I need to get some extra-long ethernet cables to run from an Apple airport router to a computer located across a small yard, so I need an outdoor for that purpose.
I also need extra-long inside the house.
I went to buy them on Ebay and immediately became overwhelmed. I did some research and learned that I should only need a Cat5, that’s for normal consumer-grade LANs.
But I don’t want to mess up… and there are other terms:
“patch” cable
“non-booted”
“RJ45”
“crossover”
Does any of that mean anything that I need to care about having or not having?
DON’T GET A CROSSOVER CABLE!!! It’s for IIRC connecting two computers together without a router. Two of the wires are crossed. Won’t work with a ‘typical’ home network setup.
RJ45 is the type of connector on the end. That’s what you want for network gear. RJ11 is the connector you see on a phone cord.
Non-booted, if I’m guessing correctly, means there isn’t a little rubber piece on the end of a jack to keep it from getting snagged on things. But that’s just a guess, I could be wrong.
You want a patch cable with RJ45 connectors. Cat5, Cat5e, Cat 6. Probably all fine. You’re running this outside, Cat 6 (again, IIRC) is a bit more rugged. Are you planning to bury this?
Depending on how long this is going to be, it may be cheaper to buy the cable and the ends separately and learn how to crimp an RJ45 jack onto the cable. It’s a bit of a PITA, but it can sometimes save money. Also, it means you can make smaller holes in anything you need to drill though.
RJ45 is the kind of connector used for Ethernet cables.
A patch cable is just a name for a cable.
Never heard of “non-booted”.
A crossover cable used to be required for connection between similar devices. Some of the pairs were flipped so you had “in’s” matching “out’s” where important (that’s oversimplification). However, all modern Ethernet cards figure out the connections with a straight or crossover cable, so that shouldn’t matter much.
That’s about all I know. Lengths are not unlimited; keep them as short as possible.
I don’t recommend making your own cables from scratch unless you are going into the communication business. Here’s a company that sells every kind of cable imaginable, really cheap:
RJ45 is the phone-type connector on the end of the cable. RJ45 connectors are wider than the typical RJ11 phone connector because RJ11s support up to 6 wires (most only use 4) but RJ45s handle 8. Although a cable with RJ11s will auto-center and click into an Ethernet connection, it won’t work for networking, as it doesn’t have enough wires.
Don’t use a crossover cable unless you are using equipment from the 80s or early 90s.
Although the term “patch cable” used to refer to a short cable for a patch panel, it’s used pretty much synonymously with “network cable” now, so it really tells you nothing.
For the record some booted cables are very stiff and difficult to get off but if you are just connecting and leaving the cable then it’s fine. You may the cable referred to as network, ethernet, patch or even an intranet cable but it all means the same thing, as long as the cable is rj45 male to male (and not a crossover) you will be fine.
I had a few parked domains. Turns out I parked them wrong, but since I rarely returned to them (they were on auto-renew via CC) I had no idea. I woke up one morning to telecommute and found the police had been by and booted my cable.
I’d buy a pair of crimpers and make the cables. See the color code.
There is a buriable Cat5, nasty to work with (it’s full of water proof grease) but it will work outside.
This isn’t particularly relevant to the OP, but folks claiming that crossover cables are somehow antiquated is a bit irksome to me. Do you need them at home? No - not usually (although their handy for transferring data directly between machines on occasion).
In an enterprise environment, they’re required (depending on the hardware in question, but I can’t think of a place I haven’t needed/seen them). Got a router-firewall-IDS-switch configuration? Need crossover cabling. Want the IDS to re-broadcast to itself (unusual, but it happens) - you probably need crossover cabling.
I have only 2 crossover cables, and no one is allowed to touch them. Because going to the store and asking for crossover cabling from the college dropout selling stuff at most big box stores gets them all confused. And I’m sick of holding the ends of the cable up and demonstrating where the colors are.
Sorry for the mini-rant. It’s 0330, and I’m somehow feeling defensive about my cabling.
Say I have 50 GB worth of data on my desktop that I want to transfer to my laptop. Go on, say it. I’ll wait.
I can either send both machines to look at the transfer directory of the NAS and copy/paste/copy/paste or if permissions are set right I can browse one machine from the other and copy. This sends the data across a Gigabit network–though sometimes it’s wireless (n).
Assuming it’s convenient at the time (e.g., I actually have a crossover cable on hand), would the data transfer likely be faster NIC to NIC? Is it likely that Windows 7 will automatically detect that I’ve plugged two computers together via the crossover cable and simply allow me to browse one from the other? Or would I need to install software/drivers and still need to set permissions and sharing?
Back in computer dark ages, I used to make all my cables, mostly to save money. But since you can now buy a complete cable for 51 cents, and it has molded ends and is probably sturdier and more reliable than one I could make myself, I can hardly justify breaking out the old crimper unless I can’t wait for overnight shipping.
From my experience and anecdotes of other techies, I don’t think modern (last 5 years?) Ethernet cards care if you use a crossover cable or not. They are smart enough to figure out where the signals should go and how to route them and work equally well with either kind of cable. Older equipment, not so much.
If a cable works, use it. It won’t work half-way, alter the speed or corrupt your data.
Theoretically, NIC to NIC is faster than thru a router, but it doesn’t always work that way in practice. I’d say either test both first or do what’s easiest for you.
Once you have two machines connected directly, you will have to map a drive letter to the other machine’s drive. I think the easiest way, since I’m assuming you don’t have a security problem during this operation, is to set up the source machine’s drive as fully shared from the root level. Then you should see it on the network and you can copy files just as if both drives were on the same machine.
50GB takes only a few minutes between my XP machines on a peer-to-peer Gigabit card.
I have always appreciated this poster that shows most PC connectors and other parts with names of them as well. Might help keep things clearer when you learn different names of types of gear used/needed. Maybe it’ll help seeing parts as well as reading about 'em…
I wouldn’t count on that. For consumer applications, perhaps, but, oddly enough, not for enterprise hardware.
It was about 2 years ago or so that I questioned my design engineers putting a brand new piece of hardware in why they were setting the switch ports to 10 meg/half duplex. Turns out they had questioned the vendor about it, and the vendor decided that since the port in question was just a management port, they saved a cent or two on the nic card that could only do 10 meg/half duplex.
Somehow, I doubt it can auto-sense crossovers either.
Cisco equipment will auto sense crossovers. I don’t know about other vendors but with Cisco’s newer stuff it is standard for at least PC to switch. It even has an acronym. Linky. If you stay on the same layer then you need a crossover. Or at least it was that way last time I checked.
Enterprise hardware would be things like a 6509. If you have one in your house you totally out geek me. And yes, they cost just a little bit more than $100. I own 12 of those at work and they are expensive little buggers.
I believe ALL recent (as in, last 4 or so years) Apple hardware can take standard or crossover ethernet cables without complaint (they are Auto MDIX or whatever it’s called) – part of their whole “it should just work” ethos, which coupled with the insane margins allowing for it, generally does actually work
Oh and +1 for monoprice, their prices are amazing; I put in an order every few months. I just got a pretty mobile windshield mount for an iphone for I think $4, figured well, low expectations for $4. It turns out to be pretty well made and fit perfectly. Yay!
Also +1 to the “don’t make your own cables”. At least not if you plan to run gigabit ethernet over them – I know what I’m doing and it’s still tricky to get gigabit-clean cables over long lengths. 10/100mbit, eh whatever, though.
