Length of cable's from Modem to Comp??

Shinto

Cheres Amis,

I'm planning on getting Broadband in my house. I would like to get Wired Broadband and was wondering...how long are the cables provided by the ISP's?...Are they sufficiently long for most people?

My main phone socket is in the kitchen, and i'll want to have the cable move from there through the hall, into the living room to my PC (a distance of about 10 metres). Is that an unreasonable distance?

p.s. I'm not technically minded so appoligies if this seems like a stupid question.

Sponge Bob

whats another 10 metres when you are 3000m from the exchange

dub45

Shinto wrote:

Cheres Amis,

I'm planning on getting Broadband in my house. I would like to get Wired Broadband and was wondering...how long are the cables provided by the ISP's?...Are they sufficiently long for most people?

My main phone socket is in the kitchen, and i'll want to have the cable move from there through the hall, into the living room to my PC (a distance of about 10 metres). Is that an unreasonable distance?

p.s. I'm not technically minded so appoligies if this seems like a stupid question.

If your isp supplies a wireless router/modem all you need is a wireless adapter for the pc either a card or a usb dongle and that will save having a cable going between rooms. If you dont want to try the wireless option you can pick up the appropriate length of cable in most computer shops.

It is reasonable to predict that no isp will supply you with an ethernet cable 10 M long.

watty

The supplied cable is usually about 1.5m to 2.5m for each of the phone and ethernet.

Ethernet is 100m MAXIMUM

Phone cable is 4000m or more.

Phone only needs Cat3. But you can extend it further on Cat6e

Sponge Bob

jayzus watty its only 10m

Shinto

SpongeBob, Watty, and Dub45.....thank you for your help.

I will most likely buy the appropriate length cable from my local computer shop (as i'd rather not go Wireless). I didn't know that i could easily buy extra cable, so now i'm happy. Merci.

watty

Sponge Bob wrote:

jayzus watty its only 10m

You never know who else might be wanting to extend a cable what with all the WiFi publicity.

Snaga

Sponge Bob wrote:

whats another 10 metres when you are 3000m from the exchange

All depends on the qualty of the cable/connectors etc...

Your far better off with a short phone cable run and a long ethernet run than the other way around.

Avoid long telephone cables if possible- as this tends to lead to coiling - which can cause fairly big problems to your lines dsl capability.

So either get one thats close enough to the right length - or leave the modem down near the phone and get yourself an ethernet cable from the modem to the pc.

watty

I'd disagree snaga. If you use Cat3 or Cat 5 twisted pair, you can have phone cable at a length that would stop Ethernet working without affecting the DSL at all. Coiling up of a cable always improves it as it attenuates common mode interference. Never affects the differential signal on the wires.

We used to have twisted pair and coax cables wound even on big transformer cores about 6" or 8" across to block earth loop hum.

Snaga

Good quality solid core cable (Cat3/Cat5) would likely be fine - just make sure that the cable that is bought for the job is one of the above (and not cheap braided stuff).

On the whole though DSL is far less tolerant of dodgy cables/connectors/filters/rf interference etc.. (even a few db extra attenuation can make an adsl line very unstable).

As a general practice its far better to reduce the phone line length and extend using ethernet (using cat5e/cat6 cable) or WiFi (a whole other story wrt to interference )

JNive

not really if you have a microwave oven near your router or PC, or if there are many other WiFi points in reach on the same or adjacent channels :-)

JohnnieM

surely there is No point in using a cat6 patch lead with cat5e router ports etc ..best to just buy a 10 mt cat5 patch cable..

Snaga

Theres no such thing as a "cat5e router port" - Cat5e is a cable standard - not a port/termination standard. (Your thinking of "rj-45" (or 8P8C)).

Your quite correct in that cat6 would be a bit of overkill. Cat5e would do the job just fine at a cheaper cost. (But sure - if you had some lying around )

Dankoozy

watty wrote:

The supplied cable is usually about 1.5m to 2.5m for each of the phone and ethernet.

Ethernet is 100m MAXIMUM

Phone cable is 4000m or more.

Phone only needs Cat3. But you can extend it further on Cat6e

for 1Gbit maybe. at 100mbit it can be up to 220 i think (from the manual of one of my LAN cards)

and 2.3Km for 10mbit

JohnnieM

Hi Snaga,
I know what you mean..
What i meant was that theres no point paying extra for a cat6 lead when everything else is cat5 100 mb standard.:)

watty

Dankoozy wrote:

for 1Gbit maybe. at 100mbit it can be up to 220 i think (from the manual of one of my LAN cards)

and 2.3Km for 10mbit

So why bother with DSL and ethernet repeaters?

I've never heard of professional installers running more than 100m of cable for twisted pair ethernet. I can't remember what the limit is on original vampire tapped thick ethernet coax at 10Mps (10Base5), so I looked it up, it's 500m. It's less on "cheapernet" the RG58 type coax that uses BNC instead of 15 pin D-connector on the NIC, 10Base2 is 185m.

Using Cat5 the spec for 10baseT is 100m. If you use Cat6 you might get 200m reliably.

The 100M and 1G is only speced for 100m. Cat5e and Cat6 are only needed for 1000BaseT, 1000BASE-TX needs Cat6 minimum.

Cat 5e cable does not enable longer cable distances for Ethernet networks: cables are still limited to a maximum of 100 m (328 ft) in length (normal practice is to limit fixed ("horizontal") cables to 90 m to allow for up to 5 m of patch cable at each end). Cat 5e cable performance characteristics and test methods are defined in TIA/EIA-568-B.2-2001.

Only 10BaseT can be extended by using Cat5e and Cat6 and there is disagreement as to the sense of it since people will likely connect 100BaseT at least.

Cat3 is fine for DSL, allowing in fact up to 9km

Shorter lengths of Cat3 can be used for 10baseT and 100BaseT, but with current cost of labour and Cat5e cable it never happens.

Cat5 is essentially an obsolete standard, probably all network cable today is at least Cat5e.

Kilometers for any copper ethernet is fantasy. You need fibre for Kms or else xDSL technology for copper.