Wifi better than cat 5 ????

[AntiNazi]

Originally Posted by croak5

Look, I'm not a dolt, I just haven't comited my life to networks, Thats why I'm ask questions from people who have, like yourself

1) ((its twisted pair for a reason...)) Reply:

asuming you're right I'm surprised it works at all In other words I haven'y a clue why pairs are twisted in the first place...sheild each other or somthing...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_5_cable
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twisted_pair
second one has the answer in the beginning of the article. It generally works to some extent if you just color match, sometimes totally fine, sometimes like ****.

3) ((the signal quality drops at your inline junction)) Reply: why? How much % wise (significant)?
any kind of connector is going to drop the signal quality, % is going to be totally dependent on the quality of parts and assembly. My personal experience with them seems to be that they work fine sometimes/for a while and then just **** the bed, so personally I avoid them at all costs, though I have successfully used one in the past. In any case I wouldn't expect it to drop the quality to your levels if its working properly.

3) ((it would seem obvious that the signal drops gradually over the length of the cable)) Reply:

a)Sure it's obvious,conventional wisdom. But it's also conventional wisdom to me that a single little 1 inch long long juction (assuming good conection) along the lenght of a 100+8 ft cable could make spit of difference. so...Why would it?
you got this one, its solely dependent on the connections, and you will lose some quality through every connection, its just a question of how much. Being that it is digital you have a lose a fair amount of quality before it becomes and issue, but I would say its within the realm of possibility if you have enough little things wrong.
3) What would make it suddenly drop at 100m? Again, defies conventional wisdom. But so does a little junction being such a problem.

So to does the theroy of the twisteded pairs. If anything, conventional wisdom would say twisting long lengthes of wire into ropes requires each strand to be significantly longer that the sum of the whole, thus longer wire (s), more signal drop of. How could that be obviously better?
see #1, someone with more knowledge of electronics than me or you came up with it.

Another defiance of conventional wisdom: Another seemly knowladgablel guy on another forum was down on junctions but said keystones were fine. Keystones have raw wires splayed all over whereas junctions don't. Your take?
With a keystone its really more like a replacement end connector, you use it rather than an rj-45. To use a keystone and then add another cable is what, 3 connections (one for each cable+end connector, 1 to connect the 2 connectors), The inline junction is 4 plus some magic inside that you can't see. I think the real reason though is that it's a) easier to setup punch block style connectors if you have the tools, and b) you can more accurately tell if you have a good connection.

I have zero doubt there are good reasons to all this stuff but, at face value, they do infact defi conventional wisdom. Thats why my question may seem lame... right now it's sort of voodoo.


...(I've known plenty of twisted pairs, they all ended in divorce)

Croak

You want to know what I would do personally? Find a known working cable of shorter length, move the cabled machine to where ever the other end of the long cable is, and try it to see if you get better performance. Make sure you are not chasing a ghost.

[Jason]

I was about to suggest the same thing. Move the PC closer using a known good cable. If your speed is the same, then perhaps it's your PC (try updating your network drivers), or a misconfiguration of the network settings, or even an incompability between the brand of networking chips. There was an article a while back where a company tested different brands of NICs to see how throughput compared against each other. Obviously using the same brand on both ends typically yielded the best results, but there a couple instances where two different brands just had awful awful performance. Whether it was software or hardware was not really mentioned in the article. People (including me) would expect any brand nic to work 100% with any other brand device you plug it into, but that isn't always the case (unfortunatly).

Anyhow... if the speed picks up with the short run, then obviously something is wrong with your long cable / connection. Or you are getting interference somewhere along the run creating errors and degrading performance.

Lastly, remember with wireless you are going to be sharing the overall bandwidth with the more wireless devices you have on your network.

[croak5]

Originally Posted by AntiNazi

You want to know what I would do personally? Find a known working cable of shorter length, move the cabled machine to where ever the other end of the long cable is, and try it to see if you get better performance. Make sure you are not chasing a ghost.

Not a bad thought except that my current rig is a raw mother board sitting on my desk suround by drive's, psu, monitor etc... not very portable. PLus, where it sits now is where it's going to have ultimaely perform.

After considering everything I've gleaned I think my best bet is to replace my homade cat5 cable with a store bought cat 6 cable and try to stretch (no splices) from router to the jack on my board. If I can do that I'll just live with it.

Thanks again,

Croak

Additional Comment:

Originally Posted by Jason

I was about to suggest the same thing. Move the PC closer using a known good cable. If your speed is the same, then perhaps it's your PC (try updating your network drivers), or a misconfiguration of the network settings, or even an incompability between the brand of networking chips. There was an article a while back where a company tested different brands of NICs to see how throughput compared against each other. Obviously using the same brand on both ends typically yielded the best results, but there a couple instances where two different brands just had awful awful performance. Whether it was software or hardware was not really mentioned in the article. People (including me) would expect any brand nic to work 100% with any other brand device you plug it into, but that isn't always the case (unfortunatly).

Anyhow... if the speed picks up with the short run, then obviously something is wrong with your long cable / connection. Or you are getting interference somewhere along the run creating errors and degrading performance.

Lastly, remember with wireless you are going to be sharing the overall bandwidth with the more wireless devices you have on your network.

Thanks,

In short, the differrence between the speed hard wired rig and that of my adjacent wifi is rig not huge (5-10%) slower (for wired). but I just can't fathom it being slower. I expected it to be 10-15% or so faster.

Anyway, Drivers are pretty up to date, 5 months old. U.S robotics (my router an wifi card) has generaly served me well in compatablity, In fact the fastest (albeit closer) computer on the wifi net is a ...um..well not USR . In fact I've run 4 diferent brands of wifi cards, without many problems.

As for interference, the sigal from wifi goes through 6 or 7 walls. right past a big refrigerator and terminates at router a few feet from a wirles phone.

THe cable follows roughly the same path, but runs through the a basicaly empty attic: the only potential intereference that I see is electrical wireing (in galvanized conduit), cables for the Sat TV, and the HVAC (that hardly ever is on.

I've got a store bought 100' cat 6 cable that I just need to repplace my home made cat5 and if I can, eliminat my junction.

Thanks Croak

[ZJChaser]

Originally Posted by Steve

In response to onioneater36 and croak 5,

586 A is prevalent in residential and 586 B is the standard for commercial applications for the most part.
Ether standard can be used but must not be mixed, I do all my work in B unless the customer or plan requests A witch I have found they almost never do.
The main objective is to not untwist the pairs more than 1/2", I try not to go more than 3/8". That includes keystones.

Steve

agreed, I actually wire data in B and voice in A when doing commercial installs(use cat5e and RJ45s for voice). "A" pairs up with the blue/orange/green/brown standard pattern on the 66 blocks.

I have noticed as well that most purchased patch cables are in A so I tend to make most patch cable A as well.

I actually don't make nearly as many patch cable as I used to since they are made in many more prefereable lengths than they used to be it seems and are dirt cheap.

Originally Posted by croak5

I've got a store bought 100' cat 6 cable that I just need to repplace my home made cat5 and if I can, eliminat my junction.

Thanks Croak

If you don't mind out of curiosity what did you pay for that cable?

[ether.real]

Not so much anymore....cost of copper is driving up the price of ethernet lately, it seems....

[croak5]

Originally Posted by ZJChaser

agreed, I actually wire data in B and voice in A when doing commercial installs(use cat5e and RJ45s for voice). ....

I actually don't make nearly as many patch cable as I used to since they are made in many more prefereable lengths than they used to be it seems and are dirt cheap.



If you don't mind out of curiosity what did you pay for that cable?

Hi,

As to what I paid for it; 22 or so bucks at newegg (worries me a bit. I.E. quality) and mind you this is not yet installed.

