Suggestions For a Coax-To-Ethernet Solution? 608
watanabe writes "I just moved from a house with Cat5e wiring to a house with ... a whole bunch of coax cables. Like, my living room has five coax cables coming out of a hole in the wall. All of them go back up to my attic.
The house is big, (and I like it, thank you), but I have realized that our digital usage pattern (media server + squeezeboxes + remote time machine backups to a linux box) will not work without wiring. I am currently bridging some old Linksys WRT54Gs to the right places, but of course, that slows everything down.
This got me thinking: 100mb ethernet is four wires, yes? And I have four wires for every two coax cables. What about a two coax-head -> ethernet jack setup? Has anyone done this before? Searching online only gives me $100+ coaxethernet transceiver type boxes. At that price, a HomePNY system would make more sense.
I'm willing to solder if I have to, but I first wanted to get advice and holes shot in my plan, if there are any."
Use the Coax as a wirepull for the cat5 (Score:5, Insightful)
If you have lots of coax running through pipes and if it is free, then use the coax as a wirepull to rewire the house.
Cat5 provides many more options than cat5.
Re:Use the Coax as a wirepull for the cat5 (Score:5, Funny)
I admit though, my testing may not have been exhaustive.
Re:Use the Coax as a wirepull for the cat5 (Score:5, Funny)
Cat5 can do better if you coax it.
Re:Use the Coax as a wirepull for the cat5 (Score:5, Funny)
I'm gessing you can get a Monster Cat5 cable for an absurd amount of money, that's got gold plated connectors and electrolytes and stuff...
Re:Use the Coax as a wirepull for the cat5 (Score:5, Funny)
that's got gold plated connectors and electrolytes and stuff...
It's what networks crave!
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"Actually, I have found that Cat5 provides just as many options as cat5"
I find it top be more a case of 6 of one, half dozen of the other.
Just be sure and let us know when you get to the bottom of that dilemma.
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I was going to say the exact same thing. I needed to bridge my upstairs and downstairs networks. I was able to use the existing runs of coax to guide my cat-5 up the wall. Just bought a new face plate with an RF-45 and F-connector and widened the existing hole a little bit.
Re:Use the Coax as a wirepull for the cat5 (Score:5, Informative)
</2cents>
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Um, "complete failure to understand parent post"?
This thread is talking about using the existing coax runs to wirepull Cat5 through the walls, not trying to run signals through the coax.
In theory, one could use four 50 ohm coax cables to run 100BaseT - Two 50 ohm single-ended coax cables can be used to form a 100 ohm differential connection, same characteristic impedance as Cat5 but with a hell of a lot more shielding and isolation.
However, if they were 75 ohm TV connections, they're useless as anything oth
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Aargh. Cat5 provides many more options than coax.. My bad.
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If the wire is nailed down (therefore not free to be pulled), perhaps he could use an Ethernet-over-coax adaptor [amazon.com].
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Or this one from Netgear [amazon.com].
Anyone have experience with these?
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Far cheaper to pay someone to run cat5e for you. Around here it costs $100.00 a run for cat 5 runs under 120 feet. that includes new wallplates and termination at each end.
OP doesn't want to pay $100 (Score:3, Informative)
Searching online only gives me $100+ coaxethernet transceiver type boxes.
Anonymusing wrote:
If the wire is nailed down (therefore not free to be pulled), perhaps he could use an Ethernet-over-coax adaptor [amazon.com] or this one from Netgear [amazon.com].
Amazon wrote:
Ethernet-over-coax Converter/extender: $148.99
Netgear MCAB1001 MoCA Coax-Ethernet Adapter Kit (Black): $180.91
I imagine the OP was looking for a cheaper way to do this.
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly!
because I bet that it is all crappy RG59 cable and not RG6 or RG6Quad that would really be needed.
If the house was wired more than 7 years ago the coax in it is pretty much garbage.
It's also not hard to run new wires in existing homes, I dont know why people are so scared of it.
Re:Use the Coax as a wirepull for the cat5 (Score:4, Informative)
Also, check building code in your area, as you may have to buy plenum insulated Cat6e as opposed to the cheaper PVC. Some jurisdictions actually restrict the use of PVC, even when it is behind a wall.
