What drop in speed will I get with a long cable?

mingeroonie · 23 Sep 2006 at 08:48

Im thinking of moving my router which will mean running a cable about 30 metres from my pc to where it will soon be.
Will I lose much speed from my 3mb connection for this length?
Any advice appreciated

Locky · 23 Sep 2006 at 08:50

i would say yes

mayb not so much if you buy quality shielded twisted cable

dirtydog · 23 Sep 2006 at 09:29

No you shouldn't do - but it is obviously better to leave the router next to the master socket and use a long ethernet cable instead

There is no physical need to have the router in sight as you can configure it remotely of course.

mingeroonie · 23 Sep 2006 at 09:35

Yep, that's what I mean, the router will be going downstairs next to the amin socket, and I will then run a network cable upstairs to my pc.

Am I right in saying this is the wrong cable to go straight from router to pc?

Belkin Cat5e Network Crossover Patch Cable 30m - Grey (CB-135-BE)

And this would be the right one?
*competitor!*

shine · 23 Sep 2006 at 10:14

mingeroonie said:
And this would be the right one?
*competitor!* [/URL]

Yes, that is the kind of cable you would need.

dirtydog · 23 Sep 2006 at 11:07

Correct, do not get a crossover cable

garyh · 23 Sep 2006 at 12:30

smoove said:
Im confused, why is the other the wrong cable?

A crossover cable is used to connect PC-to-PC that's why; although most new routers are now capable of doing a software switch of the wires to enable you to use a crossover cable for PC-to-Router IIRC.

michael baxter · 23 Sep 2006 at 12:46

mingeroonie said:
Im thinking of moving my router which will mean running a cable about 30 metres from my pc to where it will soon be.
Will I lose much speed from my 3mb connection for this length?
Any advice appreciated

As already stated, use a regular ethernet cable (non-crossover).

Ethernet is good for 100+ meters, even at gigbit speeds. You won't need shielded cables unless you have a lot of electrical noise in the area, which I doubt you have! However, note that most ethernet will be 100Mbit/s, so you would need a serious problem for it to bottleneck your 3Mbit/s broadband!

My only other recommendation would be to avoid running the ethernet cable in parallel with your mains cables, but even then it will probably be robust.

Generally, ethernet is very robust!

Michael

mingeroonie · 23 Sep 2006 at 14:58

Cheers all, time to get the drill out and start drilling holes

iMacMart · 23 Sep 2006 at 17:28

mingeroonie said:
Cheers all, time to get the drill out and start drilling holes

You shouldn't have an issue with speed loss tbh when my company has under 60 or 90m we use CAT5e after that we use fibre

rpstewart · 25 Sep 2006 at 10:49

smoove said:
I'm still really confused to which cables I must be using, I bought bog standard cat5 cable of ebay and using them, how can I tell if they are cross over ones?

The easiest way is to look at the connectors at both ends, if you hold them with the wee tab pointing away from you then you should be able to see the colour of each of the cores. If both connectors have the core colours in the same order it's a straight through cable, if the order is different it's a cross over.

Red and White · 25 Sep 2006 at 10:53

do you lose a lot of speed by not using the master socket?

sorry for hijack

dirtydog · 25 Sep 2006 at 13:15

Clerkin said:
do you lose a lot of speed by not using the master socket?

sorry for hijack

It depends on the wiring in your home basically. The answer could be that you lose a lot or nothing at all. Try it and see

Psyk · 25 Sep 2006 at 15:04

The ethernet specifications say that a network cable should be no longer than 90m. So anything under that should make no difference at all, provided there are no other circumstances (like interference from power cables).