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[Tim McCulloch]

Scott, I have great respect for the professionalism that's displayed in the responses on this site. And I'm deeply grateful for all that share their experience with their fellow man.  Yourself included.  Thank you.  All of you have done a great job making this a fantastic place to spend my time.  This is such an unbelievably amazing resource and, up until now, no drama.

OP had a query.  I shared my experience.

If you find my experience to be ignorant, or in Chrysander 'C.R.' Young's case, unbelievable, that's fine.  That's an acceptable and civil communication that you have a different point of view or opinion.  There's nothing wrong with that.  We can talk about that.  Openly, publicly, and civilly... men treating men like men.

Now, if you take it a step further and openly and publicly discredit and accuse a man of intentionally trying to mislead the OP, or intentionally spreading false information, and tell them to sit down/shut up/go somewhere else...  that's unacceptable.  That's a keyboard warrior.  There's not a man in his right mind who thinks it's appropriate to speak to another man that way on the internet, let alone publicly and/or in person. 

That sort of attitude doesn't belong in this space... this awesome resource... this fantastic knowledge farm.  And I regret having been a part of any drama here.

That's the last I'm going to say in the matter.  You guys got something to say?  Say it.  Get it off your chest and let's move on.

Something to think about and why this place is neither a strictly regulated, hyper-professional space, not is it GearSlutz.  It's a community.  The Live Audio Board started out that way, back when it was an SIG on Compuserve, then an email listserve, and finally on the WWW, running a script from Matt's Script Archive, on a machine in the site founder's apartment.  A few of us here go back all the way...

Dave Stevens created a special place on the intertoobs... originally where a bunch of crusty road dogs and company owners, managers, and other folks could talk real audio, and not deal with the hype and bullshit that was developing around the web.  "The Anvil of Reality®" (picture Wile E Coyote and a package from Acme...) was dropped on more than 1 participant.  Generally they stuck around, recommended the place to friends, and over the last 20+ years, it evolved through 3 subsequent owners/investors to what you see today... but the 'community' aspect remains.

Like other communities, there are neighbors you'd invite for dinner and others you're content to merely wave at.

In general, though, this is probably the best general pro/semi-pro audio forum on the net (in English, anyway).  We call out things we believe are wrong and so long as things don't get carried away, the mods let folks put up their data and discuss.

Have fun, good luck.

Tim Mc

[Scott Holtzman]

Something to think about and why this place is neither a strictly regulated, hyper-professional space, not is it GearSlutz.  It's a community.  The Live Audio Board started out that way, back when it was an SIG on Compuserve, then an email listserve, and finally on the WWW, running a script from Matt's Script Archive, on a machine in the site founder's apartment.  A few of us here go back all the way...

Dave Stevens created a special place on the intertoobs... originally where a bunch of crusty road dogs and company owners, managers, and other folks could talk real audio, and not deal with the hype and bullshit that was developing around the web.  "The Anvil of Reality®" (picture Wile E Coyote and a package from Acme...) was dropped on more than 1 participant.  Generally they stuck around, recommended the place to friends, and over the last 20+ years, it evolved through 3 subsequent owners/investors to what you see today... but the 'community' aspect remains.

Like other communities, there are neighbors you'd invite for dinner and others you're content to merely wave at.

In general, though, this is probably the best general pro/semi-pro audio forum on the net (in English, anyway).  We call out things we believe are wrong and so long as things don't get carried away, the mods let folks put up their data and discuss.

Have fun, good luck.

Tim Mc

Tim is right, this is a place to get away from professionalism.  There have been  some great fights, some funny arrogant noobs that get shut down and a few food fights.  Keeps life exciting.


My point is claiming running 1000 ft of unprotected plenum cable ia a good idea. If it worked for you ok, some day it won't and hopefully that's not when you need it the most.  Specs are for a reason.


You have been a good new addition too BTW. 

[Russell Ault]

[...]
Forget the fact that is something catastrophic happens with the electrical that 26ga wire could end up being your ground reference.
[...]
You probably are dropping half your frames.
[...]
Do it once, do it right.  Fiber or radio are the only solutions.

