[CS-FSLUG] Ethernet Testing

[Tim Young]

Um.  "Nice" coax lines.  Nice..?  Hmmm...  ;)  How to speak in a 
loving manner...

Just a FYI.  I spent a number of years doing anything in my power to 
remove coaxial lines from one of the networks I managed...

Fiber.  I am sure you are talking about fiber.  One can use the word 
"nice" and apply it to fiber.

Coax, now that is a word that could use a few other adjectives 
applied to it.  Hefty-looking, thick, slow, and some words that 
should not be spoken on this email-list...  You know that Coax 
(10Base2) really only goes 10-megabit, where cat5e can do gigabit? (sigh)

Actually, I guess I could answer you by saying, "Yes, I am aware that 
you can find 10Base2 network cards lying around."  But I would not 
want to get your hopes up into thinking that coax is at all good in 
any form.

Basically, coax is not "twisted-pair".  For all that rubber and 
"shielding", coax has two wires.  One single core, and the shield on 
the outside.  That one core is very, very lousy when it comes to 
acquiring noise and sending signals.  Actually, antennas are designed 
in similar ways to coax.  Twisted-pair, for whatever reason, can get 
a signal across with much less degradation.  But that is just a small 
portion of why I nearly cried with joy when my last coax was removed 
from my network.  Coax will produce echos, will disconnect, and have 
a number of other quirky issues with it's joints.  I would need to 
make a daily circuit of my network and jiggle the coax wires until my 
network resumed working.  The term, "reliability" was not what came 
to mind.  An exercise in patience, character-building, 
faith-producing, these are all positive things to say about coax...  
Just my humble opinion.

Anyway.  The short of it is that, if you are thinking about a 
different solution to connect two buildings, a wireless link would 
probably be easier to set up if you cannot do fiber.  Buried cat5 can 
have some issues (it is a lightning hazard if you are in a lightning 
area; and you can have some really odd electrical / grounding 
issues).  Fiber and wireless are the two primary ways to get a signal 
between buildings.

     - Tim Young

On 9/5/2012 5:22 PM, Timothy Butler wrote:
> Incidentally, does anyone know a good, affordable way to use those nice coax lines to run networking? I've looked at a few options, but none looked especially promising. In theory, it seems like nicely insulated coax would be great for a long run like this...
>
> Blessings,
> Tim
>
>