On Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 11:21 AM, Alan Dayley wrote: > If this were a casual situation, we might do what you suggest. But > using a cable that is too long is known to be a source of intermittent > and odd problems. In this situation we'd rather do it right once and > not worry about errors happening when we least want them. > > This is a pretty good if not detailed explanation of the length limit: > http://www.duxcw.com/faq/network/cablng.htm > > Basically, as I understand it, when the Ethernet sender ships out the > packet it will wait for an acknowledge from the destination. The > signals running through the cable are very, very fast but are not > instant to the other end. When the cable is too long, the sender > could declare a time out on the acknowledge and resend before the > destination gets the packet. Collisions or other problems could then > ensue. So, theoretically, it does not matter much how "good" the > cable is because the limit is based propagation of the signals. Also -- with long cables you get noise on the cable called cross talk (NEXT & FEXT). The cross talk is worse on a long cable at 100Mbps or Gigabit speeds. If you are running half duplex, you will get late collisions on a 'too long' cable that would cause noticeable packet loss or packet delay that will show up as frame drops in a video feed. A switch is a really good solution. Please make sure to use Full Duplex for the smoothest packet flows. Fiber is a good solution if you had to go a lot further, but there are higher costs with that. From my POV, Cat 6 and Cat 6e are just marketing terms. However, the cost of copper cable is usually small compared to the labor costs of installation. P.S. In a casual situation 10Mbps/Full would probably work fine with a good installation of Cat5e. --------------------------------------------------- PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss