Goose Your Network to Gigabit Ethernet

Seth Anderson wrote:
>
> Thanks a million (bits) for this article
> (http://db.tidbits.com/article/9518 ). I've been meaning to upgrade
> our office home/office for a while now, but put off doing the hard
> investigative work to figure out the details. After reading your
> thorough article, I'm ready to tackle this project as soon as I can.
> We haven't upgraded our LAN network since System 8.5 days, so I'm
> sure our new Macs will all benefit immensely from ditching the hubs,
> and perhaps recabling in a few locations.
>
> A question though: is it difficult to make one's own Cat6 cables?
> Does anyone have suggestions as the best way to add the little
> plastic doo- hickeys (connectors) to a custom-sized ethernet cable?

Are you NUTS!

Really. Don't do it. If you're talking about patch cables, the ones with mail connectors, just buy them. Don't even consider making them. Unless you live in upper Idaho you can likely find several local shops that sell them at decent prices. Buy.com isn't too bad.

As to the cables "in the wall" (or along it), just go with Cat5e. You can buy all you need from Home Depot or Lowes. I prefer HD as they use Leviton Quick Port which is also readily available mail order or through most communications supply houses. Using QP means you can run out Saturday night at 8 pm to get a part if you need it for your house.

I disagree with this part of the article as it applies to home and small office setups:

> However, for gigabit Ethernet, you really want to use either Cat5e,
> which replaced Cat5, or Cat6 cable, and networking people have told
> me that Cat6 is necessary for full performance over longer cable
> runs. Hopefully, any cables you have lying around will be labeled on
> the cable itself; if you suspect problems, just get new Cat6 cables.
> All cable runs must be less than 100 meters, and preferably shorter.

Until you need 10 gig networking Cat5e for small setups is just fine and way less expensive.

David

>On Fri, Mar 21, 2008 at 5:48 AM, Seth Anderson <sethb12partners.net> wrote:
> > A question though: is it difficult to make one's own Cat6 cables? Does
>> anyone have suggestions as the best way to add the little plastic doo-
>> hickeys (connectors) to a custom-sized ethernet cable?

At 4:20 PM -0700 3/21/08, Michael Krzyzek wrote:
>It's not really that hard, just takes a little bit of knowledge and
>the right tools.

snip

>Things will get a bit more complicated, and expensive, if you want to
>do wiring in the wall and have your computers connect with RJ45
>connectors on faceplates. I don't really recommend it unless you
>really know what you are doing.

Having made hundreds of cables in in my time, I've got to disagree a
bit with Michael. It is a pain, it is tricky and can even be hard to
do, especially for braided wires. I still do them from time to time,
and each time I wish I didn't have to. (The one time I went to MWESF,
I came across a cable crimping contest. Most of the cables didn't
even work when checked, including mine. Even people who do them a lot
can screw it up.)

If you are going to and from fixed location I'd put in ethernet
jacks, either in the wall (expensive and hard, as Michael says) or
surface mounted. It is MUCH MUCH MUCH easier to attach cables to
jacks than to connectors. And then you can buy patch/Ethernet/normal
cables as needed.

A froogle search for what I am talking about:
<http://www.google.com/products?btnG=Search+Products&show=dd&q=surface+mount+cat5e>

(You'll need a punch down tool, but you can usually order a cheap
nylon one. For example:
<http://www.cablestogo.com/product.asp?cat%5Fid=1408&sku=03787>)

Long runs should always be done with solid wires, but such cables are
not as flexible and forgiving as braided wires. (This refers to the 8
wires in the the cable. They can each be either solid copper, or each
can be made of tiny copper threads that are braided together.) Solid
is easier to work with, but if you are going to plug and unplug and
move around and bend and flex the cable a lot, you can get a broken
wire in there. That's why patch cords use braided, which are as
flexible as shoelaces - or at least boot laces.

So, I would recommend doing your runs with solid cable, terminate
each end with a jack and then use a patch cable to connect the jack
to the switch and/or computer. And buy your patch cables already
crimped and completed.