I went through and did this for a friend quite a few years ago (replaced all his phone cabling with Cat6e) and had an electrician friend of mine give us advice before we started. The electrician said we were OK to run the cabling ourselves, but we had to use plenum since that was what code required. The cabling was twice as expensive as PVC, even when bought in bulk. We also ran slip lines, which has been a god-send for my friend since he had to then follow up a year or so later and run more lines through to his home theater.
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I'll second the "use it for a wirepull" sentiment, though not the cat5 > cat5 sentiment.
No point in haggling with crappy old coax, and, happily, coax is really durable, so it's well suited to being a pull line.
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That's so zen.
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Have any of you really tried this in a big house? Unless the house isn't that big (the OP says it is in fact big) and the coax was retrofitted and not installed permanently (which is quite possibly the case) trying to use the coax as a pull for cat5/6 is a bad idea.
There is a chance that the coax will reveal an ideal conduit (such as a hollow wall running from the basement to the attic) if you follow it carefully, from the living room down and then up. Using it as a pull from one end to the other is likel
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Seems like it's still kicking in one for or another... [newegg.com]
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Looks like paying a pro to run Cat5 would be cheaper than these things all over the house.
Re:Use the Coax as a wirepull for the cat5 (Score:5, Informative)
The crimping pliers I use cost about ten bucks, and I've produced one bad cable out of twenty - and that was the first one I'd ever made. When that happens you cut off an inch and redo.
Plus, if you're installing it fixed to a wall you'll likely use box sockets. The terminals on those are usually screw fit.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The ones I got were pre-labelled and didn't require any crimping (just stripping the outer shell off). It looked more or less like this - http://www-personal.umich.edu/~csev/hng/book/06wiring/female.jpg [umich.edu]
Those clipped into the faceplate and my walls look nice and professional -- even though I did it myself. Regular pre-made cables from the wall to my devices.
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Yea, but jesus it sucks. You'd get better performance and throughput by just putting in a couple of WAPs.
Re:Use the Coax as a wirepull for the cat5 (Score:5, Informative)
As for the question posted by timothy, it is by another slightly electronics-illiterate poster. The statement, "This got me thinking: 100mb ethernet is four wires, yes? And I have four wires for every two coax cables. What about a two coax-head -> ethernet jack setup?" needs to be examined here. You can't just assume that since Ethernet "is four wires" you can use any four conductors as a layer 1 transport. That might bring house electrical wiring into the equation. No, we can't do this since we are talking about transmission lines, and everything has to be impedance matched, and the PHY has to be able to handle what the symbols look like on either end of the line. We aren't talking DC here--there is a lot more involved to high speed communication links than "wiring stuff up."
So, I would either go with a coaxial media adapter or use the coax to do new Ethernet cable pulls.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Because coax was so unreliable it would make network admins cry.
In the good ole lan party days, the network would be disrupted every time someone needed to connect or disconnect a pc. Sometimes you had T piece that was a bit faulty and that also nuked the network. And when you had 12 machines on the network, finding the source of the error was even harder.
Performance was only a secondary reason for it's demise.
Re:Use the Coax as a wirepull for the cat5 (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Use the Coax as a wirepull for the cat5 (Score:5, Informative)
You do realize ethernet originally ran over coax, right? Google '10BASE2'
Only problem with that is 10Base-2 ran over 50 ohm impedance coax while CATV coax is 75 ohm impedance. The mismatch would reduce the power delivered to the receiving end and set up a standing wave that would deform the wave shape, possibly causing errors.
CATV is cat5 in Roman (Score:5, Funny)
To use CATV cable for cat5 all you need to do is you run X-Base-II with L ohms terminators. Or would those be LXXV ohms?
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That's what I was thinking.
100BaseT is on twisted pair 100 ohm impedance.
Simply wiring up to the shield and conductor of the coax won't work worth a damn (50 or 75 ohm will cause bit error rates like hell).
Get a balun transformer that matches 100 ohms to 75 or 50 ohms (depending on your cable) and two cables + 4 baluns = one 100 meg run.
That said, the baluns have to work at 125MHz, and you'll find they are quite pricey. You'll likely want to simply pull new cable.
