s it safe to “hot swap” an ethernet connection like you can with USB, or does everything have to be powered down? What about if the computer in question is in sleep mode? Do the same considerations apply to unplugging the cable as to plugging it in?
More ethernet questions. Am I right in thinking that longer distance ethernet connections (several yards) require higher quality cable and can get quite expensive? Also, is heat a problem for ethernet data transmission? (Specifically, I am contemplating running a cable close to a radiator that gets pretty hot. It may not be possible to avoid having the cable touch the radiator or its pipe at one point.)
I plug and unplug the ethernet connection on my laptop daily, with it powered on, for several years at least. Hasn’t been a problem at all. I’ve done it plenty with my desktop or at the router, again without problems.
Longer cords aren’t expensive at all. The standard cables can run several hundred feet without needing anything special. I’ve got a few 25 and 50 foot cords lying around, and I don’t think I spent more than $10 for them. ETA: Don’t believe anything a Best Buy salesdrone says about cables. They’ll try to convince you that you need the $50 cable that has special fairy dust.
Heat could well be an issue, if the radiator is hot enough to melt or degrade the insulation.
It’s safe to hot-swap at all times. Temperature-wise, a heater probably won’t hurt it. There should be a temperature rating on the cable jacket that you can check.
You might consider “plenum” rated cable. It has a different type of jacket designed to be more heat resistant and to not emit poisonous gases when it heats/burns.
Ethernet was designed from the outset to be hot plugged.
The cable used for Ethernet is typically CAT-5, but may be CAT-5e or CAT-6. These designations provide guarantees about the loss through the cable, and various other parameters. There is no magic or special nature beyond this. 100Mb/s will run for a hundred meters over CAT-5, and that is the lowest rating cable. Gigabit needs CAT-5e or CAT-6. About the only thing you get with different cables is better QA on the putting the plugs on the ends.
All perfectly safe, as has been stated above. But what prompts the question? Is anyone claiming otherwise? Is someone still promoting Token Ring (shudder) or something?
We have some pretty long runs in the house/office, relatively speaking; three floors down and back up two with some horizontal distance as well. There are a couple switches in the runs too, if that changes anything. All equipment is Gigabit-capable. I went with Cat-6 because I was in a bit of a hurry, wanted to be sure I wouldn’t need to re-run in five years if it was needed, and because the overall price difference wasn’t that significant.
No. I just didn’t know, and I do know that lots of connection types cannot be hot swapped, though a few can.
I saw some advice (I think on this board) recently, that it is really not a good a good idea to hot swap HDMI, even though, according to specification, it should be hot-swappable. I wanted to be sure about the ethernet (and this board is full of you guys who really know this stuff).
I’ve used a 3 foot ethernet cable and a 50 foot ethernet cable on the same computer/connection before, and didn’t notice a difference in connection speed. And I game, so I always monitor my latency. I ran the 50 foot cable out a window and down to another floor over a cold weekend, too, and didn’t notice any issues.
Heat is a problem if it would melt the cable, of course.
Hot-swapping is fine for ethernet. The only thing that shouldn’t be hot-swapped in my experience is an external disk (like an external hard drive, or when connecting your ipod or kindle to the usb port).
Some of the newer devices that do not have a separate power cord, bt are powered via the USB connection are problematic – hot pulling the USB connection cuts off the power to the disk, and if it is still rotating, there could be problems. They should have crash protection & head landing zones, but those don’t always work.
Disks nowadays autopark when powered off, so cuting power has not, for years, been a problem for disks.
Ethernet CAT5 works for any speed up to 1GB. Cat5e or CAT6 will work better (i.e. longer distances). Generally though, the connection either works or it does not. There are no “quality” issues.
The only issue iwth distance I have run across - people making their own connections and patch cords. I saw someone once who did not know the pairs on the plug go 1-2, 3-6, 4-5, 7-8. This guy crimped the crystal ends 1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7-8 and as a result, the nearby stations worked, but beyond about 15 feet, the fact that the transmit or receive +/- did not twist around each other meant the losses were too high and the signal failed.
I did once see something in the days of 386’s and 486’s with 3C509 network cards and 10Mbps. (The good old days) A run was interrupted in the middle with a patch panel and jumper cords; possibly this plus the total length pushing the limit of 100m meant that the signal was erratic - sometimes it worked, sometimes not. A disk on the network would appear, then disappear, network directory list would appear slowly if at all. Sometimes packets went through after multiple retries, sometimes they failed. Putting a switch in the middle eliminated the problem.
Hardware-wise, as everyone has already said, it’s safe. Software-wise is a different matter. If you are doing something over the network, then that may well fail, even if you are very quick.