--
=Alex Hoffman
Leadership, Policy & Politics
Teachers College, Columbia University

--On March 21, 2008 4:20:38 PM -0700 David Ross
<drdavidrossconsultant.com> wrote:

>> However, for gigabit Ethernet, you really want to use either Cat5e,
>> which replaced Cat5, or Cat6 cable, and networking people have told
>> me that Cat6 is necessary for full performance over longer cable
>> runs. Hopefully, any cables you have lying around will be labeled on
>> the cable itself; if you suspect problems, just get new Cat6 cables.
>> All cable runs must be less than 100 meters, and preferably shorter.
>
> Until you need 10 gig networking Cat5e for small setups is just fine and
> way less expensive.

>From my favorite online cable store a 100' Cat 5e cable is $17 and a 100'
Cat 6 is $20. 10-3' cat 5e cables are $10 and in cat 6 are $16.

Hardly "way less" expensive. The only time Cat 6 will be really expensive
is when you're talking about a certified installation (usually done in
large businesses) where they test from wall connector to patch panel and
verify the whole run meets cat 6 specifications. This is labor intensive
(especially if they have to redo some out of spec runs).

If you're doing a new small installation I'd go with the Cat 6. If you
have existing short Cat5e calbes, go ahead and use them but if buying new
cables pony up the couple of extra bucks.

At 4:20 PM -0700 3/21/08, David Ross wrote:
>Until you need 10 gig networking Cat5e for small setups is just fine and
>way less expensive.

        Maybe not if you factor in the cost of fishing wire through walls
though....

        As the article mentions - for new wall construction or
retrofitting, you can be future proofed if you put in some sort of conduit
with a string in place so that you can easily pull through whatever fancy
jiggabyte-cable-of-the-future is available years from now.


--
* Johann Beda - contact link: <http://xri.net/=j-beda> *
* Johann's MostlyMac Computer Consulting - <http://mmcc.beda.ca/> *

On Mar 23, 2008, at 4:13 AM, Kevin van Haaren wrote:
> If you're doing a new small installation I'd go with the Cat 6. If
> you
> have existing short Cat5e calbes, go ahead and use them but if
> buying new
> cables pony up the couple of extra bucks.

I agree. To quote a Mort Sahl album title*, "The Future Lies Ahead".
It is highly unlikely that new technology in this area will be less
persnickety about cabling than current technology is.

    --John

*By the way, don't miss it if you can.

At 4:20 PM -0700 3/21/08, Michael Krzyzek wrote:
>On Fri, Mar 21, 2008 at 5:48 AM, Seth Anderson <sethb12partners.net> wrote:
> >
> > A question though: is it difficult to make one's own Cat6 cables? Does
> > anyone have suggestions as the best way to add the little plastic doo-
> > hickeys (connectors) to a custom-sized ethernet cable?
> >
>It's not really that hard, just takes a little bit of knowledge and
>the right tools. First of all the best thing you can get is a good

At 4:20 PM -0700 3/21/08, David Ross wrote:
>Are you NUTS!
>
>Really. Don't do it. If you're talking about patch cables, the ones
>with mail connectors, just buy them. Don't even consider making
>them. Unless you live in upper Idaho you can likely find several
>local shops that sell them at decent prices. Buy.com isn't too bad.

At 4:13 AM -0700 3/23/08, Alexander Hoffman wrote:
>Having made hundreds of cables in in my time, I've got to disagree a
>bit with Michael. It is a pain, it is tricky and can even be hard to
>do, especially for braided wires. I still do them from time to time,
>and each time I wish I didn't have to. (The one time I went to MWESF,
>I came across a cable crimping contest. Most of the cables didn't
>even work when checked, including mine. Even people who do them a lot
>can screw it up.)

That contest may have been one of the annual Mac Managers parties a
few years ago, which is traditionally the evening before the keynote.
It is well attended by professional Mac managers, who get to tell war
stories and speculate about what might show up in the next morning's
keynote speech - and participate in a contest to see who is better,
or faster, or more knowledgeable - in the contest. The contest is
administered and adjudicated by Chuck Goolsbee (a frequent
contributor here, and whose company hosts TidBits mailing list and
listserv), and that particular year's cable crimping contest is now
legendary and still spoken about years later. (I seem to remember it
was won by a senior network administrator from Northwestern U.)

