4 ms·

It also is a testament to the ability of the interface vendors to get solid connections of out-of-spec cables. I have a small server room that is only wired wi

It also is a testament to the ability of the interface vendors to get solid connections of out-of-spec cables. I have a small server room that is only wired with a 200+ foot run of in-wall Cat5e cables that the building was originally wired with. Running fiber to the room would be a multi-thousand-dollar job. On a lark, I took two switches with 10G-BASET interfaces and successfully brought up a 10Gigabit link across that Cat5e. I brought that link into production 6 months ago, and through that time have had less than 100 errors per link. Just incredible.

Scoundreller 8y ago
Thank you for testing out just how over-spec’d our world is. I recall making a very crude crossover cable by cutting and soldering wires together and still got 100mbit (as high as I could test, this was early 2000s I think).
- pkaye 8y ago
  There is an old show floor demo I've heard about where a bunch of barb wire is used to transmit Ethernet data. The crucial part was spacing the wires apart to get the right impedance. Don't recall what speed them were transmitting though.
  - CamperBob2 8y ago
    That goes back to the original demonstration of 10BaseT (10 Mbit). It blew everybody away, definitely one of the great Valley demos of all time. I want to say this was Bob Metcalfe, but not 100% sure he was involved.
- derefr 8y ago
  You and the GP poster might both live in a nice little RF-shielded part of "our world", mind you. A Cat 6 cable, like a "ruggedized" laptop or a mars rover, will work near sources of EM interference that would knock your regular cable (or computer, or robot) over dead. That's most of why they cost more. Though, mind you, right tool for the job—I'm surprised that everybody is talking about "getting perfect cables" for maximum interference-tolerance in business-critical applications, when what I'd expect the professionals here to be thinking in terms of is taking measurements of the local RF environment they're going to do cable runs in, and then using the cheapest thing that's within tolerance.

Scoundreller 8y ago

Thank you for testing out just how over-spec’d our world is. I recall making a very crude crossover cable by cutting and soldering wires together and still got 100mbit (as high as I could test, this was early 2000s I think).

pkaye 8y ago
There is an old show floor demo I've heard about where a bunch of barb wire is used to transmit Ethernet data. The crucial part was spacing the wires apart to get the right impedance. Don't recall what speed them were transmitting though.
- CamperBob2 8y ago
  That goes back to the original demonstration of 10BaseT (10 Mbit). It blew everybody away, definitely one of the great Valley demos of all time. I want to say this was Bob Metcalfe, but not 100% sure he was involved.
derefr 8y ago
You and the GP poster might both live in a nice little RF-shielded part of "our world", mind you. A Cat 6 cable, like a "ruggedized" laptop or a mars rover, will work near sources of EM interference that would knock your regular cable (or computer, or robot) over dead. That's most of why they cost more. Though, mind you, right tool for the job—I'm surprised that everybody is talking about "getting perfect cables" for maximum interference-tolerance in business-critical applications, when what I'd expect the professionals here to be thinking in terms of is taking measurements of the local RF environment they're going to do cable runs in, and then using the cheapest thing that's within tolerance.