-nB
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You don't need impedance transformers in this case. 75 Ohm terminators (in place of standard Ethernet 50 Ohm) will do the trick. These are much cheaper and can be hacked together at home if not found in stores.
10BaseT cards have high impedance transmitters and receivers that can drive/receive wide range of cable impedances, as long as the cable is matched at the ends (to avoid reflections).
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pfft, kids these days. you can make them quite simply yourself with very cheap components (one of which could even some cat-5 wire pulled apart), hams have been doing it for decades. tons of info on the web, try "balun"
Re:Use the Coax as a wirepull for the cat5 (Score:5, Insightful)
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Before FIOS used the full routers standard, they use a Coax transciever and you can pick them up for about $100, sometimes cheaper, for 100Mbit over existing Coax.
Motorola NIM100 coax bridge (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Use the Coax as a wirepull for the cat5 (Score:5, Funny)
Yup, and guns used to load the bullet from the same end it shoots out of.
Re:Use the Coax as a wirepull for the cat5 (Score:5, Funny)
And cars use to run on electricity... oh wait.
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Re:Use the Coax as a wirepull for the cat5 (Score:5, Informative)
Attach a CAT5/6 AND a string, and pull like hell. You'll be glad you have a string in the wall when you want to pull CAT7.
Just remember, when you attach something to the string, always attach a new string too. It sucks when you finally finish pulling a run, only to have forgotten the replacement string.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Why shouldn't he pull CAT7 now? Everyone with access to Ebay as supplier AND his own house as proof of wealth has no valid reason not to buy the best cables he can procure there. No, not Monster Cables, but cheap run-of-the-mill SSTP CAT7 (Screened/Foiled shielded Twisted Pair S/FTP).
Wiki-Grandma says Cat7 is a worldwide standard except for the USA, but that may or may not be true. Anyway, I think some webshop will sell them for a few bucks, just look for
SSTP (Screened-shielded Twisted Pair)
PiMF (Pairs i
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However, pull gently, and coax it the whole way (pun not intended). If the coaxial runs through pipes, you'll probably run much less risk of stripping or breaking the Cat5/6. Almost none if you find a gallon or so of wire lube at Home Depot or Lowes and grease the hell out of the new cable as it enters the pipe. Just be sure to trail a strong cord along with it so you have another pull if you want to pull another line in later. If you test it and it doesn't work because a wire
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Of course, we take for granted that his coax cables are installed in a way so they can be used as fishers ;-))
True. All of this well-intentioned advice goes to hell if the prior installers had stapled the RG-59 to the studs.
Plan B: hire pros to at least pull the Cat 6 cable runs, even if you have the equipment and supreme confidence to terminate the wires yourself.
How hard is it to pull the old wiring (Score:2)
and run new wiring? Does the old coax run in channels or conduits?
That's not how coax works (Score:4, Insightful)
Coax gives you one braided shield and one center conductor to carry RF. It's not even remotely like UTP.
Re:That's not how coax works (Score:5, Informative)
Really? You might try telling that to Netgear [netgear.com] or D-Link [dlink.com] or any of the other companies that make Coaxial Ethernet Bridges [google.com].
This whole story could have been avoided if the poster knew the right term to Google.
10Base-2? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:10Base-2? (Score:4, Informative)
Except 10Base-2 is 50ohm coax, while TV coax (which is probably what he has) is 75ohm. Nope, not going to work.
Damn, I wanted to use a cute unicode omega, but apparently
Re: (Score:2)
... but apparently Slashdot never quite became friends with Unicode, and instead decides to do weird stuff when you try.
Character encoding (5:erocS) (Score:3, Informative)
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It'd be nice if they maintained a reasonably comprehensive whitelist then. It isn't hard to allow known-good pages without control characters.
Re:10Base-2? (Score:5, Informative)
yes it does. you impedance match the ends with baluns.
I did that a LOT back in the day of 10base2 when the office owner would not pony up for running wires.... yet he paid 2X that for baluns and impedance matching...
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Resistors don't work for bidirectional signals (which 10base2 is), because they only provide the desired effect one way (the other way, you end up with the opposite effect).
