[CS-FSLUG] Ethernet Testing

[Timothy Butler]

Well, I've read about some recent solutions to get near gigabit speeds over coax. Given that the cable company can bond channels on coax and get 100 Mbps or more over DOCSIS 3 and still pipe lots of QAM channels, in theory it seems like there is a lot of untapped potential there...

Now, as to whether any of it is accessible to us... :-)

I definitely don't want to go back to old style 10 Mbit coax networks of yesteryear...

Tim

On Sep 6, 2012, at 8:05 AM, Tim Young <Tim.Young at LightSys.org> wrote:

> 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
>> 
>> 
> 
> 
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