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Started by Dwiel Nov 13, 2004 at 6:35 PM 19 replies 2k views
Original Post
Dwiel
Dwiel
Hey, just have a few netowrking problems I havnt been able to resolve. When it comes to networking if when I plug everything in, and it doesnt work, I am at a complete loss. The Scenario. I have cable internet. Comes into my basement. Goes to a router. Router goes to WIRED ports around my house. I would like to run 2 computers on the network in one room where there is only one port. I bought a switch to do this, but maybe it is not what I needed? I know my router can handle it. It says it can handle 255 computers. One thing I was slightly confused about was that there was no special port which was for the wire which connected to the router. I am still not quite sure why this is not the case. When I plug from my wall to the switch to a single computer which was previously connected, windows 'thinks' its still connected, as in it doesn't show that network disconnected icon in the systray, yet nothing works. home network, http to router, inet, nothing. The lights are all on where it seems like they should be on the switch. Second. I have a bunch of old cat 5 cable but no male connectors. long male-male cat 5 cables are expensive and I already have the wire. I am pretty sure that I need a special crimping tool to add the male ends on although I am not sure. Would I be able to cut a 3ft male-male cable in half and splice in my own longer cat 5? Thanks Dwiel
Dwiel
mutex
mutex
Quote:
Original post by Tazzel3D
Second. I have a bunch of old cat 5 cable but no male connectors. long male-male cat 5 cables are expensive and I already have the wire. I am pretty sure that I need a special crimping tool to add the male ends on although I am not sure. Would I be able to cut a 3ft male-male cable in half and splice in my own longer cat 5?
Splicing in cable sounds difficult; you might be better off buying a really long cat 5 cable (100 ft for ~$10 maybe?) and cutting it up and making your own ends. I don't know how much the tools cost, but the connectors can be expensive unless you buy in bulk.

And now I'm sure I'm wrong about the prices, but lots of cat 5 is pretty cheap from what I remember.

Dwiel
Dwiel
I have a lt of the cable/wire, it just has no ends on it. From what I have heard, the tool necessary to put the male ends on are expensive. Maybe that is wrong... I was just hoping to be able to use the large amount of actual cable I already have. Thanks

Dwiel
Dwiel
benryves
benryves
Crimping tools aren't that costly... The fancy ones here are up to £30, but you can get them for little more than a tenner.
[Website] [+++ Divide By Cucumber Error. Please Reinstall Universe And Reboot +++]
TMAN
TMAN
Windows thinks it's connected because it is. It's connected to the network created by the switch. To hook the switch up to the router, you'll need a crossover cable. I think if you hook a crossover cable to the wall from the switch, it should work fine but I've never done anything like going through a wired wall with a crossover.
-Yo, I couldn''t think of anything else for my sig.TobiasA+, Linux+
Dwiel
Dwiel
Quote:
Original post by benryves
Crimping tools aren't that costly... The fancy ones here are up to £30, but you can get them for little more than a tenner.


Actually I just did some more looking into. I do need a special Cat5 Crimping tool, not just any crimper, but they are only about $15. The little plugs are $0.50. One question if I do decide to make my own, you know how to make it a crossover?

Quote:
Original post by TMAN
Windows thinks it's connected because it is. It's connected to the network created by the switch. To hook the switch up to the router, you'll need a crossover cable. I think if you hook a crossover cable to the wall from the switch, it should work fine but I've never done anything like going through a wired wall with a crossover.


Yeah, I did some googling with crossover, network, etc and it does look like what I need. Is there a way to canibalize a current cable?

Thanks

Dwiel
Dwiel
TMAN
TMAN
yes
here and here

I came across this really great site about this but for the life of me, I can't find it.
EDIT: Oh wait, here it is
-Yo, I couldn''t think of anything else for my sig.TobiasA+, Linux+
Dwiel
Dwiel
Thanks a lot. I'll see if I can get what I want done by using a crossover cable and then either just buy a longish RJ-45 cable, or buy the tools to do it myself if I think I will want to make more in the future.

Thanks for the help!

Dwiel
Dwiel
etothex
etothex
Why do you need a crossover cable? I thought even the cheap-ass switches support Auto-MDIX.

If your switch does, you shouldn't need a crossover. Just plug a regular network cable from the router to any port on the switch, then connect each pc to any of the free ports on the switch left. At least that's the way my switch works.
Dwiel
Dwiel
Quote:
Original post by etothex
Why do you need a crossover cable? I thought even the cheap-ass switches support Auto-MDIX.