Not sure why I like playing devil's advocate, but here goes...

• Given that Ethernet is transformer-isolated, if unshielded Cat cable becomes a ground reference then I'm guessing there are more problems in the setup than just electrical.
• At some level, dropping half of frames is only a bad thing if it's causing problems; I would guess a lot of Internet users (gamers aside) wouldn't actually notice.
• For the cost of fibre and endpoints I can run at least a few <$100 boxes of Cat cable, and both are just as susceptible over that distance to third-party stupidity...

Is it best practices? No. Is it a professional solution? No. Will it get the job done, at least initially, for an absolute minimum of capital outlay? Probably. Is it "idiotic" if it solves the problem and fits the mission brief? I don't see it.

There is an inherent difficulty when questions like this arise on these forums. The participants here spend their professional days trying to ensure better-than-five-nines uptime for the thousands (or millions) of eyeballs in the audience, and in RF and networking (which at some level is basically just RF over copper/fibre with a whole lot of added complexity) that means best practices (if only for the CYA value). When it comes to questions like this (i.e. not professional, not real-time, not show-critical, at some level just trying to make the best of it, etc.) many continue advocating best practices, which is great, but also continue treating anything less as heretical, which is appropriate when discussing getting Dante from point A to point B, but is perhaps unwarranted when discussing checking e-mail two houses down.

It turns out the OP can't run a cable anyway, so the suggestion is moot, but I haven't seen anyone yet explain why the 1000' of Cat cable is unworkable, only that it's unadvisable, and if that's all it is, well, I think terms like "troll" and "idiotic" are a bit hyperbolic, personally.

-Russ

[John L Nobile]

There's 2 solutions for problems like this. One is mission critical where you have to throw some time and money into it and the other is cheaper but involves loss of service and time to get it up and running again. I've used both and much prefer the former but resources have made me choose the latter. I usually regret that but it does get the job done if you can put up with the issues.

But if it is mission critical I will put my foot down and find the money.

[Scott Holtzman]

Not sure why I like playing devil's advocate, but here goes...

• Given that Ethernet is transformer-isolated, if unshielded Cat cable becomes a ground reference then I'm guessing there are more problems in the setup than just electrical.
• At some level, dropping half of frames is only a bad thing if it's causing problems; I would guess a lot of Internet users (gamers aside) wouldn't actually notice.
• For the cost of fibre and endpoints I can run at least a few <$100 boxes of Cat cable, and both are just as susceptible over that distance to third-party stupidity...

Is it best practices? No. Is it a professional solution? No. Will it get the job done, at least initially, for an absolute minimum of capital outlay? Probably. Is it "idiotic" if it solves the problem and fits the mission brief? I don't see it.

There is an inherent difficulty when questions like this arise on these forums. The participants here spend their professional days trying to ensure better-than-five-nines uptime for the thousands (or millions) of eyeballs in the audience, and in RF and networking (which at some level is basically just RF over copper/fibre with a whole lot of added complexity) that means best practices (if only for the CYA value). When it comes to questions like this (i.e. not professional, not real-time, not show-critical, at some level just trying to make the best of it, etc.) many continue advocating best practices, which is great, but also continue treating anything less as heretical, which is appropriate when discussing getting Dante from point A to point B, but is perhaps unwarranted when discussing checking e-mail two houses down.

It turns out the OP can't run a cable anyway, so the suggestion is moot, but I haven't seen anyone yet explain why the 1000' of Cat cable is unworkable, only that it's unadvisable, and if that's all it is, well, I think terms like "troll" and "idiotic" are a bit hyperbolic, personally.

-Russ

Oh now doubt I was picking on him because of the certainty of which he dismissed the limitations and that his singular empirical evidence was valid reason.  If he had said "I am cheap, willing to take the risks, and so far it has been serviceable" I would have just wandered on past so launch the hyperbolic counter attack.


