Router Problems

[Bob Williams]

My Cat 6 was bought made up and fitted across the loft by No.2 gson. The only problem was getting the ends through the corners between ceiling and walls, then into trunking. It is thick as you say, but across the loft trusses that does not matter. Wrapped, not tightly, by insulating tape across the beams, was enough to secure it.

There is no way that I would contemplate fitting terminals to Cat6. I have done so with Cat 5e in shorter lengths in the past.

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

[Ed P]

Your No2 Grandson is obviously experienced in making up Cat 6, as Dave notes it is nowhere near as simple as running  Cat 5e. Glad it works well for you, but do note the caveats in the links i attached earlier – never sharply bend or stress the RJ45 ends as they are far less forgiving than Cat 5e.

[Dave Rice]

Cat 6 needs specific crimping tools and RJ45 plugs because it’s thicker. I do not own either.

For any RJ45 plug you should also be using a strain relief boot to avoid an over tight bend unless you absolutely cannot. Some equipment, like APs, don’t have the room to accommodate them but they contain the last inch or more of the cable inside themselves so do the same job. Getting cables around bends and through restricted spaces is where it’s all at.

If anyone wants to put themselves through the extra pain and expense of Cat 6 then good luck to you, but you’ll gain absolutely nothing.

[Tippon]

Now that some ISPs offer gigabit fibre, would it be worth installing in a new build or refurb?

Don’t worry, I’m not planning on doing it, so you’re not going to get a million and one it’s gone wrong questions  :wacko:

[Ed P]

If you were designing and building a new house from scratch for yourself  you might well include house-wide utility ducting and install Cat6 to future-proof it and give super-fast broadband (5K TV?) throughout the house.

A person I know is doing a new house development (for sale) and although all the infrastructure ducting is going in, it will only be Cat5e that is installed. High speed wired broadband throughout the home is a selling point, 5K TV outlets are not quite there as yet! As pointed out Cat6 is more expensive both in terms of cable and installation.

[Dave Rice]

Nope. Cat 5e is perfectly good for Gigabit. Gigabit (1000BASE-T) is nothing new, it came into use in 1999 and Cat 6 wasn’t defined until 2002. There is even a 2016 standard 802.3bz that defines 2.5 Gbit/s up to at least 100 m of Cat 5e.

The only reason ISPs use fibre is distance. It’s the need to increase the distance of new speed standards that push the cable specs. It’s 10GbE that pushed Cat 6, not 1000BASE-T. That 802.3bz standard I mentioned allows for 5Gbit/s on Cat 6, but when are you going to need such speeds at home?

The home is all about wireless these days anyway. If you’re looking to get infrastructure in IMO it’s 802.11AC standard you should be looking at. Granted, like me, it’s going to involve some Cat 5e somewhere but as a backbone not to a wall socket.

[Tippon]

Cool, thanks both  :good:

Dave: I was thinking more for future proofing, but now you’ve said it, wireless makes much more sense

[Ed P]

My mistake substitute 8K Ultra-high-definition television for 5K (probably there will be no 5K), 8K runs at 120fps and requires a bandwidth of 48Gbps. Apparently the Japanese think this will be the next thing after 4K and not many years hence! (look up 8K UHDTV if you are interested). You would REALLY be future proofing your house if you designed around that!

[Dave Rice]

There won’t be the broadcasting resources. Apparently the Japanese have managed to transmit UDHTV a whole 2.6 miles over UHF.

“After compression (NHK has developed a special codec for Super Hi-Vision), the entire stream clocks in at around 500Mbps. To put this into perspective, a 1080p TV channel signal (over the air) is around 10Mbps. The new 802.11ac WiFi standard can reach similar speeds (500Mbps), but over tens of meters — not 4.2km.”

Let’s face it there’s not much 4K about at the moment and people aren’t finding it as spectacular in real life as those carefully crafted demos in John Lewis.

[The Duke]

Ed, the home theater geek on twit, is alway saying that 8k is going to be leapfroged and we’ll end up going 4 straight to 16k

Personally I don’t care that much, a pet from sport, Im over chasing res, blue ray is more than good enough for me, for Syfi films. Most of the time 720 is more than good enough for daily consumption crap.

