Long cables & speed degradation

rymus

Got UTV dsl installed yesterday and was flying along at full whack, downloading at approx 54k/sec (about 5-7pm). Left the laptop connected when I went out and when I came back I could barely get a download over 10k/sec. This ran from about 8pm to 1am. At about 2am I decided to try something a little different and moved the laptop & modem downstairs next to the phone socket. I had been using one of those eircom 50ft phone extension cords all day. When I plugged in to the phone socket using the shorter cable supplied with the modem I noticed that downloads were back up to 54k and browsing was flying again.

My somewhat overly paranoid question is... was this just contention kicking in or was it my mammoth 50 footer? Another thing I noticed (which may or may not be important) is that the speed in the connection properties dropped from 8Mbps to 512Kbps when I got back home.

The real question behind this is; as I'm getting a modem & wireless router combo package towards the end of the week, will speed degradation be a problem over a 60-70ft length of CAT5 cable from the modem downstairs (next to the phone socket) to the router upstairs?

Ba$tard

Yes, the phone cable length will be an issue, as phone cable is very poor at doing long length when it is not twisted pair (what eircom use) and not terminated correctly.

What I decided to do ages ago is when I do finally get DSL, is to make sure I get an ethernet DSL modem. I will leave the DSL modem at the closest point to the first telecom terminal in the house and then run RJ45 to the computer room upstairs.

Cat-5 RJ45 can do 300feet without interference. Even if you DID get interference, the interface from your DSL modem to your computer is either running at 10meg or 100meg depending on your NIC/Modem, so even if you do get RF interference, you will still be way beyond what the DSL pipe can supply to you, i.e. no performance degradations.

James.

Lex_Diamonds

Well ive got a 50 foot cable running upstairs and it doesnt affect my dsl at all. There was also some maintenance going on in certain exchanges at the time you mentioned, so it might have been that?

bizmark

i also have a 50ft line and it doesnt effect my speed's

Ba$tard

I have gone thru this before...
My first ext lead affected my 56k speeds, by dropping them as much as 40k
Second more expensive one drops me currently to 46k

If I bring my laptop to phone socket, I get 50k.

Suppose depends on layout and level of RF interference one's particular house.