Just ordered my popcorn hour, anyone want to touch me ?

[Jamie84]

Sounds interesting , for now Id only be looking to stream Mp3 from laptop to screen so DNLA Should do the job right ?

Although not somthing Id be interested in at the moment definatly something Id consider later , not watching enough 1080 material from laptop .

On a side note , looking for advice on terminating cat 5 to RJ45 , is the crimping tool essential ? Cheers in advance .

[Sanjøy]

Morning, I do not stream the 1080 movie, I present a smb share to the device using freenas. iirc this showed ~30meg for a 1080p movie with a dts sound track.
I recently have had trouble with a 30gb blue ray backup which will only play when I copy it locally to the hd in the device as the freenas devices cheapo realtek nic cannot keep up

[robin]

Streaming it or reading it from hard disk is mostly the same in terms of bandwidth requirements; with streaming you need more meta-data in order for the receiving device to (re)sync in the event of data loss.

~30mbit/s you mean? That's quite high - does that match a DLNA profile?

I suspect the issue is not the realtek NIC but the s/w driving it, btw.

I'm sure the MP3 stuff will work they way you're suggesting.

For terminating CAT5 you will need the crimp tool, or you can take some spare patch cables, cut them in half and then splice in your long cable runs - this will work so long as you do a reasonable job of the splicing - try and keep the pairs twisted rather than running parallel for any distance.

Cheers,
Robin

[gorrie]

jamie... I'm sure I've still got an RJ45 crimp tool in my old telecoms tool kit (somewhere in the garage). If you need a loan.. gimme a shout & I'll try to dig it out (I'd need it back at some point though). I've probably got some RJ45 ends in there as well, although not sure how many.

[Jamie84]

Too late Andy thanks anyway , picked up a small kit complete with crimping tool and RJ45 and RJ12 connectors for £15, quite a task getting the cat 5 into the connectors!! , got there in the end although getting gateway problems with the dnla connection so maybe my termination wasnt so good , sorry for thread drift .

[Jamie84]

Any tips on terminating ?think there could be good chance my ends are down , hard to get each core straight and in each slot !

[robin]

How have you assigned the wire colours? Ethernet uses a non-obvious scheme of having one pair be next to each other (pins 1&2) and the other pair being split between 3&6. The remaining pins (4,5,7,8) can be left unconnected (which might make getting the wires inserted easier.

Cheers,
Robin

[Jamie84]

Didnt pay to much attention to wire order , but knew the pairs had to be together , with the clip facing me from left to right I had White/orange - Orange - White/Green - Green - White/Blue - Blue - White/brown - brown , assumming pin 1 is white/orange ? I'll have a google to be sure !

So only the pins you mention are required ?

Cheers robin

[graeme]

Might as well wire up all 4 pairs correctly to start with. It's not too hard, and it'll future proof your cable for gig ethernet or anything else that uses all 4 pairs.
For a straight-through (non-crossover) cable, both ends should look like this:



As for tips on how to do it, it's mostly just practice. My first ever was a dud. Every one since has been perfect first time.

Strip about 3-4 cm of sheath off (without damaging the pairs underneath!). There might a sheath-stippery bit on your crimp tool.
Untwist each pair and straighten them a bit between finger an thumb one at a time and sort of fan them out and flatten them down in the correct order as neatly as possible. Try not too pull on each wire too much as you straighten it.
Hold all the wires between finger and thumb flat and tight and check they are still all in the correct order. Un-fan them (squish them all up next to each other) and again check they are still in the correct order.
Hold them tight, and trim the pairs to about 1.5 cm as straight and neat as possible.
Pop the rj45 connector on !!!the correct way up!!!! and push the pairs all the way down to the end. Visually check the order again, and make sure each wire is long enough to reach the end of the connector, or at least past the metal toothy bit that gets crimped into it.
Check the order again.
Check the order again.
Check the order ad nauseum.
Crimp as hard as you can (or as hard as the tool will let you). Don't be scared of it. The tool won't let you do it too hard, but you can do it not hard enough if you don't give it a proper manly squeeze.

