Ethernet Cable Question

BK_123

Golden Master
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Australia
Hey guys. So a little while back I decided to hook the TV in our living room up directly to the router via a switch using two cables joined together using a little coupling. Now my parents don't quite understand that its not all about how many cables you use that effects the speed of connection. Can anyone tell me if using so many cables can affect the speed, quality of the connection?
 
Yep length of cable and those little ethernet couplers, especially, can affect the speed of file transfers across a network. So can the devices that are on that network.
 
It would make a difference but not a massive difference nothing to worry about anyways

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I have to agree

My sister has a 50ft Ethernet cable running from her modem to her computer thats in the back room, and the speed was only lowered slightly.
 
Well dunno about you lot but when I tried to stream films from my storage via a 20 meter cable it was buffering to the point that the film was unwatchable. I have now moved my storage much closer to my hub and everything is okay now. The other thing is that there ethernet cables and there are ethernet cables. The cheapo ones will strangle a networkif they are of any length and those little couplers are a nightmare. I cannot remeber what the loss is across one of those but it is quite severe. I'm sure Google will know.
 
As long as you are using a cable that meets cat5e specification and is under the limit of 100 meters you should not see any performance hit. If you are stringing multiple cables together using ethernet couplers then you could see some performance loss because at each point the cables are unshielded and interference/crosstalk could be introduced. Still would probably be negligable unless you are making a run that long and have a lot of the couplers.

So you could probably tell your parents it doesn't matter because your run isn't that long and if you are on gigabit connection, streaming 1080p to your TV doesn't even come close to topping that bandwidth. even 100 mbps is more than enough for streaming.
 
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Copper cables have a maximum run of 95-100 metres before the signal degrades and a repeater or switch would be required. If you've got a sub-100 metre CAT5E, CAT6 or CAT7 cable running between two decent (Fast ethernet/Gigabit) network devices and you're having speed issues - you've either got a bad cable, a lot of interference or one of your devices is having a problem.

Most consumer-available network cables are UTP (Unshielded twisted pair), so interference will be a problem if the cable is running alongside power cables (as electrical current creates a magnetic field) . The solution to this is STP (Shielded twisted pair), this is on the whole ever so slightly slower than unshielded, but it cuts out most of the interference.

RJ45 couplers are, for me, an absolute no-go for a number of reasons. The primary reason is that they tend to be crap and do not very often meet CAT5E/CAT6 specification themselves.
 
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The coupling and extra cable have been removed now as we've moved our living room around for summer. We'll see how it goes.
 
If you want to make your own shielded cable rap time tin foil around the cable :) correct me if I'm wrong please

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If you want to make your own shielded cable rap time tin foil around the cable :) correct me if I'm wrong please

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That could work although it would be pretty inefficient not to mention the actual diificulty of wrapping the tin foil around the cables. Also do not forget that one end of the shielding should go to a good earth point so that any interference picked up in the shielding is grounded.
 
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