cat-5

[Michael Butash]

Mike,

  Trick is the wires have to be twisted throughout to minimize
interference, doing so at the ends won't help.  Newer standards like
cat6 and higher have internal dividers to reduce crosstalk between
twisted pairs even, and cat7 makes use of individually shielded twisted
pairs to all together remove possibility of crosstalk (assuming you
terminate them properly too).  Consistency is the key for minimizing
physical modulation problems on the line.  You're fighting an uphill
battle trying to coerce cat3 to work for networking, best relegate it
analog voice only.

  I'm with Trent that you're probably money ahead to just buy some cat5e
(at least) somewhere, especially if you need patch cables.  Or if you
have some time, you find good deals on cable from ebay or other online
retailers, far better than going to fry's electronics and overpaying for
their crap.  I sniped an expensive 1000ft roll of high-quality bertek
cat6 off ebay for 80 bucks shipped a while ago, so you can find good
deals.  I bought several 1000ft rolls of generic shielded cat6 recently
for 150 each shipped, but this is far more quality than you probably
need, and I've seen them cheaper since.  Roughly a hundred bucks should
buy you a 1000ft roll of unshielded cat6 that'll last you ages, and
futureproof since gigabit gear has come down in price significantly.  At
least until your friends find out you have bulk cable.  :)

-mb


On Thu, 2009-07-23 at 18:18 -0400, mike havens wrote:
> Will  twisting it at the ends  (so the tswists go under the sheath)
> fix this?
> 
> On Thu, Jul 23, 2009 at 4:55 PM, Technomage
> <technomage.hawke at gmail.com> wrote:
>         mike havens wrote:
>         > all I need it for is patch cables... and telephone cables.
>         Why doesn't
>         > crosstalk affect the telephone signal?
>         >
>         >
>         
>         most PSTN signalling is of low bandwidth (especially on the
>         "last mile"
>         run). now DSL is kind of an
>         exception to this (except you need line filters on your phones
>         to keep
>         from hearing the "static" of the modem.
>         
>         you can probably get away with 10BaseT signalling on cat 3,
>         but because
>         of how the cable itself is wound
>         (turns per foot, etc) your max length will be very limited.
>         100BaseT is
>         not recommended at all owing to
>         the large about of bandwidth used (typically greated that 200
>         Mhz wide)
>         and cat 3 cable will
>         act as an antenna at lengths longer than about 18 inches.
>         
>         
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> 
> 
> -- 
> :-)~MIKE~(-:
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