The point of the contest was that by then many whose job descriptions
had once included the capability to quickly and efficiently cut and
crimp cable - including knowing the correct order of the wires in the
connector when they were crimped - were losing the skill because the
cost of uniformly prepared cables had come down to the level where
networkers were buying them off the shelf rather than crimping their
own. The contest turned out to be great fun for all, because all were
surprised at how their skills had eroded. (Perhaps the ethanol before
the contest served to erode those skills a bit too, except for the
winner.)


For those who are debating the cost of Cat5 vs. Cat5e vs. Cat6, go to
Amazon and check the cost. You'll find no variance. In fact you can
find Cat5 from one manufacturer that is trivially more expensive than
the same length of Cat6. And they are both trivially costly - about
US$5 (plus or minus $1) for a 50' length. The prices are marginally
less for the standard 25' length.

At these prices, it really isn't worth it to cut and crimp your own.
These things are made by machines now, and they are much more
accurate and uniform than we can do. If you're in such a big rush
that you can't wait for Amazon to ship, go down to the local
electronics store - even a consumer electronics store - and just buy
them.

Don't get me wrong though. I think knowing how to crimp cable is a
fine skill - rather along the lines of being able to cut your own
willow branch, twist your own twine and carve hooks out of bone to
catch fish. You never know when you might need the skill some day.
I'm glad I learned how to do it. But as I plan my new home network
(another post), I'll just plan for and buy the pre-cut-and-crimped
cables that I'll need.

At 4:20 PM -0700 3/21/08, Alan Forkosh wrote:
>Nice article ((http://db.tidbits.com/article/9518).

Agreed, nice article. And coincidentally Wired's current issue (with
the two articles about Apple and cover image of the Apple logo) has
an article called "This Networked House" which includes a description
of why and how to network one's house with gigabit, and also includes
a 1TB network storage device (NAS) and a server. The storage device
was on display at Macworld in January, as was another network storage
device. These are small and fast and affordable.

And just as coincidentally, I'm planning to overhaul my HAN (home
area network) with gigabit ethernet and a file server serving massive
media storage, so it's helpful to read someone else's experience for
some tips and pointers.

>That contest may have been one of the annual Mac Managers parties a
>few years ago, which is traditionally the evening before the keynote.
>It is well attended by professional Mac managers, who get to tell war
>stories and speculate about what might show up in the next morning's
>keynote speech - and participate in a contest to see who is better,
>or faster, or more knowledgeable - in the contest. The contest is
>administered and adjudicated by Chuck Goolsbee (a frequent
>contributor here, and whose company hosts TidBits mailing list and
>listserv), and that particular year's cable crimping contest is now
>legendary and still spoken about years later. (I seem to remember it
>was won by a senior network administrator from Northwestern U.)

Your memory of the event is a BIT off Dan, which is forgivable since
it was seven years ago.

Virtually every cable built failed when tested by the Fluke cable tester.

Said NU Network Admin was indeed the first contestant to successfully
build a "passed testing" cable, however he took the LONGEST time to
do so of any competitor that night. I'll not embarrass him by naming
him here, but he did co-present with me in a 2-day "Power Tools"
session at this years' Macworld Expo. ;)


The winner was actually Scott McCarty, who then built another
custom-length cable by request for use by "The Mac Show Live" staff
who needed it to reach their broadcasting location at the W hotel.


--chuck goolsbee, mac-mgrs list mom

<http://www.mac-mgrs.org>

Need to replace a string in a conduit? There's another & perhaps better way than using a fish tape as mentioned in the article; particularly if your conduit has several bends and corners.

Tie a cotton ball to the end of your replacement string and put it in one end of the conduit. Hook a vacuum cleaner or shop vac to the other end of the conduit. Turn it on and the cotton ball with your replacement string will be pulled through the conduit in seconds.

Rick

On 03/25/2008 06:59 AM, "chuck goolsbee" <chucklistforest.net> wrote:

> The winner was actually Scott McCarty, who then built another
> custom-length cable by request for use by "The Mac Show Live" staff
> who needed it to reach their broadcasting location at the W hotel.

And because I can't resist...

