Anyone run Cat5 or Cat6 to their shop?

[Dave Johnson29]

While it may work, I don't recommend joining cables.

I am not convinced Paul. The cable-joiners are not better or no worse than the sockets on the patch panels and routers. Gold contacts to gold contacts.

If the environment is that noisy then fiber optics should be mandatory and the use joiners too.

I have been networking stuff longer than I care to remember. Never had a problem with cable joiners. In fact had more problems with patch panel connectors than anything. That gets expensive when you have to replace the panel for a couple of bad connectors.

[Dave Johnson29]

Trenching to my shop will be about the last step in the whole process.

I was lucky. The guy who built this house was a retired Government Electrician. He has pipes and cables everywhere and for everything. Including a 10' C-Band and 4 dish-network installations. He even piped hot water from the house to the garage!

I don't bother with TV, but the cable pipes are nice.

I am happy with the performance of the Cat-5 so see no need to try a fiber system. If it ain't broke...

My only gripe is I have not yet been able to get the win98 to access the Vista machine. I must have spent 150 hours on that. The win98 can access everyone else on the network but not the Vista. I finally gave up and use a w2000 as the go between and synch files.

win98 <-> w2000 <-> Vista

Not ideal, but if you have some suggestions I am all ears.

[paul cottingham]

I am not convinced Paul. The cable-joiners are not better or no worse than the sockets on the patch panels and routers. Gold contacts to gold contacts.

If the environment is that noisy then fiber optics should be mandatory and the use joiners too.

I have been networking stuff longer than I care to remember. Never had a problem with cable joiners. In fact had more problems with patch panel connectors than anything. That gets expensive when you have to replace the panel for a couple of bad connectors.

Like I said, you will also find people who swear that you don't need to use safety equipment either as long as you are careful. I made a good amount of money fixing up networks wired exactly as you describe. Te EIA/TIA standards exist for a reason. The issue is one of signal propagation, and joiners (and home-made patch cables, and all manner of things) really affect it, so they are expressly forbidden by the standard.

That being said, who cares? If this is just a home network, it doesn't really matter, does it? As long as it works. It just gets my dander up as an ex-cabler.

oh, and troubleshooting that kind of stuff when it fails can be a bear.

[Art Mulder]

We are heavy VMWare users where I work, that's the only reason I'd go with that. I've used VirtualPC in training and at a previous job and I think its easier to use for the casual user. I was just in a training class where we used Sun VirtualBox. I thought it was cool on Day 1. By Day 3, I hated it. Every machine in the room had it crash at least once. Some damaged the virtual machine files in the process.

I got a short fiber cable (Ebay, $5 total) for testing in the mail yesterday. I'm expecting 2 media converters (Ebay, $50 total) today. And just this morning I bought a 50M fiber cable with the pull eye (Ebay, $28 total). I'd have never considered it if it weren't for this thread.

I agree, this has been a fascinating thread to a woodworker-geek. I also had no idea that fiber had dropped so much that it was a reasonable option for home use. I'd never heard of fiber having a "pull-cable" on it, and so on.

I'm surprised at your problems with virtualbox. Was this on a PC?
I've got virtualbox on both my macs (home + work) and I use it to have a windows pc and linux pc installed right there on my mac system. I've never had it cause me any problem. But to be fair, I only use it infrequently for an hour at a time. Previously I used it on a WinXP system, with WinXP installed on virtualbox, so that I could have a "sandbox" system. I love the checkpointing. I've used that a few times to roll-back a broken/infected system to a known-good point.

However it does kind of annoy me that it is upgraded essentially weekly. Every time I launch it, it wants to be updated.

We are going to be checking out vmware at work - going to virtualize a bunch of our services. Seems like the way to go.

[Matt Meiser]

They had VirtualBox running on Server 2003. We were running a Server 2003 VM inside it. Many of them were crashing overnight. We'd leave them running and the next day as soon as you'd move the mouse VirtualBox just quit. The ones that damaged the vm files were crashes during some operation. I've never had VMWare crash on me (knock on wood.)

My media converters showed up late this afternoon. I'm posting via 1M of fiber right now. How cool is that? I totally blame Mark Beall for this.

[Mitchell Andrus]

My media converters showed up late this afternoon. I'm posting via 1M of fiber right now. How cool is that? I totally blame Mark Beall for this.

They're working.... cool. Mine are due today - but so is my mom for a 6 day visit.

What speed are you getting through the converters? ....or is the limiting factor you're provider? I had Fios in NJ (we were spoiled), here in NC it's back to DSL. On Fios, everything inside the house slowed stuff down. I have a feeling that here everything in the house will not make much difference.
.

[Matt Meiser]

The limiting factor would definitely be my provider so I haven't tested. Maybe I'll try to find a speed test utility I can run on my own network.

[Bryan Morgan]

The limiting factor would definitely be my provider so I haven't tested. Maybe I'll try to find a speed test utility I can run on my own network.

There are many free testers for this. Most require you to load a small applet on one computer and run the actual tester from another.

[Mitchell Andrus]

The limiting factor would definitely be my provider so I haven't tested. Maybe I'll try to find a speed test utility I can run on my own network.

I use this one: (to the outside world)

http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/

free.
.

[Matt Meiser]

I found one called "LAN Speed Test" on Downloads.com that is a single-file executable that does a test by writing to a network share. From my laptop with the wire unplugged, I get about 19MBPS each way (on a G network.) Wire plugged in through the fiber, wireless off 89. The 19 was the same from my shop PC over the current wireless link. I'm not sure if these numbers are accurate, but they give a good comparison. I think this is going to seriously speed up my weekly backups.

Both numbers are a LOT faster than my internet connection is capable of.

[Mark Beall]

They had VirtualBox running on Server 2003.

My media converters showed up late this afternoon. I'm posting via 1M of fiber right now. How cool is that? I totally blame Mark Beall for this.

I don't think I've been blamed for any coolness lately Glad to hear it's working for you.

mark

[Matt Meiser]

And just this morning I bought a 50M fiber cable with the pull eye (Ebay, $28 total).

Got my cable a little bit ago and tried it out. Works great and is Corning brand fiber. The gas company is assembling long lengths of main around the corner from my house and in a couple weeks they should have the main installed in front of my house and pressurized, then my gas conversion project can start and I can get my conduit in.

[Rod Upfold]

I hated putting the connectors on cat cables...



Rod

[Matt Meiser]

Same here. Getting the jacket stripped, the wires straightened and ordered properly, then crimped. Painful.

[paul cottingham]

then don't make patch cables, buy them. the crimp on ends people use for those kinds of cables are almost always for stranded cables, and most people use solid cable for them. the cables always fail if you test them with a cable certifier (not a tester.) that ought to tell you something.

Its all about frequency propagation. home made patch cables don't cut it, its the equivalent of cutting dovetails with a swede saw, it'll work, but not too well, and eventually, it'll fail.

For solid cable, attach female jacks, and use patch cables to connect them.

Just good cabling practice.