UTP cables: how sensitive?

[menards]

I just bought 20 meters of UTP (CAT-5) cable with RJ45 connectors.

At first I thought it was a Router problem, but then I switched to my old 1 meter long cable and the internet worked perfectly.

I also noticed that when I inserted the 20meters to the jack port, it didn't light up.

So I checked the cable if it had any extreme bends and I figured if I could straighten them out it would work.

After doing so, I insert the other end to the router--- the router light blinks! then is gone again. I tried to repeat but with no success.

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Athlon64 Newcastle, 2800+, 640KB Cache, 1800 MHz
MSI K8M Neo-V, VIA K8M800 + 8237 chipset
Sapphire Atlantis Radeon 9600 256MB

 

[fishmahn]

20m is nowhere near the limit for UTP Ethernet (200m is the spec, IIRC).

Sounds like there's a break in one or more of the wires somewhere along the line, or one of the connectors isn't making good contact with the wires in the cable.

If you have a multimeter, you can possibly test continuity by shorting any 2 pins on one end, and checking on the other with the meter. Repeat for the other 3 pairs.

Or take the easy way - return for replacement.

Mike.

<font color=blue>Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside the dog its too dark to read.
-- Groucho Marx</font color=blue>

 

[Guest]

Its 100 meters!!!
Altough running at 10mps you can go much further...

Cabels are pretty solid but Extremely bent can break a UTP...

Asus P4P800DX, P4C 2.6ghz@3.25ghz, 2X512 OCZ PC4000 3-4-4-8, MSI 6800Ultra stock, 2X30gig Raid0

 

[fishmahn]

Hmmm... somewhere in my skull is a 200m (600ft actually) limit... aaahhh!! Coax! (Heh, see how long I've been playing with networks...)

Thanks for the correction and memory refresher. Glad it doesn't change the analysis of the problem.

Mike.

<font color=blue>Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside the dog its too dark to read.
-- Groucho Marx</font color=blue>

 

[Guest]

Hehe yeah its COax THinNet and I think ThickNEt is 500 meters if im not mistaken.

ANd yes doesnt change anything...

But as I told you at work we have a cable almost 200meters long and its running below 10mbps speed and the signal is ubber weak but its working =)

Asus P4P800DX, P4C 2.6ghz@3.25ghz, 2X512 OCZ PC4000 3-4-4-8, MSI 6800Ultra stock, 2X30gig Raid0

 

[fishmahn]

You're probably right on thicknet, I never had to deal with it.

Nice run! At one job I had a run (only about 10m) of 10BaseT that was 'silver satin' cable (8-wire phone line) - no twists, no shielding, nuttin'... For some reason, Cat3 just wouldn't work there, but silver satin would...

Then there's all the fun things I used to do with ArcNet networks - or plain old serial data - that weren't spec, but worked...

Anyways...

Mike.

<font color=blue>Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside the dog its too dark to read.
-- Groucho Marx</font color=blue>

 

[menards]

hmm I got it to work.

I reversed what jack goes where. Does that matter? I had a router-to-pc cable made.

-------------------------------------------------
Athlon64 Newcastle, 2800+, 640KB Cache, 1800 MHz
MSI K8M Neo-V, VIA K8M800 + 8237 chipset
Sapphire Atlantis Radeon 9600 256MB

 

[riser]

Cat5e limit is around 285ft but Cat6 can run up to 700ft or so. That's the only true benefit of Cat6 that I know of over Cat5e.

 

[fishmahn]

It shouldn't matter which end goes where...[/shrug]

Glad it works.

Mike.

<font color=blue>Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside the dog its too dark to read.
-- Groucho Marx</font color=blue>