How would I know weather I have "a" or "b" ? is "A" just 5e? or are there 2 flavors of ca6? if so, should I assume most store bought cat 6 is going to be the same (mostly one or the other)

Also, someone wrote up there "NEVER MIX CAT 5 & CAT 6". Sounds really ominous but, I'm comunicationg to you (albeit not at the speed I'd like) right now with yhis mix, no sparks are flying, what justifies the dire warning, am I damaging somthing? ?

Thanx...

And while I've got you attention, my dsl provider is offering double speed dsl (3000Kbs) for less than I'm paying now. They are also offering new boxes pretty cheap with rebate. Do I need a new box? (I currently am set up for hypothetically 1500 Kbs)

[Jason]

I think he was talking about mixing 568A & 568B...

You *can* mix those types of cables in your home network, as long as you are not trying to daisy-chain them with adapters to make one really long cable, or running really long lengths. It's not going to kill anything.

You can also mix cat 5, 5e, 6, etc... with the same reasons & precations above.

As for most pre-made cable that you buy... I've really only seen 568B. You can look yourself when it comes in, just look at the connector and do a quick google search will find you the pinout if you don't already have a sheet printed out.

[ZJChaser]

Originally Posted by croak5

Hi,

As to what I paid for it; 22 or so bucks at newegg (worries me a bit. I.E. quality) and mind you this is not yet installed.

How would I know weather I have "a" or "b" ? is "A" just 5e? or are there 2 flavors of ca6? if so, should I assume most store bought cat 6 is going to be the same (mostly one or the other)

Also, someone wrote up there "NEVER MIX CAT 5 & CAT 6". Sounds really ominous but, I'm comunicationg to you (albeit not at the speed I'd like) right now with yhis mix, no sparks are flying, what justifies the dire warning, am I damaging somthing? ?

Thanx...

And while I've got you attention, my dsl provider is offering double speed dsl (3000Kbs) for less than I'm paying now. They are also offering new boxes pretty cheap with rebate. Do I need a new box? (I currently am set up for hypothetically 1500 Kbs)

OK I'm just going to try to simplify for ya here:

568A and 568B are just two different ways to wire the end on the cable, the only difference between them is a different pattern of the colors, in reality, the only difference is that two of the pairs switch places(the orange and green pairs).

To tell which wiring pattern you are looking at you look at the plug from the bottom, so you are looking at the contacts on the plug and you can see the colors.

568A pattern looks like this:



568B pattern looks like this:


as long as the cable is "A" or "B" on both sides you are fine.

A cable that is "A" on one side and "B" on the other is a crossover cable, you DO NOT want those for standard home networking. There are plenty of uses for crossovers but I wont go into that here.

You CAN have both "A" cables and "B" cables in your network just fine.

You CAN use a mix of cat5e and cat6 cables in your network just fine.

568A and 568b CAN be used on all cat5, 5e, and cat6 cable.

You will find store bought patch cables in both the "A" and "B" variety for both cat5 and cat6. It DOES NOT matter which you get.

$22 is a **** good price for a 100ft cat6.

[croak5]

I get ya, as long as the wires end up on the same pin on each end, I don't have a problem basically. It's all really just a matter of convention, no big perfomance incompatability (no).

This makes sense to me, and is the way (I beleive) I made my cat 5 cable I'm using right now. Other here are saying otherwise. But if I read you correctly, not much matters.

So basically an "A" daisy chained to a "B" ain't goin' to make a spit of diff. Nor does it matter wheather I use one or the other??

As I've stated in the initial thread was my performance drop going from wifi to hard wired. And I am doing exactly what I apparrently should never do, cat5 daisy chained to ca6.

THanx

[ZJChaser]

explain your daisy chaining, are you using a barrel connector? or butt connector?

the pattern at the ends cannot be any order, it does need to match one of the two standards.