 

I seen a BBC short about two/three years ago, where they broadcast from BBC to a single location in Japan,  or the like, in 16k as prof of concept. It was a huge undertaking at the time. Taking up massive amounts of bandwidth.

Netflix 4k won’t even be offered to you as an option unless you have a 25meg line. I think hd they need to see 5 meg. The exponential growth of the file sizes is fast. As you know (obviously).

 

Edit- my bad, my “couple of years ago” seems to of been 7 years ago, and it was 8k they tested. Where does the time go.

[Ed P]

I’m not plugging either 4K or 8K as it is even difficult to get good 4k content that fully utilises its capabilities (4K Life of Pi is an exception). I was really responding to the ‘money no object’ future proofing question and Dave’s comment that wifi is good enough, hence the 8k comment.

If I was one of the squillionaires that Dave deals with then I would certainly have one of my minions throw cat 7a into the utility trench!

For me cat5a is more than good enough. I have to use a wired set-up as a house with internal walls constructed of high mineral content brick with numerous steel joists is a test for any single wifi without a lot of assistance. (Foil covered bubble wrap as used in insulation also seems pretty effective at signal attenuation despite being a carp insulator)

[Dave Rice]

I’d get them to drop some fibre rather than copper. Even now switches with 10GbE aren’t horrendously expensive. The TP-LINK T1700G-28TQ 24-Port Smart managed Stackable Gigabit Switch w/ 4x 10GbE SFP+ Ports is £264

There are some interesting new bits of hardware coming out to bring managed wireless to hard to reach areas via any Cat 5 you have. I’ve already talked at length about Ubiquiti APs and their ability to create a single unified network via many devices. Well there are now “In-Wall” WiFi PoE Access Point (150Mbps N) £60  and 1200Mbps AC (300Mbps+887Mbps) for £103 (needs POE+).

TP-Link do similar products that use their Auranet Controller Software and the prices look similar.

[Ed P]

@Dave – it looks neat, but I’d have to shell out £130 for a 16 port PoE *switch as well so I’ll hold off until my current el-cheapo TPLink access point dies. It is however something to consider in a new set-up or when replacing an Ethernet jack. I’d probably go for it if I was starting all over again.

*I could get away with a cheapo injector or a smaller add-on PoE switch but that just seems to be geographically spreading out the same equivalent kit as a TPLink Access point.

[Dave Rice]

It wasn’t really aimed at a solution for you Ed, I don’t know your circumstances – every job begins with a survey.

It was more to point out that there are innovative solutions out there now that don’t cost the earth. With UniFi (and probably Auranet) once you have your site set up adding APs is as simple as adopting them. Whereas with the more usual home solution you have to configure each device separately. The new “mesh” home units take a lot of that away too, but come with their own gotchas like double NAT and trying to find a wired printer from a wireless client (it’s because they set up their own IP subnet and the “master” unit is in fact a router).

[Ed P]

“ every job begins with a survey.”

You are beginning to sound like a real salesman Dave!

Good for you

Don’t make the same mistake that a mate of mine makes (still making the same mistake unfortunately). He puts all his efforts into chasing jobs, closing the sale and doing them but he really hates billing them out and chasing down his money! When we go out to the pub I sometimes ask him how the cash-flow is going, but I know that he gets more than enough nagging from both his wife and his Accountant.

He normally has a moan about his big Corporate accounts, some of whom will not even look at an invoice for three to six months. I tell him to put in a late payment clause in his standard terms. It probably will not make a real practical difference as most of his invoices go out three months later than they should!

[Dave Rice]

Cash flow. Tell me about it! The smaller businesses generally pay on the nose or smack on 30 days.

Larger ones and Govt institutions can really mess you about. Sometimes it’s policy, mostly it’s a don’t give a shit attitude.

[Ed P]

Exactly what my mate complains about even though they get an effective extra 90 day credit from him!

To return to the 8K I posted earlier – it looks possible that 12K resolution may be possible on a future equivalent of a 4K box, and only need a tiny increase in bandwidth to gain the effect (1 colour bit per pixel). I’m assuming that I am reading and extrapolating this Gizmodo article correctly!

[Ed P]

Just to return to Steve’s comment about 4K. I find it interesting that a way has been found to convert old movies to HDR link. However what I found most interesting was the obvious improvement in quality that is obtained with HDR.

[Author]

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