I too know that Ethernet is supposed to be transformer isolated but I have an IBM Yoga 2 sitting here that was plugged into an outlet wired backwards, Ethernet cable plug into switch and boom went the laptop.  Empirical evidence too but it proves that some implementations may play a little loose with the standards.   


Update: It appears that there is a transformerless mode is allowed now and used in connectors that contain integrated isolation.  Single capacitor mode is within spec and I would think that 110v could be enough to breakdown the capacitor and hence no galvanic isolation.  I could also be wrong on this theory. 

[Russell Ault]

[...]
I too know that Ethernet is supposed to be transformer isolated but I have an IBM Yoga 2 sitting here that was plugged into an outlet wired backwards, Ethernet cable plug into switch and boom went the laptop.  Empirical evidence too but it proves that some implementations may play a little loose with the standards.   


Update: It appears that there is a transformerless mode is allowed now and used in connectors that contain integrated isolation.  Single capacitor mode is within spec and I would think that 110v could be enough to breakdown the capacitor and hence no galvanic isolation.  I could also be wrong on this theory.

I was under the impression that transformerless options are only acceptable for use when two PHYs are on the same PCB, and that twisted pair connections still require transformer isolation (either in the PHY or in the 8P8C jack itself). There certainly have been devices that, er, "forgot" to include the magnets (I believe some early generation Raspberry Pis fall into this category), but those should be pretty rare.

As for the Yoga... ouch. I feel like that's doubly strange, since auto-ranging switched-mode power supplies should also be transformer isolated and hot/neutral agnostic (especially since the jacks in many countries are un-polarised). I guess I could see it happening if the Yoga had a grounded power supply and the outlet was wired reverse-polarity-bootleg-ground (yikes!) and the Ethernet cable was shielded and the switch was also grounded, but that's a lot of "if"s (and I was pretty sure that all of IBM's power supplies were ungrounded).

-Russ

[Mark Scrivener]

Years ago I purchased a pair of these outdoor high gain (directional) wifi bridges- https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006M1PKWY/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o07_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I used them to remote control a robotic telescope and imaging system that was over 1000' away and through a line of trees. They worked flawlessly. Looks like this particular model is discontinued, so I'd suggest shopping around for something similar. These were about $80/each when I bough them.

[Jonathan Johnson]

On the topic digression of CATx run lengths...

While a longer cable may comply with most of the electrical and performance specification of category cabling, there is one constant that may limit the length to 100m: the speed at which electricity travels along a conductor.

That is, the latency from one end of the cable to the other isn't going to be changed by using lesser or higher quality cable. And some transceivers may be less tolerant of the higher latency of cables exceeding the 100m specification.

While it may be workable in some applications, exceeding the limit can cause timing issues that result in a significant number of dropped and retransmitted packets.

[Tim McCulloch]

Years ago I purchased a pair of these outdoor high gain (directional) wifi bridges- https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006M1PKWY/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o07_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I used them to remote control a robotic telescope and imaging system that was over 1000' away and through a line of trees. They worked flawlessly. Looks like this particular model is discontinued, so I'd suggest shopping around for something similar. These were about $80/each when I bough them.

I've been very happy with the EnGenius Networks access points I've used... they just work.  The bonus for me is they're easier to configure than Ubiquity.

[Chrysander 'C.R.' Young]

OP, if the overall goal is temporary internet access at a second location, there are two other options to consider:

Pay a per-month tethering fee on a phone/tablet with a decent unlimited data plan and use that as your mobile internet provider.  Some carriers even have portable hot spots that you can buy and pay month-to-month for a reasonable amount of speed and data.  Most either have data caps or throttle their "unlimited" plans after a few GB, but if the data needs are modest it is worth a look.  I have a Verizon iPad with unlimited data that I use for tele-working in remote locations where other forms of internet are not available.

Another plan is to see ff you can see a wifi SSID at the new site, track down the owner, and see if $20 and a bottle of an adult beverage will let you share someone's wifi for 6 weeks. 

Good luck, OP, and let us know what you find.

[ProSoundWeb Community]