Ethernet through old coax conduit

[l-_-ll-_-l]

[tl;dr: 1) Small conduit, two flat UTP cables? 2) Difference flat/regular UTP? 3) How does a switch distribute “supplied speed” over connected devices? 4) How many devices on throughput electricity powerline?]

 

Hi everyone!

 

At least 5 years ago a technician informed me that the old coax plug in my wall was in fact not connected to the basement. Last week I got so fed up with the slow speeds of my wireless adapter I took off the front plate off the wall and started looking for the conduit. To my surprise there actually was a coax cable in there! In all my euphoria I had almost ordered some bulk UTP CAT 7 cables until I realised that the conduit is rather small at around 12mm (0.47”). It made me wonder how to optimally wire things up now that I have the chance. A couple of questions:

1)      The conduit can not fit two regular UTP cables, but could perhaps fit two flat cables? Has anyone ever done this before? If so, how was your experience? (Example Amazon: click here)

2)      Is there a difference in performance between regular and flat UTP cables. In a previous topic I read there wasn’t as cables with the same category label (5E, 6, 6A, 7) should comply with the required speeds. If there really is no difference, then why was the plastic cross needed to avoid cross-talk in regular cables? How do flat cables deal with this?

3)      This may be a rather stupid question, but I am not sure how speed distribution between the modem, a external switch and the subsequent connected devices works. Currently I have an all-in-one modem/router with 4 ports from my ISP. I’d like run the new cable to connect my devices in my room two stories up and a powerline two stories up (has to be one the same circuit to be able to have better speeds than the current setup next to the modem, the electric wiring in this house is a mess.) In my mind it would be better to run a cable through the conduit to a new gigabit switch in my room and another cable to the powerline adapter. Is there any merit to this though? Or could I just run one cable to connect the switch and then connect the powerline adapter to the switch without loss of speed? I don’t want the connection between the modem and my room to be or become a bottleneck later on. (How is the cable’s "maximum speed", for CAT6A being Gigabit/sec at 500MHz, distributed over the connected devices on the switch? I have heard about the "lanes on a highway" metaphore, but would like a real life example.)

4)      How many devices can you reasonably have running on the throughput electricity plug of a powerline? (Example Amazon: click here)

 

Thanks in advance!

[Lurick]

When you say modem, is it just a plain modem or does it have a router built in as well?

If it's just a modem, you need a router and then the switch. If it has a built-in router then you're fine. The switch will provide bandwidth to all the devices depending on how it's being requested. For example, if your internet plan gives you 100Mbps download speed and 1 device is pulling down a steam download at 50Mbps (~6MBps) then everything else will have to fight for the remaining 50Mbps. This assumes no traffic engineering such as QoS or anything else exists in the network to more evenly distribute bandwidth. Of course this is all for devices leaving the local network. Internal network transfers will be at the maximum rate of the switch, provided you aren't hitting one device with requests from two devices at which point you would get roughly have of the speed to each requesting device. (ex: 1 server, 2 hosts)

 

To answer the questions:

1. Flat cable should work provided there is enough conduit space.

2. No difference in performance but might be subject to more interference from electrical lines if one is right ontop of the cables, otherwise just two shouldn't cause interference between just the two cables.

3. See first part of post

4. For powerline it depends on the age of the wiring, how many circuit hops, distance, etc. to get from point A to B.

[l-_-ll-_-l]

8 minutes ago, Lurick said:

When you say modem, is it just a plain modem or does it have a router built in as well?

If it's just a modem, you need a router and then the switch. If it has a built-in router then you're fine. The switch will provide bandwidth to all the devices depending on how it's being requested. For example, if your internet plan gives you 100Mbps download speed and 1 device is pulling down a steam download at 50Mbps (~6MBps) then everything else will have to fight for the remaining 50Mbps. This assumes no traffic engineering such as QoS or anything else exists in the network to more evenly distribute bandwidth. Of course this is all for devices leaving the local network. Internal network transfers will be at the maximum rate of the switch, provided you aren't hitting one device with requests from two devices at which point you would get roughly have of the speed to each requesting device. (ex: 1 server, 2 hosts)

 

To answer the questions:

1. Flat cable should work provided there is enough conduit space.

2. No difference in performance but might be subject to more interference from electrical lines if one is right ontop of the cables, otherwise just two shouldn't cause interference between just the two cables.

