[plug] home cat5 issues

[Arie Hol]

On 19 Mar 2008 at 15:08, Gavin Chester wrote:

> On Wed, 2008-03-19 at 14:43 +0900, Tim Bowden wrote:
> > On Wed, 2008-03-19 at 14:19 +0900, Jason wrote:
> > > <snip>
> > > 
> > > 
> > > Cable strewn across the floor works fine but unfortunately the wife
> > >  doesn't like it, and the dog likes to chew it.
> > 
> > Do you have any cat5 cable running alongside power cables?  Does 
nasty
> > things.  Crossing at ~90deg is fine though.
> 
> Thanks Tim and Jason. No, I'm aware of interference with outside 
sources
> and have routed the cable well clear. But, the cable that I'm testing 
with
> after discovering issues is simply 30m of cat5e coiled on the floor. 
> 
> The key to it all falling down is the keystone sockets interposed along
> its length. Any connection to them fails even though these have been 
done
> correctly and tests show connected okay. See diagram of test cable 
below,
> reproduced from first posting:
> 
> X-------O---------O------O------X
>         |                       |
>         |                       |              
>         PC                      Router
> 
> where each 'O' is a keystone socket and 'X' is crimped cable connector 
on
> a single cat5e cable placed loose on the floor. All connections and
> sockets test as good, but only X-X works, any combination of X-O or O-O
> fails.
> 
> Gavin
> 

In the keystone sockets - do you have the correct orientation of wiring 
in the back of the socket ? 

The wires should be paired to slots 1-2 , 3-4, 5-6, 6-8

Slot layout on back of socket

1   2
3   4
5   6
7   8

Assuming that I have understood your problem and your diagram.

It seems that the setup you are using is trying to work like a peer to 
peer system running on coaxial cable ..........................

If you have all sockets paired to the same orientation, your common run 
would be acting like a backbone - and more than likely you are getting 
collisions because all points are trying to speak over two same two 
wires. 

Hence your system appears to work when only one PC is connected and in 
use - then connecting a second PC cause collisions.

If you want to use more than one socket at a time for different PC's, you 
need to reconnect each pair of wires to different slots in the back of 
the keystone socket - seeing as cat5 has only eight wires in total - then 
my guess is that your backbone needs a discrete pair of data wires for 
each socket - in which case using cat5/e/6 cable WILL NOT do the job.

The above would also entail making a "crossover" type of cable dedicated 
to each socket on the backbone - somewhat unworkable in my thinking....

I would recommend running a separate cat5/e/6 cable for each PC and do 
away with the idea of a backbone.

HTH

Regards Arie
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