So I’ve recently moved into a townhouse, and I got my internet hooked up yesterday. Currently, I’m running everything over WiFi. It worked ok, until I tried streaming a HD video from the desktop computer upstairs. It was pretty choppy. I think its a wifi bandwidth or interference issue, so I’m thinking I should wire up the computer upstairs if I want this to work.
Now, I have a coax cable running from the exact spot where my cable internet comes in, right throgh the roof to my bedroom, which is right above the living room. But I don’t have a coax network card and the router doesn’t accept 10base2. Near as I can tell, I have four options.
Use the existing coax wire to snake a new 10baseT through the existing hole. I think I can fit the plug end through the hole, but I can’t guarantee it, and then I’m out the cost of the cable for nothing. I don’t have any tools to crimp a new 10baseT plug on.
Pay someone to do number two. With the right tools and a big spool of wire, it would probably be a five minute job.
Replace the crappy router with a cable modem built in that they setup with a dedicated cable modem and a higher end wireless router. Fuck the wires.
Any suggestions about this? If I go with option two, it probably would require a 50 foot wire. Money is tight, but I can swing a little cash to watch my HD movies on the bigass TV downstairs instead of at my desk. Anyone have any experience with something like this?
Option 2.5 -
Buy a crimp tool for $6.29 on ebay, and pull the wire yourself. That’s going to be a lot cheaper than any coax-to-ethernet adapter, and you’ll be happier with the performance.
Nothing beats good clean runs of Cat 5e or Cat 6. Buy a coil, some connectors and a crimper and do it all yourself. Wireless for video is half-assed and problematic, even when you have a wired Unifi puck ten feet from the video stack. Just one more layer to screw things up.
I clicked on the eBay link to scoff at what a $7 crimper looked like.
It turned out to look nearly exactly the same as my $50 one.
What everyone else said. Get a tool and learn to crimp. The hard part is getting the wires in the right order and making sure they are all the way down into the connectors.
Once you know how to do it and have the tools, you’ll wonder how you ever got along without it.
I learned how to do CAT 5 cable, by looking it up on the internet and buying the supplies I needed.
Assembling and crimping the wire is a breeze. I have never had a homemade cable fail yet. Knock on wood.
Several cat5 cables that came in a box with a modem or router, have gone in the trash due to some manufacturing defect.
The hardest part is finding an appropriate place to drill holes, fish wires, and retrieve said wires, without making a terrible mess. Luckily I had a planter hook in the same area so I just put up a fake plant to sorta hide the wire that came out about 8 inches from the wall.
Option 2.5.5. Purchase tool-less cat 5 or cat 6 keystone jacks from Monoprice.com and install proper female jacks where you need them and attach them via patch cables to your devices.
Keystone jacks look much nicer and if you have a spool of cable you can cut the exact length you need instead of having 8 extra feet coiled up under the desk or something. Before buying a crimper, check amazon for spools. They often come with a crimper.
Having tried these, I would advise against using them. The holes that allow the wires to pass through also weaken the part. My experience with them was ~30% failure rate (and lots of headaches).
10 base 2 requires a 50 Ohm cable. It won’t work to have 50 Ohm circuit boards connected to 75 Ohm coax - I tried it. Well it is possible, but there are limitations. Carrier and collision detect stops working… I did get it working, as a uniplex media… We wanted uniplex media for the train… each coax had one transmitter only and one receiver only. Each carriage had a computer to relay from the downstream carriage , mix in the current carriage and send on to the upstream carriage. )
Your option 1 required a 75 Ohm cable, because its aim is to upgrade an analog video cam to IP without replacing the cable.
As you are in a townhouse, this is what I would do: download a free wireless survey app from Apple App Store or from Google Play. Then, run it. See how many other people have wireless and at what channels and see how many other networks are using your same channel. The solution might be as simple as going from WiFi channel 1 to 6 or to 11, etc.
If changing to a different channel does not do it, then, look at cabled solutions. Start with “free” first.
Weird, really? I have used this a tool like this in an actual production environment and never had a problem. It was a Platinum Tools EZ-RJPRO HEAVY DUTY Crimp Tool and I used their branded connectors. I had made, literally, a thousand or so cables and never had an issue. I did also use quality CAT5e and CAT6 cable, I have noticed more issues arising from sub-standard cable then anything else.
It could very well be the quality of the tool. Those “knock-offs” don’t last too long and are just frustrating in the end.
If your devices are capable of 802.11a, then get a router which will also do 802.11a. That is the 5Ghz form of wireless (normal is 2.4Ghz). It is likely to have much less interference than regular wifi; I would be surprised if you can detect any other 5Ghz networks in your area. You will also typically get faster speed out of the 5Ghz than 2.4Ghz. For example, in my free standing house with very little 2.4Ghz interference, I peak out at about 9MB/s on 2.4Ghz and 17MB/s on 5Ghz.
This is obviously only a solution if your computing devices are capable of 5Ghz. For example, if you’re streaming to an iPhone 4S, then 5Ghz is not an option. If you do decide to do this, then make sure you get a wireless router which is dual band and can simultaneously broadcast on both frequencies. That way you can, for example, connect with your iPhone 4S at 2.4Ghz and stream at high speed to your 5Ghz connected Ipad 4.
All of that being said, there is no substitute for an ethernet cable. I recently ran a cable around my house, and I intend to do another one pretty soon. Get a drill bit which can go all the way through the wall. It won’t be terribly expensive and will save you the frustration of trying to get holes to line up from opposite sides. Also, you can use the little plastic plugs and silicon caulk to seal the holes. On the inside walls, put proper outlets in the wall that look nice, rather than just cables sticking through holes in the drywall.
WiFi is “iffy” at higher speeds, particularly in areas with lots of competing wireless systems (your neighbors).
5GHz has less congestion (now - that may change in the future as more people adopt it), but won’t go through walls as far as 2.4GHz. Plus, you may need new wireless adapters, which can be a pain in some notebooks.
It’s the wrong kind of coax, anyway. It’s 75 Ohm cable TV wire, while 10base2 Ethernet uses 50 Ohm cable. However…
When DirecTV added Ethernet to their boxes, they ran into this same problem. They came out with a device (called a DECA) which converts 100Mbit/sec full-duplex Ethernet to cable TV coax - no speed loss at all. You can add more than 2 DECAs to create a larger network, but the total speed is still limited to 100Mbit.
Since they use a lot of these, the price is quite low and they’re also available used - check eBay, etc. For a standalone system you’ll need 2 DECAs and a power injector. I believe the “Cinema connection kit” includes 1 DECA and the power injector, as well as some cables.
Places like Solid Signal or WeaKnees should have the instructions online if you want to see what you’d be getting into before buying.
If you do this for a living (or it is a large part of your job, anyway), look at the GMP Modular Plug Presser. It is NOT cheap, but is (IMHO) the best tool in the industry. They’re incredibly expensive new ($250 and up, depending on configuration) but they occasionally show up on places like eBay. There’s one there now opening at $50. Not my listing, no relation to the seller, yadda, yadda.
I was actually going through AMP hand tools every 5,000 crimps or so, and my AMP rep was the one who suggested switching to GMP. This was years before Tyco, of course.
It is VERY important to note that any compatibility between one brand of crimper and a different brand of plug is pure coincidence (and unlikely!) unless that is specifically called out in the plug’s description. Trying to mix and match will result in unsatisfactory crimps at the best, and damage to the tool/die in many cases.
I can’t see what the advantage of such a connector would be. After making 5 or 10 crimps you’ll be able to judge the correct wire length by sight, before inserting it into the connector.
