Extending an ethernet cable?

[ChrisR]

Our family PC was connected to our router via a 10m ethernet cable that snaked its way round the walls. When we had new carpets, the layers offered to tuck it under the carpet, sounded like a good idea. But in the process, it's about a metre too short to connect to the PC! Is it possible to extend an ethernet cable, via some sort of female/mail cable?

 

[Box Brownie]

FWIW

ethernet cable extender - Google Search

 

[ChrisR]

OMG I'm sorry, I really should have done that search first! I think I got it into my head that it wasn't possible, then thought I'd check with the "folk who know things" on here! Thanks.

What it does to throughput is I guess another question.

The immediate prompt for the question was spending an hour or so today wrestling with getting the Wifi adapter to recognise our network properly. It's been fine for a year or so (since the carpet) then suddenly bombed. Restart seems to have fixed it for now, but maybe (I'll buy one of those adapters and cable just in case...

 

[Mr Bump]

yup just a cheapo rj45 fem to fem will do it no dramas

 

[Mozthecat]

If they are made to standard they won’t do much to throughput.

In a properly wired commercial environment (e.g office, shop or factory) a connection will go through a few plugs and sockets, and these extenders are only adding one additional to your setup.

 

[Snapsh0t]

To get from upstairs workroom to dining room here is
cable
wall socket - cable - wall socket
link cable
wall socket - cable - wall socket
cable

All standard Cat5e and I get 2.5Gb/s without any problems. You might need to worry if you had a couple hundred metres of cable but some proper connectors in a few tens of metres won't matter at all. I did once do a job in a government department in Whitehall where the in-house cabling team had tried to extend a Cat5 cable by soldering the wires and were most offended when we laughed.....

 

[AndrewFlannigan]

...and were most offended when we laughed.....

I learned very early on: never upset Civil Service techies; they. like wizards, are subtle and possess many varied ways in which to take their revenge!

 

[Stephen L]

I learned very early on: never upset Civil Service techies; they. like wizards, are subtle and possess many varied ways in which to take their revenge!

As in BOFH!

 

[AndrewFlannigan]

As in BOFH!

Haven't visited The Register for a while. Must drop in and find out what he's up to.

 

[steve_lyt]

I setup a few different 8 way swithes , and connect them together, it works fine.

 

[ecoleman]

To get from upstairs workroom to dining room here is
cable
wall socket - cable - wall socket
link cable
wall socket - cable - wall socket
cable

All standard Cat5e and I get 2.5Gb/s without any problems. You might need to worry if you had a couple hundred metres of cable but some proper connectors in a few tens of metres won't matter at all. I did once do a job in a government department in Whitehall where the in-house cabling team had tried to extend a Cat5 cable by soldering the wires and were most offended when we laughed.....

I've soldered cat 5 cables before.

I used to look after the network for our local VW/Audi dealerships in SA. I'd installed a network a few years back when they had moved into their new building and had a couple of truck cables from the lower sales ares to upper services level in trucking which was eventually covered with tiles .

They were remodelling as per Audi specs and the server room had to be moved, running new cables would have been a real pain in the backside. With very limited space inline punch down boxes or connectors was impossible so soldering was the only other option. They never had a problem.

I did manage to get a cable hooked on a ladder though while pulling it through in another area causing the ladder to come crashing down on the bonnet of a brand new Audi. Cost me a bit of money that did.

 

[AndrewFlannigan]

I did manage to get a cable hooked on a ladder though while pulling it through in another area causing the ladder to come crashing down on the bonnet of a brand new Audi. Cost me a bit of money that did.

Cableology!

A site I worked at a few years before I retired, had a 300 yard piece of ordinary CAT5 strung between two buildings, over a space frequented by 40 ton artics. I constantly expected something to tear it down but it was still swinging in the wind when I left. Fortune often does favour the foolish!

 

[Jelster]

Cableology!

A site I worked at a few years before I retired, had a 300 yard piece of ordinary CAT5 strung between two buildings, over a space frequented by 40 ton artics. I constantly expected something to tear it down but it was still swinging in the wind when I left. Fortune often does favour the foolish!

When Easynet had their first office in Goodge St, London, the owner was also a director of the "Cyberia" Cyber cafe opposite. So as we had a 10GB link directly to the Internet coming into the office, we ran a pair of cat 5 cables across the road from about 4 floors up. Cyberia now had super fast access which was FOC. This was back in 1996......

 

[Snapsh0t]

As in BOFH!

I had a BOFH email address at most places I worked was employed over the last thirty years.

 

[ChrisR]

Thanks for the help folks. I ordered a couple of cat 6 sockets with a half meter cable attached, plugged one end in (the other juuuuust reached already), rebooted and all worked fine! Dodgy wifi adapter switched off now. Thank you very much! (I also enjoyed the other stories... I was involved in commissioning ethernet installations back when there were two sockets at every point, with a cable loop between, and two cables to your adapter... tracing sudden faults when someone forgot to reconnect everything properly and shut off everyone on that subnet was a physical trek!).