[ether.real]

As long as the order is the same on both ends, it does not matter what the order is.

[croak5]

Originally Posted by ZJChaser

explain your daisy chaining, are you using a barrel connector? or butt connector?

the pattern at the ends cannot be any order, it does need to match one of the two standards.

Pretty fundamenta but I just notice a pecular twist.

I have 10', store bought cat 6 cord coming off an onboard "Marvel yukon 10/100" ethernet port on my mobo.

My conector, Heres the rub, on closer look, it's a sort hybrid thing. Part keystone part conector. Its a retangular block with one end a having a snap finger thing just like a keystone, however the other end is a receptacle for a male ethernet cable (instead of the usual wire block thing).

Any way, coming out of the other end of this hybrid conector is my home made 70'-90' (aprox.) cat 5 cable going straight to my router.

So; mobo to store boght 10' cat6, to strange conector, to home made 80' cat5 cable, to router. (don't know what goes from router to dsl modem).

(maybe significant or not, the cables enter the junction inverted to each other)

THe faster wifi goes staight though from an adjacent computer (usr wifi) to the same router.

So, hope that clears thing up a bit

Regards, Croak

[ZJChaser]

ok that does clear things up. a connector like that is ok, not prefered if you don't have to use it but its ok.

The main thing to check then is the how you put the ends on that home made cable. make sure they are either 568A or 568B and you "should" be ok, prefereably match them to the wiring pattern of the cat6 cable

[croak5]

Originally Posted by ZJChaser

OK I'm just going to try to simplify for ya here:

568A and 568B are just two different ways to wire the end on the cable, the only difference between them is a different pattern of the colors,...

$22 is a **** good price for a 100ft cat6.

Hi, Just when I thought I'd put this thing to bed ...

I ran a store bought a single 100' cat 6 straight from my USR wifi/hub to the jack on my mboard. I only to see as disappointing 7% improvement over the the adjacent computer linked to the same wifi/router (via wifi).

To put the icing on the cake, I just upgraded my DSL to 3000.Kbps, my DSL modem shows a disappointing 1536 and "dslreports.com" shows I'm getting 1280 (again about a 5% Kbps improvement at my computer.)

So with the replacement of my ca5/junction/cat6 line with one long cat6 cable and my DSL upgrade I am only seeing a 5 % improvement (approx) at my computer.

Any ideas

Croak

Additional Comment:

Originally Posted by Jason

I think he was talking about mixing 568A & 568B...

You *can* mix those types of cables in your home network, as long as you are not trying to daisy-chain them...when it comes in, just look at the connector and do a quick google search will find you the pinout if you don't already have a sheet printed out.

Hello again,

please see my latest post. In short, replaced cat6/connector/cat5 kluge with a single cat6. Upgraded dsl service to doublespeed.


...net result? bout a 7% imprpovement at my workstation and marginally faster than the adjacent wifi.

Croak

[ZJChaser]

are you comparing internet speed tests between the wifi and the wired computers? is that what you are using as a test?

[croak5]

Originally Posted by ZJChaser

are you comparing internet speed tests between the wifi and the wired computers? is that what you are using as a test?

Ya thats part of it (before, side by side computers, the wif's one was bit faster to the net than the cabled one).

The bigger deal is that since the upgrade (both the cable and the DSL service) theres precoiuse little imprpment overall.

I sign up for a hypothetical 3000kbps, I get 1536kbs at my modem and about 1280Kbps at my computer. ((I used too get 1270 aprox. at my sloppy wired rig with (hypothetical) 1500kbs service))

Essentially, not only am I getting nowhere near the 3000kbps (I get 1536 Kbps at the modem) I signed up for, but I'm loosing about 400Kbps between the modem and my computer.

Scratching my head

Thanks Croak

P.S. I don't really care about the wifi setup, I just use it for a bench mark

[ZJChaser]

ok for one.....the wireless really should not be much if any slower than the wired one for the internet. Your internet is not coming in at speeds faster than your wireless can handle therefor they should be the same or similar.

