Ethernet Over Coax?

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#1049937 20-May-2014 17:23

wellygary: Coax based Ethernet, holy time travel Batman,

In the "Good old days" when ethernet was but a pup coax was the most common way to reticulate it,

In the late 80s we were mucking around with 10base2 ethernet to run comp labs at uni

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10BASE2

If you are going to run a PC at the far end you can probably pick up a BNC NIC for almost nothing,
http://www.trademe.co.nz/computers/networking-modems/network-cards/auction-729108122.htm

Damn those T connectors and terminators! One dodgy cable and the entire network dropped...

Regs

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#1050088 20-May-2014 21:04

wellygary:
If you are going to run a PC at the far end you can probably pick up a BNC NIC for almost nothing,
http://www.trademe.co.nz/computers/networking-modems/network-cards/auction-729108122.htm

I used to run 10base2 at the office. i'm surprised that there were PCI based cards available! Thought everything from that era was ISA

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linw

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#1050250 21-May-2014 09:02

RunningMan:
wellygary: Coax based Ethernet, holy time travel Batman,

In the "Good old days" when ethernet was but a pup coax was the most common way to reticulate it,

In the late 80s we were mucking around with 10base2 ethernet to run comp labs at uni

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10BASE2

If you are going to run a PC at the far end you can probably pick up a BNC NIC for almost nothing,
http://www.trademe.co.nz/computers/networking-modems/network-cards/auction-729108122.htm

Damn those T connectors and terminators! One dodgy cable and the entire network dropped...

Oh, yes, I remember that as well!

deadlyllama

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#1050280 21-May-2014 09:42

Regs:
wellygary:
If you are going to run a PC at the far end you can probably pick up a BNC NIC for almost nothing,
http://www.trademe.co.nz/computers/networking-modems/network-cards/auction-729108122.htm

I used to run 10base2 at the office. i'm surprised that there were PCI based cards available! Thought everything from that era was ISA

There were PCI cards. We had 10Base2 at home, I remember buying DEC 21041-based PCI cards because they were well supported by Linux at the time (1998/1999 IIRC). There were also "PCI NE2000" cards. Which worked well and were compatible with everything under the sun, but the NE2000 design was not known for high performance.

I remember the Great Upgrade when we got some repeaters, so the server and firewall could go on a separate segment, and not be killed when a cable broke somewhere else in the house.

Dad still has 10Base2 at home, he hasn't bothered rewiring. He's got a few 10baseT hubs with a 10base2 port on the side now :-)

MikeAqua

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#1050391 21-May-2014 11:54

Thanks for all the advice folks.

I consulted with Mr Gamer last night. He couldn't care less about Freeview, as like most teenagers he watches everything online. So to start with I'm going to disconnect the coax to his room from the satellite and buy a couple, of the simple ethernet-coax adaptors. I'll post a review once I have this installed.

I can look into the units that allow satellite and ethernet on the same coax at a later date if the usage changes. I'd also like to wait unil this technology is plug and play.

Mike

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#1051375 22-May-2014 21:15

While I think your ethernet over coax idea sounds awesome and I don't want to discourage you from that at all, if it doesn't work as expected, powerline networking actually works very well.

I installed a couple of units at my parents house recently, and the speed seems comparable to wifi, although I didn't accurately measure it. Latency was only 3-4ms above ethernet. Their house was built in the 1980s, so the wiring is probably good relative to some older houses, which I wouldn't expect to get the same results.

It didn't seem to make much difference where in the house the units were plugged in, and they actually worked between that house and the house in front, with more or less the same performance (the two houses were built at the same time and presumably the back house power connects into the front house).

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#1051435 22-May-2014 22:54

You could always use the existing coax to pull through ethernet and another piece of coax. In the long run it will probably be cheaper than fiddling around with expensive workarounds.

MikeAqua

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#1051542 23-May-2014 09:03

There are at least 3 90 degree turns in the coax run. I think if I tried using it as a draw cord, there is a very good chance it will get stuck somewhere, and then the room will have no service.

The baluns for Ethernet over coax cost about 90 each, so not expensive.

Mike

raytaylor

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#1052854 25-May-2014 15:42

I still have my house wired up for coax 10base2 ethernet - installed it in about 2004 because I didnt know much about cat5 at the time.

+1 for powerline.
I have seen coax used in motels, with a bit of re-wiring as they dont like going through amplifiers.

Powerline adapters are also only $120 a pair. TPLink is the brand I recommend.

You only need 1 or 2 megabits for gaming. 100mbit is more than adequate.

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cdrnet

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#1055337 28-May-2014 18:30

I am amazed that someone would consider using coax for anything other than a back bone. I used to do a lot of this stuff in the 1990s and it was a nightmare to manage clients. We ended up gluing on the terminators as it saved us on call outs for such trivia. If you have coax, the best way to use it is to securely attach new Cat. 6 cable to it and then rip it out whilst pulling the Cat 6 stuff through. 1000 or 10000 Mb/s has to be the winner every time.

Why, oh why, oh why, won't this work )c8

MikeAqua

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#1055674 29-May-2014 09:46

If this was a simple cable run I would be doing exactly what you say using the coax as puller for cable rat and pulling CAT6 and coax back through.

I don't think that's a realistic option in this house. The coax goes from the roof space of two level home to a ground floor bedroom at the other end ad other side of the house. Due to the layout of the house there is a set of compounding 90 degree turns around a stairwell. the resistance will be huge. Assuming the person who ran the cables didn't secure them anywhere along the way, the resistance from the compounding corners would be huge I doubt the cable will pull through. There would be good chance of getting it jammed halfway.