 

[ecoleman]

Thanks for the help folks. I ordered a couple of cat 6 sockets with a half meter cable attached, plugged one end in (the other juuuuust reached already), rebooted and all worked fine! Dodgy wifi adapter switched off now. Thank you very much! (I also enjoyed the other stories... I was involved in commissioning ethernet installations back when there were two sockets at every point, with a cable loop between, and two cables to your adapter... tracing sudden faults when someone forgot to reconnect everything properly and shut off everyone on that subnet was a physical trek!).

Ahh, you talking about the old Coaxial cable ethernet daisy chained to each PC with T-Piece ? I remember doing those. Real pain in the arse when somebody, somewhere had unplugged the wrong connector and broken the chain. Brought the entire network down

 

[Tringa]

Ahh, you talking about the old Coaxial cable ethernet daisy chained to each PC with T-Piece ? I remember doing those. Real pain in the arse when somebody, somewhere had unplugged the wrong connector and broken the chain. Brought the entire network down

Hehe, that took me back.

Many years ago and knowing no better a couple of us in an office wanted to move the PCs so we unplugged the T pieces! The, then fairly new, computing section were a bit miffed.

Dave

 

[Faldrax]

Ahh, you talking about the old Coaxial cable ethernet daisy chained to each PC with T-Piece ? I remember doing those. Real pain in the arse when somebody, somewhere had unplugged the wrong connector and broken the chain. Brought the entire network down

I remember lugging PC's round a friends house so 3 or 4 of us could play a multi-player game using a little network using those things - connect it all up, and hope it worked (when it failed, rebuild and try again...)
RJ45 and hubs (switched were far to expensive at first!) made things so much quicker and more reliable!

 

[ecoleman]

I remember lugging PC's round a friends house so 3 or 4 of us could play a multi-player game using a little network using those things - connect it all up, and hope it worked (when it failed, rebuild and try again...)
RJ45 and hubs (switched were far to expensive at first!) made things so much quicker and more reliable!

We did a number of Quake Lan parties. Late nights and huge hangovers in the morning

 

[AndrewFlannigan]

We did a number of Quake Lan parties. Late nights and huge hangovers in the morning

I never did those things.

My excuse was "someone has to be sober to tackle the fault log in the morning". Worked like a charm in getting people to cover, if I wanted to get away early on Fridays...

 

[Stephen L]

Ahh, you talking about the old Coaxial cable ethernet daisy chained to each PC with T-Piece ? I remember doing those. Real pain in the arse when somebody, somewhere had unplugged the wrong connector and broken the chain. Brought the entire network down

Yes, I was working on bank support then with just such systems, and getting someone in the Western Isles to understand my Lancashire accent was entertaining to the other technicians. And getting them to bypass a terminal to trouble-shoot ... well. If they couldn't do it it meant a flight out from Edinburgh.

 

[Phil V]

What it does to throughput is I guess another question.

Nothing
The mechanical connection is solid, the thing that reduces the signal is cable length, and off the top of my head 100m is where it starts to get flaky

 

[hunnymonster]

100m is the spec length. Depending on the cable in use *and* the equipment at either end I've seen 130-135 work but you cannot rely on more than 100.

If you need more that 100, use a pair to f media converters & fibre.

If you're spanning between two buildings (especially if they are different equipotential zones) use fibre & media converters - forget the exact IET regulation something like 4.4.9 from memory

 

[AndrewFlannigan]

100m is the spec length. Depending on the cable in use *and* the equipment at either end I've seen 130-135 work but you cannot rely on more than 100.

As I've learned the hard way, there's specified maximum run distance and there's "I'm sure it will be OK" run distance.

Just don't be on call, when someone finds out that it wasn't OK...

 

[Phil V]

100m is the spec length. Depending on the cable in use *and* the equipment at either end I've seen 130-135 work but you cannot rely on more than 100.

If you need more that 100, use a pair to f media converters & fibre.

If you're spanning between two buildings (especially if they are different equipotential zones) use fibre & media converters - forget the exact IET regulation something like 4.4.9 from memory

I used to do IT support in a large building where the architect decided that it’d be ok to build just one comms room right on the middle.
Right at the end of the top floor, the floor boxes were already over 100m, but I could never get one of our team to understand that and not chuck a 10m cable to a desk when a 2m one would fit. The users couldn’t understand why I slagged him off every time he’d done some ‘cabling’ and they couldn’t get a reliable connection.

 

[Faldrax]

I used to do IT support in a large building where the architect decided that it’d be ok to build just one comms room right on the middle.
Right at the end of the top floor, the floor boxes were already over 100m, but I could never get one of our team to understand that and not chuck a 10m cable to a desk when a 2m one would fit. The users couldn’t understand why I slagged him off every time he’d done some ‘cabling’ and they couldn’t get a reliable connection.

Worst thing I ran into like that was back in the days of dial up access - we had a number of suppliers who would use out software to dial into our systems to upload orders, send invoices, etc.
One suddenly started complaining that it was now horribly unreliable after an update, and would keep corrupting the data (and insisted that the update was the only thing that had changed)
We couldn't figure out what was going on, so my manager did a site visit to try and sort it out.
When he got to the office he found they had moved the desk that PC was on - from beside the phone socket, to the middle of the room, and had a phone extension cable training across the floor.
And the the plug at the wall end was missing the little springy bit of plastic that keeps is securely in place - so every time someone walked across the room, the plug jiggled about in the socket, playing havoc with the connection!
The desk was back in it's original place by the time he left their office!