Repeat at the other end.

Check with a fancy-pants cable tester, or a plain old mulitmeter in continuity mode using a needle or pin to touch each terminal on the connector at each end, one at a time (pin 1 to pin 1, pin 2 to pin 2 and so on). You may need 4 hands or some crocodile clips for this. If you skip this test, bear in mind later that if your setup isn't working properly, the most likely candidate is your cable.

Admire your work and award yourself 1 beer for a very manly job well done.

[graeme]

Don't know why I didn't think of this sooner:

Google Results

[gorrie]

Pretty sure I've also got a Cat5 Tester in the tool kit as well which checks each pair sequentially... might need a battery though. Shout if you want it dug out to check your terminations... not sure how much it would cost to buy one. Alternatively, use the cable you made to plug the laptop in to the router & see if your NIC comes up... if it does, you're likely OK.

As your earlier post said you are hardwiring the TV to the Router... then it would be a straight cable you'd be making up for that. You'd only need a cross if going Laptop direct to TV... but worth mentioning just in case you are taking the middle man out & conecting directly for testing & wondering why there is no connection.

Your colour/order were wrong (which you will have seen from Graemes post)... but to be honest, as long as you've kept it the same order either end.. the continuity is preserved so should work.

(this coming from the idiot who made up 40 Coax cables with BNC ends for ISDN 30 trunking on a customer site at 3am & forgot to crimp the inner pin... doh.. and my colleagues made sure it was remembered).

[Jamie84]

Thanks for the help guys , good advice graeme !

I have a few options to try today , I have a manufatured ethernet cable I could try if I bring the router downstairs it , if it works with that then my cable is down .
Before that I'll try plugging the lappy in as you mentioned andy . I knew the cable would be cool aslong as both ends where the same but I'll redo eventually

Twin N Earth FTW

Enjoyinhg the challenge though !

[robin]

Your colour/order were wrong (which you will have seen from Graemes post)... but to be honest, as long as you've kept it the same order either end.. the continuity is preserved so should work.

No, it won't work, least ways not for 100Mbit ethernet (it will work for ISDN2 and 10Mbit ethernet,maybe). Ethernet uses a twisted pair differential transmission scheme; if you wire the pairs in the obvious-but-wrong way (1&2, 3&4, 5&6, 7&8) then you'll be sending one half of one signal on one pair and the other half on another pair. Because these two pairs are not twisted around one another, they won't have the same noise immunity as a proper twisted pair. Differential transmission relies on both conductors receiving the same noise (so-called common-mode noise); the original signal is extracted by subtracting one signal from the other, thus the noise cancels (same noise incident on both conductors) and the signal doubles (because we transmit +signal on one conductor and -signal on the other: +signal - -signal = 2xsignal). If the wires are allowed to take different routes they can easily see very different noise levels (even a few mm is enough to break the scheme on longer cable runs).

So, always use a pair on 1&2 and another pair on 3&6 for 100Mbit ethernet. For Gigabit ethernet you need all four pairs as per the diagram Graeme posted.

Cheers,
Robin

[gorrie]

I'll bow to your knowledge then Robin. My practical wiring experience is a 'few' years old now (& mainly on 10Base-T connections to 10Mbit hubs).
10base-T isn't affected as much by quality as 100base-TX.... so, you'd likely get away with it on 10Mbit. ISDN2, for sure (I've had ISDN2 working over the scrawniest peices of jumper wire you could think of).
Either way though... I'd have got my butt kicked if I'd terminated it incorrectly, so good practice to get the cable done right.

/back on topic

Andy.

[Jamie84]

Sorted ! done both ends again and realised my mistake , My router accepts rf45 and rj12 , id been trying to force 8 cores into a 6 pin rf12 ! , changed both ends to rj45 , cores slid in no problem at all , thanks for the advice hopefully connection works now