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Well, 10Base-2 uses coax. I think I have an old hub that still has a coax connector. :)
I was going to write my own "10base2" comment, but instead I'll just reply to this one. Yes, your coax cables are essentially 10base2 cables - but may have a different connector. Sounds like you're willing to do a little work - so, get a cable conversion tool and add some correct connectors.
Once you have that, you'll need to have some 10base2-to-10baseT converters. You can probably get them cheaper elsewhere, but here's one at Amazon [amazon.com].
My first workplace was wired entirely with 10base2, even in our server roo
ATT Uverse runs over coax (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:ATT Uverse runs over coax (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:ATT Uverse runs over coax (Score:5, Funny)
sorry, I realize my post contributed nothing.
This may be the most profound comment I've ever read on Slashdot.
Re:ATT Uverse runs over coax (Score:5, Funny)
And with that, we complete our tour of Slashdot.
Re:ATT Uverse runs over coax (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes it did -- it gave me an idea. I don't know if it would work, but maybe he could use cablemodems to connect ethernet to the coax. Of course, he probably doesn't have enough cablemodems laying around, but if he does, or can get a cheap supply of used ones it might work.
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Despite your humility, you may have in fact contributed something. If the OP doesn't want to invest money or significant time (if the house is indeed large the odds of using the coax as a pull string are very very low)... Then he can always just subscribe to a service that accomplishes exactly what he wants. While not the cheapest thing around, ATT will give you all the gear you need to make use of your coax.
Twisted pair, man (Score:5, Insightful)
100mb ethernet is four wires, yes? And I have four wires for every two coax cables.
The four wires in your coax are not twisted. It's not gonna work.
Pay $100 for those coax-ethernet transceiver things, or string some Cat5e. Seriously, if you can afford to buy a big ass house then what's another couple hundred??
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My mind has been boggling at how bad an idea his plan is. The conductor and shield in coax have capacitance between them, it's an unbalanced transmission line. There'd be noise and cross talk and impedance mismatches causing reflections.... It's like running the poor signal through a meat grinder.
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They don't have to be twisted; they're shielded, which is generally even better. Of course, there's really only one wire in each coax cable (plus a shield).
Re:Twisted pair, man (Score:4, Insightful)
The extra hundred is probably something he'll have to explain to his S.O.
Sometimes it's easier to freakin' sell the house. :-)
Use the Coax to pull CAT 5e cable (Score:5, Insightful)
If the coax is sitting loose in the walls, you can use it as a pull cable to thread in replacement UTP cable.
Old Ethernet worked over Coax. I just doubt you have the correct kind of Coax. Also, my experience with residential cable installs is that they tend to have damaged Coax cable, so it is pointless even trying to use it for high-bandwidth applications.
Finally, while it is theoretically possible to substitute 4 "pairs" of twisted pair with 4 Coax cables, my suspicion would be that you would have severe impedance mismatch problems. It might be good at 10 Mb, where the old Coaxial ethernet worked. I doubt it would handle modern 1 Gb Ethernet signals. Also, modern Ethernet expects all 4 pairs to be of approximately the same length, and it is unlikely someone would have 4 matched-length pairs of coaxial cable sitting in their wall.
Just bite the bullet pull Cat6 (Score:4, Insightful)
If you have access to the attic, it may be a full day's work to wire the whole house, but you'll be far better off pulling the correct wiring into place. Buy a 500ft box of cable and the appropriate wall jacks and plates and make a day of it. It's not hard with a fish tape or fish sticks (those bendy fiberglass poles for running wires).
I have been using an 802.11N bridge to connect my upstairs printer/scanner/thing and I have another computer up there with a wireless bridge and it's a pain compared to the situation downstairs where I ran Cat6 to a patch panel in the basement.
Buying all the cable, jacks and plates has cost less than the single 802.11N bridge, and I have gigabit Ethernet for my devices. The wiring is simple and once it's in place it's done.
Bite the bullet! (Score:3, Informative)
PLUS... Dude, you're going to want gigabit eventually - and it uses 8 wires and is even more sensitive.
