of copper wires.

 

[rw120555]

Homepna (at least not yet) won't give him the improved speed he wants. Assuming he has good wireless reception, it would probably only work about as well as his current wireless setup.

If you're not in a mad rush and don't want to run more cable, you might wait for hpna 3.0 to come out -- when/if it does, it is supposed to match or exceed wired network speeds. (I just switched from homepna to wired ethernet, which is an almost sure sign that hpna will soon vastly improve!)

 

[Garion]

Originally posted by: dmurray14
OK, sounds good. I'm stuck running another network cable, then, and its going to be a PITA, but worth it. I already have a wireless network in place but I'd rather have a physical connection for this computer, as I need the improved speed of the wired network.

Thanks for your help!

If you already have one network cable and need another computer at the same location, go pick up a cheapo switch. You can get 'em for $20ish if you look on the Internet (pricwatch is your friend!). Total for that and a couple of new cables should run you under $25 with no extra cables to run. Just make sure that one of the two switches on the ends of the cable have an uplnk port or you'll have to re-wire what you have to be a crossover, not a straight through.

- G