The real test between the two is file transfers, thats what I "thought" you were using to test the entire time, my bad for making the assumption.

the 7% difference between the internet speeds on the two is totally fine.

The issue regarding your half speed internet is a whole other issue. might want to call the ISP and ask why you as seeing such slow speeds.

[croak5]

Originally Posted by ZJChaser

ok for one.....the wireless really should not be much if any slower than the wired one for the internet. ...the 7% difference between the internet speeds on the two is totally fine..

I see your point about wifi or wire can handle the relatively slow internet feed, but, my wirles passes through about 7 walls and about 75' off muddy air. My cat6 cable is a straight uninterupted, sheilded pipe.

Originally Posted by ZJChaser

The issue regarding your half speed internet is a whole other issue. might want to call the ISP and ask why you as seeing such slow speeds.

Im not holding out much hope here in that though it stands to reason that when I had a standard 1500kbps service I was only geting 1409 at the modem, at a 3000 kbps service I outa get 2x 1409.

(There are reasons I've heard that this is not a valid assumtion) So at least I'd like to figure out why I've got 1536kbps at the modem but still ony have 1270 kbps at my computer (about the same as before the dsl upgrade.)

Thanx

Croak

P.S. THe wifi to wifi-router to wifi data transfers pretty much sucked with large files. (Bit better with hard wired comuter)

[Jason]

If there was no performance change on your local network with the cable swap, then it's probably just your ethernet chipset or driver. Like I posted before, not all chips perform the same (sadly).

As for your DSL speed.... Sometimes it can take a few days for them to process the paperwork and actually "upgrade" your DSL account.

Most DSL modems have a built-in web server that you can 'browse' and will show you various diagnostic info (including your max up/down speed for your account).

It's best to try a few different locations for your speed test, if it is consistently around 1400 like you said, then they might not have upgraded it yet. Also (even though I hate to admit it), if you read the fine print they will usually say the speed is a "best effort" and not guaranteed. So if they do not have enough bandwidth down the line then you are SOL.

I like to use the Speakeasy.net Speed Test but Speedtest.net is also pretty good.

[croak5]

Originally Posted by Jason

If there was no performance change on your local network with the cable swap, then it's probably just your ethernet chipset or driver. Like I posted before, not all chips perform the same (sadly).

As for your DSL speed.... Sometimes it can take a few days for them to process the paperwork and actually "upgrade" your DSL account.

Most DSL modems have a built-in web server that you can 'browse' and will show you various diagnostic info (including your max up/down speed for your account).

It's best to try a few different locations for your speed test, if it is consistently around 1400 like you said, then they might not have upgraded it yet. Also (even though I hate to admit it), if you read the fine print they will usually say the speed is a "best effort" and not guaranteed. So if they do not have enough bandwidth down the line then you are SOL.

I like to use the Speakeasy.net Speed Test but Speedtest.net is also pretty good.

Hi Thanx,

As to did they actually upgrade me, they gave me a date and time and sure enough, there was a change, it had been 1408 kbps before the promised time and it turned to 1536 kbps somtime afterwords. So I presume that was my upgrade...Whoppee

As far as locations for speed test, I go to DSLreports.com where you can acess 6 or 7 server sites (including speakeasy I beleive) all around the country, I run m' all (good'n nogh?)

As to dign' around in the modem, been there, didn't see any thing obviously related to my speed I could tweak. The drivers on my board, their about 5 months old. The board, latest ver. Gig. ds3 bout 2 months old

Any way, I twas indeed made clear to me thee 3000 Kbps was hypothetical. Don't no if I put this tidbit In my post but the net effect of all this is an aprox. 10 kb/s gain at my rig...1270 up to 1280 Kb/s. I don't get it, Even if I can ony get 130 Kb/s more, it'd sure be nice if it showed up at my rig.

Croak