Bite the bullet - use the coax as a guide and hook up an ethernet jack in every room that needs one. Use CAT-5E cable or CAT-6 cable so gigabit connections will work. And then buy yourself a gigabit switch, and piggy back it onto your WRT54G to handle the internet routing (or buy a gigabit router). Good luck!
Coax won't support 100mbps (Score:2)
As others have said, it's better just to use the coax cable to rewire the house. Ethernet at high data rates requires a differential and high frequency cable twisted pair. Coax does not give you any of this. There's also the problem that the impedance of a coax cable is orders of magnitude greater than cat5, so you'll either have to have a high-powered driver and matching terminator at both ends or a modem.
All in all, it's not worth the effort unless someone out there has already designed something like tha
MoCa (Score:5, Informative)
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Do category 6 (Score:2)
Category 6 is better for high speed multimedia, and the small extra cost is worth it.
Can't re-use coax that way (Score:2)
"And I have four wires for every two coax cables."
One of which is the shielding, and is subject to EMF interference, and one is the core, which is shielded, which would give you a potentially unbalanced system which would give you a lot of errors. Plus there's the issue of capacitance.
If speed isn't an issue, you could always put a BNC end on the coax, and pick up some 10 mbit hubs from eBay with both RG45 and a BNC coax connection. You'd be stuck at 10 mbit, but it's probably the cheapest/easiest solution.
Cat5e vs Cat6? (Score:2)
Many of the posts suggest to pullout the coax and rewire with cat5e. My question to the community is why not Cat6? When I bulit a small network in my house I concluded that ca6 is slightly better than cat5e, especially for gigabit speeds. If you're going to wire your house why not use cat6?
Related Questions (Score:4, Interesting)
If you were building a house today, which kind of connectivity would you set up ?
Since the expensive part is probably paying someone to put the cable, it could make sense to set up both gigabit ethernet and optical fiber in all rooms. Do any slashdotters have some opinion on that ?
Re:Related Questions (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Related Questions (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree on the conduit containing Cat6 and the fish line. I'd keep the Cat6 separate and put in the conduit with the fish line though. Conduit is definitely the great idea, but having to run more than 1 cable through a conduit is a lot more work than an empty conduit. And forget running the gray PVC or the flexible gray conduit (outdoor rated stuff). Both are way too expensive and totally unnecessary for low voltage wires (except maybe in a few weird states with goofy regulations). Use cheap polyethylene tube used for sprinklers (1/2") which you can get in 500 and 1000 foot rolls.
Cat5 isn't "just" four wires (Score:2)
The key here is "twisted pair". I'm not an expert by any means, but my understanding is that the twisting design limits electrical interference and noise. Without that, you're likely to get an extremely error-prone connection.
Wiring a house isn't actually that hard or expensive, presuming you either have an attic to drop wire from or a crawl space to move up from. It takes some time, but do it yourself and you can do it right with Cat6, some higher quality coax for video distribution, and more. Look up "Str
Not another "pull Cat5 via Coax" Post (Score:2)
Do yourself a big favor, and when you pull in your shiny new ethernet, tie in some drawstrings so you never have to repeat the process.
Impedance differeneces (Score:2)
You really can't adapt this - the impedance for this coax is likely 70 ohm (for cable tv) and cat 5 is 100 ohms. You could build a balun, but you'd probably have some weird distance/speed related issues you've never had before. Anyhow if anyone had the parts it would be these guys:
http://www.blackbox.com/Store/Detail.aspx/CATV-Balun/IC448A-R2 [blackbox.com]
I know that's the wrong way, but it gives you an idea of how much you'd have to pay.
Rewiring is your best option. (Score:2, Funny)
Coax to Ethernet Bridge (Score:2)
The easiest way is to get some Ethernet to coax bridges: eBay [ebay.com], Google [google.com].
If you elect to replace the coax with Cat5 or Cat6, DO NOT try to pull it yourself. If you fuck it up, you'll end up paying someone else a lot more than if you just had an electrician do it in the first place.
MoCa to the rescue (Score:2)
Sure, youre dropping around 100 bucks per drop [newegg.com] (less if you go with actiontec), but it saves you time and energy doing a cat5 conversion. The bitrates are pretty good too, although that depends on the quality and length of your wiring.
