Finishing off cat5 cables

[The Lone Gunman]

In cabled my flat recently, bought the ends and a crimper from maplins and followed the instructions on this page:

http://www.incentre.net/incentre/frame/ethernet.html

Dead easy

Sorry, I thought we were talking about wall sockets. I have never bothered making leads, I seem to collect them.

[gingerjedi]

Wireless has, for want of a better word, lag. Plus, the 54mbps advertised is never anywhere near that. You'll be bloody lucky to get 20mbps out of it with the best 54mbps router going, the matching card that goes with it and a perfect room (no walls, radiators, reflections etc).

I bought a Netgear 108mbps router as I liked the idea of being able to use a laptop in the garden (about 40m away), the reality is I'm lucky if I get a signal at all beyond 10m, any ideas how I can boost the signal? I don’t know whether to get a repeater, a high gain antenna or on the news the other night there was a place in South Africa where they were using tin cans to direct the signal 'cantennas' they called them... anyone tried this method?

[gingerjedi]

Sorry, I thought we were talking about wall sockets. I have never bothered making leads, I seem to collect them.

Thats a point! just get a standard RJ45 socket and punch the cables in according to the colour code inside, you can use a BT plastic pusher thats costs about 50p available from all good DIY stores... and some bad ones as well.

[Zorba]

I bought a Netgear 108mbps router as I liked the idea of being able to use a laptop in the garden (about 40m away), the reality is I'm lucky if I get a signal at all beyond 10m, any ideas how I can boost the signal? I don’t know whether to get a repeater, a high gain antenna or on the news the other night there was a place in South Africa where they were using tin cans to direct the signal 'cantennas' they called them... anyone tried this method?

This works if you have time:
http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/weblog/view/wlg/448

This also works if you don't:
http://www.freeantennas.com/projects...te2/index.html

Good luck! I used a cardboard/tinfoil one for a while before I got cabled. You could also go for some homeplugs (they have several names but try http://www.homeplugs.co.uk/ ) and use a long extension from the house to the garden.

[milanbenes]

very useful thread folks

thanks,

Milan.

[Moscow Mule]

Wireless has, for want of a better word, lag. Plus, the 54mbps advertised is never anywhere near that. You'll be bloody lucky to get 20mbps out of it with the best 54mbps router going, the matching card that goes with it and a perfect room (no walls, radiators, reflections etc).

Can you explain what you mean by lag, and where it is introduced into the wireless system?

Surely, 9Mpbs wireless > 8Mbps from ISP, so you won't notice any lag?

Not having a dig, just don't understand.

[Moscow Mule]

This also works if you don't:
http://www.freeantennas.com/projects...te2/index.html

Cool - will try this for the garden.

[kramer]

Can you explain what you mean by lag, and where it is introduced into the wireless system?

Surely, 9Mpbs wireless > 8Mbps from ISP, so you won't notice any lag?

Not having a dig, just don't understand.

yeah .. what he said!

[Zorba]

Can you explain what you mean by lag, and where it is introduced into the wireless system?

Surely, 9Mpbs wireless > 8Mbps from ISP, so you won't notice any lag?

Not having a dig, just don't understand.

Bear in mind that I'm crap at this and someone who Knows about stuff will probably jump in, but the way I understand it is the 9mbps is the 'bandwidth' i.e. the maximum amount of data that can be shifted at once. The 'lag' is more technically called the 'latency', that is the time for the requests for data to move from your PC to wherever the data is coming from. The way it was explained to me is that your bandwidth is like a lorry ferrying data, but to shout to the lorry your voice is limited by the speed of sound. Using wifi increases the time taken to request the data.

Whether that lag is noticeable is questionable though. If someone who knows more about it wants to chime in, I'll happily edit this back to 'no idea'.

[Jog On]

Surely, 9Mpbs wireless > 8Mbps from ISP, so you won't notice any lag?

Wireless is worse from my experience. I've used it for 2 years and gone to cabling the flat and it's noticeably better.

I'm on cable, got a 100/full network and it's all good now. I'll turn the wireless back on when I've got a laptop!

Wireless drops out occasionally as well - can be really annoying if it's at the wrong time!