Network question. Use coax for ethernet?

Meetoo wrote:
I heard there's a way to use an existing coaxial cable for an ethernet connection? I have my iMac in our converted garage out back of the main house, and the airport/. internet connection inside the main house. I have them communicate wirelessly now and it's fine, but drops out now and then and I wanted to hook it up by wire.

There's a coax cable laid between the two houses, but no room/facility for adding an ethernet cable, easily anyway. I was told you can get adapaters to use the coax for this purpose. I looked around online and there's a variety of things available, from simple adapaters for $10 or $20, to complex boxes that cost a hundred to several hundred. Anybody know if this is possible, and if it is, what kind of adapter I need?

Coax ("10base2') was the second-generation Ethernet connection technique. (The first was "thicknet"; the third "twisted pair" - "10baseT"). Do a Google search for "10base2".

Current Ethernet standards require as a minimum the use of cables that include two twisted pairs of wires to connect for either 10Base-T (10 Mbps) or 100Base-TX (100 Mbps). Typically, these cables would be terminated with RJ-45 connectors. For 1000Base-T that same cable would require four twisted pairs. So, the use of coaxial cable would not work in this situation.

The hardware required to do this is no longer manufactered. This is not a reasonable solution. It's a very old Ethernet standard that is no longer used. It only supported 10 Mbps at half duplex, I believe.

Cat 5 supports 100 meter distances. If you want to connect the garage and house, either do an Ariel (above ground, suspended) run of cat5 or cat6. Or bury it in conduit. Or, just use a wireless bridge (like airport wds)

Peter John Hill wrote:
The hardware required to do this is no longer manufactured.

Then was this item

http://salestores.com/unicom120.html

pulled off a dusty shelf?

This is not a reasonable solution. It's a very old Ethernet standard that is no longer used. It only supported 10 Mbps at half duplex, I believe.

That all sounds right, but not because the equipment isn't available.

Meetoo wrote:
???

You asked how to use coax for an Ethernet connection. I told you what to search for. See the link in my other post.

If that garage is on the same leg of the power line as the house, then you should look into Powerline equipment:

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/power-network.htm

If I remember correctly, a pair of units for that can be bought for around USD120.

$144 for two. Not worth it.

Peter John Hill wrote:
$144 for two. Not worth it.

For someone else it might be worth it. It all depends on the price of alternatives and how badly someone needs that communication link.

One can find a faster, cheaper, and more reliable alternative. You can peobably find an electrician who will run an Ariel cat5 between the two locations for cheaper than $150. You would not have two extra bits of electronics that need power and that can fail and that can't be monitored via snmp.

You can buy all sorts of crazy transcievers. That does not mean you should. I don't want the typical reader of these forums to think this is a good solultion. The market for that transciever is very small. They could stop making them at any time.

If one takes that cat5 and connects an airport extreme to both ends, you'll have a gigabit/sec. Using coax and paying more money, you'll get 10 megabits/sec. Two orders of magnitude slower. Plus, cat5 allows full duplex and coax only half duplex. It will suck.

you might be able to blow some twine through the conduit... maybe with a shop vac on blow. Put something on the end of the twine.

If you do pull the cat 5 with the coax, pull some twine also so you are set for the future.

Meetoo wrote:
Sounds like laying a CAT5 cable is the way to go. We have a conduit running btwn the two houses, but there's no pull string in there to add another cable, plus there's no room in there (as the contractor assured me there would be, don't get me started!) But maybe I just don't need the coax any more, I don't think we're using it for anything...Hmmm, maybe I can pull the coax out of the conduit and replace it with a CAT5?

Using the existing coax cable to fish a CAT5 cable through could work. I'd start by seeing if you can move that coax cable back or forth at all in the conduit. If you can, then attach two lengths of twine to the coax cable as securely as you can and pull the whole thing through. Once that's done, use one piece of twine to pull through a CAT5 line or two.