Powerline AV isnt bad, you can get a steady 40-50mbps with it, but that's pretty much wireless-N speeds, which is a lot cheaper.
Why not wireless? (Score:2, Redundant)
This sounds like a question from the 90s.
Why not just make the jump to wireless? Do you really need more that 56Mbps on a home LAN?
I did that six years ago when I started having to deal with my kids having their own computers on their desks to do homework for high school. (Mostly because after five minutes investigation I decided I never wanted to go into the insulated attic of my new house ever again if at all possible. Blown insulation is cheap an effective but it kind of makes the attic unusable without
Clarification (Score:2, Informative)
Just wanted to clarify that Ethernet refers to a standard, not a cable. You can have ethernet over UTP, coax, fiber, etc...
If the coax in your walls is RG6, that's probably better than Cat5.
Homes with Fios or UVerse have nifty little coax to rj45 boxes that allow for the home networking setup.
Nope (Score:3, Informative)
First, to the original question. D-Link makes a product that lets you do this. Not that I'm recommending you buy their product, but they claim that, due to bandwidth limitations, your performance would be lower than 802.11n. Now D-link is doing some signal processing, before the packets hit the wire, so I suspect that trying to run a raw signal over coax will produce less than reliable results.
To all those people recommending using the coax to pull cat5 - that probably won't work. Generally the coax will be stapled or otherwise tied to the studs.
Another alternative (Score:5, Informative)
Wow... what are the odds (Score:5, Informative)
I was just searching for this same thing today and a friend of mine suggested this product:
http://www.netsys-direct.com/proddetail.php?prod=NH-310CEKIT&cat=27 [netsys-direct.com]
It's a 200Mb ethernet-over-coax solution that makes use of existing coax installs and uses traditional cable. We'll be testing it soon for a 200 metre install.
Similar project for me (Score:4, Informative)
If you can't repull (Score:3, Informative)
Stop wasting your time (Score:3, Interesting)
You cannot use RG-59 (CATV COAX) in any useful fashion for networking. Don't bother thinking about it any more.
Pull CAT-5 or better. Bite the bullet. Ignore the coax.
Even if it's RG-6 or whatever, if it's F connectors (screw-on) forget about it.
Now, if by some chance, you got RG-58 and BNC connectors, then you can maybe run 10MB over it. Another supreme waste of time.
I suspect all the media convertors that claimed to drive 100MB over wacko coax are finally gone, since none worked worth a damn.
And if you've got so much coax, you can use one as a pull string. At least for one run. You might be able to bribe a buddy to help you. Once.
Worked for me with 6-conductor phone cable (Score:4, Interesting)
Coax cable might behave a bit differently, because one of the conductors is exposed and can pick up signals, but the other isn't, unlike a twisted pair. Differential signaling relies on both picking up the same signal, so that it can be rejected at the receiver by finding the difference between the two. You mentioned it having five coax cables; with that, you could use four coax cables, with the outer layer grounded on each. This way neither will pick up much of anything extra. It sure seems worth a try to me.
what?? (Score:4, Interesting)
You can afford a huge house, but you can't come up with $100 for a tranceiver? That's absolutely daft.
Cat5 (Score:3, Funny)
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hahaha, the second I posted, I hit refresh and there's 20 other people saying the same thing :)
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Dang, that is exactly what I was gonna suggest. Pull Cable all the way! I always pull two or four cat6 cables for each drop. Two if I think I only want one, four if I think I'll need two or three. If I need Four or more drops, I'll drop a GB switch in at that location (and two drops) back to the closet.
It is all about planning ahead.
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He did say that the house was big. In this case, it might be a 2-story house, and there might not be straight runs from the 1st floor up to the attic. Worse, the coax might be stapled to the studs if it was installed when the house was built.
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RF doesn't work that way, that's not even going to remotely work - you can't magically transform the impedance of a cable just by sticking resistors on the ends. At best, if he has any chance of getting it to work, he needs baluns (transformers) to transform the 100ohm balanced pair into 75ohm unbalanced coax, but I highly doubt it's worth trying, and I wouldn't count on getting it to work at 100mbps (and forget about GigE, that needs four pairs).
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Or, perhaps, as another thought, why not just use the existing coax to pull Cat5 into place?