3. See first part of post

4. For powerline it depends on the age of the wiring, how many circuit hops, distance, etc. to get from point A to B.

Thanks for your reply!

 

The modem I have includes a switch and acces point (or a router in one word), but the placing is rather unfortunate as we don't really have any computers on the ground floor.

Our current plan has 200Mb/s but we may upgrade to 400Mb/s in the future if it was necessary, I just don't want to upgrade without the proper equipment connected to the modem.

The speed distribution sounds logical, but why does the frequency range matter then? I thought higher frequency range meant more devices could be connected at the same speed? (e.g. 250MHz = 1 device at 100Mb/s and 500MHZ = 2 devices at 100Mb/s)

[Lurick]

1 minute ago, l-_-ll-_-l said:

Thanks for your reply!

 

The modem I have includes a switch and acces point (or a router in one word), but the placing is rather unfortunate as we don't really have any computers on the ground floor.

Our current plan has 200Mb/s but we may upgrade to 400Mb/s in the future if it was necessary, I just don't want to upgrade without the proper equipment connected to the modem.

The speed distribution sounds logical, but why does the frequency range matter then? I thought higher frequency range meant more devices could be connected at the same speed? (e.g. 250MHz = 1 device at 100Mb/s and 500MHZ = 2 devices at 100Mb/s)

 

Frequency of the cable is just the operational frequency of the cable and relates to the max speed. Higher frequency is just for higher rated cables/speeds. IE, 500MHz would do 10GbE if you had a 10GbE capable switch and 1GHz cable can do 25GbE to 40GbE (which is crazy expensive) but it doesn't limit the number of devices.

[l-_-ll-_-l]

1 minute ago, Lurick said:

 

Frequency of the cable is just the operational frequency of the cable and relates to the max speed. Higher frequency is just for higher rated cables/speeds. IE, 500MHz would do 10GbE if you had a 10GbE capable switch and 1GHz cable can do 25GbE to 40GbE (which is crazy expensive) but it doesn't limit the number of devices.

I think I get it now, thank you!

 

I think I might just draw the situation in a flowchart and ask for the optimal setup, does that make sense?

[Lurick]

1 minute ago, l-_-ll-_-l said:

I think I get it now, thank you!

 

I think I might just draw the situation in a flowchart and ask for the optimal setup, does that make sense?

Sure that will work

[l-_-ll-_-l]

1 hour ago, Lurick said:

Sure that will work

One with (1) and (2) leaving from modem is current situation, the one with (1), (2) and (3) leaving from the modem is the planned situation with (3) going through the newfound conduit.

[Lurick]

I would go with plan #1 if possible. It should provide the most bandwidth to devices and the best experience.

[l-_-ll-_-l]

1 minute ago, Lurick said:

I would go with plan #1 if possible. It should provide the most bandwidth to devices and the best experience.

Plan #2 isn't really a plan, it's just the current situation, which sucks :p. The question is whether plan #1 is any good, or whether there is any room for improvement.

[Lurick]

23 minutes ago, l-_-ll-_-l said:

Plan #2 isn't really a plan, it's just the current situation, which sucks :p. The question is whether plan #1 is any good, or whether there is any room for improvement.

AH! That makes sense. Plan #1 makes more sense and looks very good from what I can tell, nothing that I can see that needs changing from what I can tell.

[l-_-ll-_-l]

1 minute ago, Lurick said:

AH! That makes sense. Plan #1 makes more sense and looks very good from what I can tell, nothing that I can see that needs changing from what I can tell.

Thanks! Now the search for flat CAT7 cables at a reasonable size and price starts.  I don't want to replace those cables ever again, and next year the ISP should be done upgrading their fiber to support Gigabit so I want to futureproof it.