Based on people's positive comments I'm going to have a play with powerline first and see if it works. It seems like it should be an inherently flaky technology but people report OK results. I can get some with a good return option.

cdrnet: I am amazed that someone would consider using coax for anything other than a back bone. I used to do a lot of this stuff in the 1990s and it was a nightmare to manage clients. We ended up gluing on the terminators as it saved us on call outs for such trivia. If you have coax, the best way to use it is to securely attach new Cat. 6 cable to it and then rip it out whilst pulling the Cat 6 stuff through. 1000 or 10000 Mb/s has to be the winner every time.

Mike

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bagheera

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#1055681 29-May-2014 09:58

MikeAqua: If this was a simple cable run I would be doing exactly what you say using the coax as puller for cable rat and pulling CAT6 and coax back through.

I don't think that's a realistic option in this house. The coax goes from the roof space of two level home to a ground floor bedroom at the other end ad other side of the house. Due to the layout of the house there is a set of compounding 90 degree turns around a stairwell. the resistance will be huge. Assuming the person who ran the cables didn't secure them anywhere along the way, the resistance from the compounding corners would be huge I doubt the cable will pull through. There would be good chance of getting it jammed halfway.

Based on people's positive comments I'm going to have a play with powerline first and see if it works. It seems like it should be an inherently flaky technology but people report OK results. I can get some with a good return option.

cdrnet: I am amazed that someone would consider using coax for anything other than a back bone. I used to do a lot of this stuff in the 1990s and it was a nightmare to manage clients. We ended up gluing on the terminators as it saved us on call outs for such trivia. If you have coax, the best way to use it is to securely attach new Cat. 6 cable to it and then rip it out whilst pulling the Cat 6 stuff through. 1000 or 10000 Mb/s has to be the winner every time.

we have tried Ethernet over power - out to the workshop - works great, no problem at all, to the master bed room, not so good and keep dropping till you reboot both end - would last 1 - 2 hour then stop, we then found that our FRITZ!Box router could talk to power adapter and give stats on power adaptor - the master bed was to far away and had very bad stats, workshop - great stats - end up spending 2 hour in the roof pulling cables to the master bed room.......

cdrnet

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#1055720 29-May-2014 10:26

bagheera:
MikeAqua: If this was a simple cable run I would be doing exactly what you say using the coax as puller for cable rat and pulling CAT6 and coax back through.

I don't think that's a realistic option in this house. The coax goes from the roof space of two level home to a ground floor bedroom at the other end ad other side of the house. Due to the layout of the house there is a set of compounding 90 degree turns around a stairwell. the resistance will be huge. Assuming the person who ran the cables didn't secure them anywhere along the way, the resistance from the compounding corners would be huge I doubt the cable will pull through. There would be good chance of getting it jammed halfway.

Based on people's positive comments I'm going to have a play with powerline first and see if it works. It seems like it should be an inherently flaky technology but people report OK results. I can get some with a good return option.

cdrnet: I am amazed that someone would consider using coax for anything other than a back bone. I used to do a lot of this stuff in the 1990s and it was a nightmare to manage clients. We ended up gluing on the terminators as it saved us on call outs for such trivia. If you have coax, the best way to use it is to securely attach new Cat. 6 cable to it and then rip it out whilst pulling the Cat 6 stuff through. 1000 or 10000 Mb/s has to be the winner every time.

we have tried Ethernet over power - out to the workshop - works great, no problem at all, to the master bed room, not so good and keep dropping till you reboot both end - would last 1 - 2 hour then stop, we then found that our FRITZ!Box router could talk to power adapter and give stats on power adaptor - the master bed was to far away and had very bad stats, workshop - great stats - end up spending 2 hour in the roof pulling cables to the master bed room.......

The last time I used Powerline technology, it only worked at 11Mb/s. They were talking about increasing the speed to something like 88Mb/s, but I did find it reliable. The error correcting side of Wireless makes the actual performance difficult to measure, so I do quite like such reliable solutions. What speed does it work at these days?

Why, oh why, oh why, won't this work )c8

bagheera

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#1055732 29-May-2014 10:39

cdrnet: The last time I used Powerline technology, it only worked at 11Mb/s. They were talking about increasing the speed to something like 88Mb/s, but I did find it reliable. The error correcting side of Wireless makes the actual performance difficult to measure, so I do quite like such reliable solutions. What speed does it work at these days?

depends - can go upto 300mbs (or at least the one we got could), but if it a long run thought the power cable it drops off, and to the master bed room it was very low - can not remember how low it was but it like xdls - over x distance it drops off.

cdrnet

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#1055739 29-May-2014 10:46

bagheera:
cdrnet: The last time I used Powerline technology, it only worked at 11Mb/s. They were talking about increasing the speed to something like 88Mb/s, but I did find it reliable. The error correcting side of Wireless makes the actual performance difficult to measure, so I do quite like such reliable solutions. What speed does it work at these days?

depends - can go upto 300mbs (or at least the one we got could), but if it a long run thought the power cable it drops off, and to the master bed room it was very low - can not remember how low it was but it like xdls - over x distance it drops off.

WOW - Sounds great. I had no idea. I'm considering running a new cable and the route I had planned to take is likely to take around 4 hours of crawling around in dirt and dust, through my roof cavity. If I was to use a Powerline device, I estimate that the actual distance will be around 60m. How would 60m measure up in terms of achieving 300mb/s ?

Why, oh why, oh why, won't this work )c8

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