Said staff had called my room asking if I knew where to get 100+ feet of
ethernet cable not *too* long after laughing at us over the contest because
"You can just go buy it at CompUSA"

Unless you need about 175' of it, and CompUSA is closed :-P


--
John C. Welch

On Tue, Mar 25, 2008 at 4:59 AM, oshloel <oshloelmail.com> wrote:
> Need to replace a string in a conduit? There's another & perhaps better way than using a fish tape as mentioned in the article; particularly if your conduit has several bends and corners.
>
> Tie a cotton ball to the end of your replacement string and put it in one end of the conduit. Hook a vacuum cleaner or shop vac to the other end of the conduit. Turn it on and the cotton ball with your replacement string will be pulled through the conduit in seconds.
>

This is a nice trick. But it presupposes that the conduit doesn't have
anything in it already. If so lucky day! If not, get out that fish
tape, just make sure it's long enough.

One, frustrating at the time but amusing now, anecdote from when I was
cabling for a living. I grabbed a roll of tape and headed out to a
job. It was supposed to be a fairly easy job however when we arrived
it turned out the walls were 18 feet high and the conduit ran up the
walls through the ceiling and back down, junction box to junction box
down the room. As I started to pull out the tape to start fishing I
noticed that it seemed quite a bit shorter than the 100 feet it was
labeled with, 92 feet shorter to be precise. Apparently it was one of
our older rolls and it had become stuck in the walls many times over
the years, which means it was snipped off and had a new end attached
repeatedly. I was not amused. But looking back on it I wish I had a
picture of what my face looked like holding 8 feet of tape and staring
upwards.

--
Michael

Beyond the legal issues, I wouldn't suggest that any use PC components as an alternative to Apple hardware for running OS X (the many patches involved result in something that could get broken by even a small but important security update). However the work of the people experimenting with such things is useful to us in the context of network upgrades since many have already found which cards or network chipset work by trial and error. Boards by a number of manufacturers generally will work if they use a chip that is supported. The OSx86 hardware compatibility lists are a good starting point. Just remember add-in cards you try MUST be made for the type of PCI slots you have (PCI, PCI-x, etc)

[http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/HCL_10.4.8]

On the subject of actual speeds being disk-limited, I can confirm that both the discs used and the interfaces make a large difference. Using external 300 GB 7200 rpm ATA Seagate Barracudas over USB 2, 1070 meg files take about a minute to transfer in the Finder. Going between 500GB and 1TB SATA Barracudas takes about 15 seconds. When using an older 400 GB SATA drive takes more than twice as long (it still has the faster 3 Gigbit/s SATA interface speed, early SATA interfaces and laptop drives look to be limited to half that.

I use a system as a PVR with Eye-TV. When using the Export command to extra the contents of a "hour" HD show to a separate MPEG-2 file with the marked ad segments stripped as it extracts, going between two fast drives takes about a minute. For me that's about 4GB for 41 minutes or so of video. (The station also has an SD program, so the data rate is a bit lower than it otherwise would be)

The info in the article, particularly with regard to cheap switches, is much appreciated. I'd like to try moving video between machines, but had been avoiding it out of fears of it being painfully slow. An older 20" iMac G5 works great for viewing HD recompressed to 1070 mB 720p .AVIs with Visual Hub, but the G5 is too slow to handle the recompression itself. Too bad it can't handle x.264 .mkv videos of the same size. A fast network should help for handling other PVR functions too. I've been tempted to try one of the Ethernet-hosted ATSC tuners that Eye-TV now supports, then I could access live off-air HDTV from my Macbook as well as my desktop. I'm current using USB and Firewire models.

For those with desktops using SATA internally but wishing to use external drives may want to look for an adaptor that's got connectors on a PCI card rear plate with cable to hook into internal SATA. I wish the was an easy way to do this on my MacBook. I believe the ICH-7M chip has support for more SATA ports, but they're not brought out from the motherboard (I saw someone recently figured this out in the MacBook Air). Example of PC version of eSATA connector plate:

[http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Description=eSATA+PCI&x=0&y=0]

oshloel wrote:
> Need to replace a string in a conduit? There's another & perhaps better way than using a fish tape as mentioned in the article; particularly if your conduit has several bends and corners.
>
> Tie a cotton ball to the end of your replacement string and put it in one end of the conduit. Hook a vacuum cleaner or shop vac to the other end of the conduit. Turn it on and the cotton ball with your replacement string will be pulled through the conduit in seconds.
>

Assuming the conduit was installed with a fairly smooth interior.

David

>Tie a cotton ball to the end of your replacement string and put it
>in one end of the conduit. Hook a vacuum cleaner or shop vac to the
>other end of the conduit. Turn it on and the cotton ball with your
>replacement string will be pulled through the conduit in seconds.
>
>Rick

LOL. Great idea! I love it.

Adam ran that article by me prior to publication, I had not thought
of something so simple because in my world conduits are 2" - 4" in
diameter:

http://chuck.forest.net/conduit/


I don't think any available shop vac has that much *suck*. ;)

--chuck

There was the classic solution used a long time ago by some clever workmen faced with the problem. Their duct was just large enough to put a cat in one end with a long string attached to its tail. Then with a source of some slight air pressure - vacuum cleaner outlet, or whatever they blew their air into the end where they'd put the cat. Cats hate to have their fur fluffed from the rear. Ergo, cat took off down the duct emerging at the far end pulling the string through. Problem solved.

[How about we wrap up the whole "get cable through conduit" thread (as well as the whole "what 'goose' means" thread) with this message? :-) -Joe]

I liked Adam's article, and I decided to upgrade my home network.

How important are the connectors at wall plates for Cat6? Should I replace those also to maximize throughput? Or are the old ones from my Cat5 connections ok?

-Al Arca

snuffyspaw wrote:
> I liked Adam's article, and I decided to upgrade my home network.
>
> How important are the connectors at wall plates for Cat6? Should I
> replace those also to maximize throughput? Or are the old ones from
> my Cat5 connections ok?

As long as your run lengths are under 80 to 90 meters you should be fine. Cat5e was developed when it was discovered that Cat5 would not support 100 meters. Cat6 is a higher performance rating based on signal prorogation but is not yet requires (as far as I know) for gig or slower networks. The cable folks have been pushing it for several years as a way to "future proof" your wiring but until a 10 gig standard is out, this is more a reasonable hope than a future proofing. Cat6 "in the wall" costs a LOT more than Cat5e. But for patch cables the price is negligible so I buy mostly Cat6 for patch now.

David

At 1:46 AM -0700 5/15/08, snuffyspaw wrote:
>How important are the connectors at wall plates for Cat6? Should I
>replace those also to maximize throughput? Or are the old ones from
>my Cat5 connections ok?

I can't say how important they are (because I don't know), although
I'd assume it depends a bit on what's inside there, and there may be
no way of knowing. That said, I built my wall plates, and they seem
to be fine.

cheers... -Adam

When I built our new house (okay, I paid someone else to build it) we ran Cat6 in the walls, but made sure to also put flexible conduit into the major rooms. IT was about $200/run of conduit (flexible smurf tube) and we covered the bedrooms, office (where the patch panel is), TV/living room, and one other room. For the price, it seemed the best way to future proof. -rich

On May 15, 2008, at 1:42 PM, Adam C. Engst wrote:

> At 1:46 AM -0700 5/15/08, snuffyspaw wrote:
>> How important are the connectors at wall plates for Cat6? Should I
>> replace those also to maximize throughput? Or are the old ones from
>> my Cat5 connections ok?
>
> I can't say how important they are (because I don't know), although
> I'd assume it depends a bit on what's inside there, and there may be
> no way of knowing. That said, I built my wall plates, and they seem
> to be fine.

I don't think you should "fix" the problem proactively. Use what's
there, and see whether there seems to be a performance problem.

If so, buy a long enough run of Cat 6 that you can lay it temporarily
(through windows, doors, etc as needed) to replace an in-wall run and
see whether that helps. (Probably isolating the other runs.) (For
runs that are back to back through a wall, use a short run through the
holes revealed by plate removal, rather than a run out a door, down
the hall, and in a door.)

If it helps (enough to matter in the real world usage, not the
testing), then consider replacing what is in and at the walls.

   --John