If your switch does, you shouldn't need a crossover. Just plug a regular network cable from the router to any port on the switch, then connect each pc to any of the free ports on the switch left. At least that's the way my switch works.


That is exactly what I tried, and it didn't work. Hopefully the crossover cable will solve my problems.

Dwiel
Dwiel
Hedos
Hedos
Quote:
Original post by etothex
Why do you need a crossover cable? I thought even the cheap-ass switches support Auto-MDIX.

If your switch does, you shouldn't need a crossover. Just plug a regular network cable from the router to any port on the switch, then connect each pc to any of the free ports on the switch left. At least that's the way my switch works.


I'd like to know if someone could confirm that?
I'm planning to add a computer to my network and if I don't have to get a crossover cable, that would help me a lot.
Horizon
Horizon
Is there something like an "uplink" port on the switch? If so, you might want to try that to connect it to the router and then connect the pc to any other port. Sometimes these uplink ports are marked with a sort of X.

Oh and splicing three pieces of cable together should be easy enough as all of the wires should be color coded. It would then be as easy as putting the same colors together (then the cable will be the same type as the one you cut in two, cross or straight).
Dwiel
Dwiel
I figured that it would be easy to splice but will I lose a lot of speed? I know that the wires are twisted and shielded to keep out interfierence (which there happens to be a lot of in my room). I wasnt sure if I would be killing my performance by doing this.

It turns out, my dad probably has the crimper and stuff at his work, so I'm gonan try to make my own cables. My switch doesn't have an uplink port on it, just 1-5. Also other switches that I found said that it would do auto crossover in the description. For my switch though, I never found a description where it said that it had this feature. I'm really hoping that this is the problem cause I have no idea what else might be the problem.

I'll be sure to update with what I did and if it works when I get everything tested so that other gders know what to do in this situation.

Dwiel
Dwiel
Dwiel
Dwiel
I just did Router -> crossover -> Switch -> Patch -> Computer. Didn't work. Anyone have any ideas on what could be going wrong?

Thanks

Dwiel
Dwiel
TMAN
TMAN
did you put the crossed end in the switch the normal end in the wall? Have you tried different ports on the switch.
-Yo, I couldn''t think of anything else for my sig.TobiasA+, Linux+
Dwiel
Dwiel
to make the cross, I cut a normal wire in half and connected orange to green and visa-versa. I was unaware that the ends of the crossover were different... I used the pic on the right as a guide:



I plugged one end into the wall and the other end into the switch. From the switch I went to the computer with a normal cable. I tried a few diff combinations of ports on teh switch.

any more ideas?

Dwiel

P.S. I bet I know what my problem is... How do I tell which wire is wire one/two etc as in the picture. I switched the colors from the diagram but it doesnt look like the wires on my cable are in the same configuration.

P.S.S. Yeah, it looks like thats what I did. My cable didnt follow any std wire color convention. Which is ok because I wasnt ever supposed to cut it open :-P Hopefully this works/
Dwiel
TMAN
TMAN
you should've read page 6, man
Quote:
from dux


  • A straight-thru cable has identical ends.

  • A crossover cable has different ends.


-Yo, I couldn''t think of anything else for my sig.TobiasA+, Linux+
Dwiel
Dwiel
Ok, well I got it kinda working. I did the switch and now my second computer is on the inet and the network with the rest of the computers not on the switch. My guess is that my primary computer simply needs a reboot to get the netwrok settings fixed up.

BTW, in that article, by saying that a crossover HAS DIFFERENT ENDS, they don't mean that the order you plug the cable in matters, just that if you but the plugs seperate, you should get an A and a B and wire it up that way. I had to canabalize two As that I already had.

It is working now though and all I did was connect brown->green and green->brown. I havnt even connected the other 4 wires yet just for testing.

Thanks for all of the help!

Dwiel
Dwiel
TMAN
TMAN
Quote:
Original post by Tazzel3D
Ok, well I got it kinda working. I did the switch and now my second computer is on the inet and the network with the rest of the computers not on the switch. My guess is that my primary computer simply needs a reboot to get the netwrok settings fixed up.

BTW, in that article, by saying that a crossover HAS DIFFERENT ENDS, they don't mean that the order you plug the cable in matters, just that if you but the plugs seperate, you should get an A and a B and wire it up that way. I had to canabalize two As that I already had.

It is working now though and all I did was connect brown->green and green->brown. I havnt even connected the other 4 wires yet just for testing.

Thanks for all of the help!

Dwiel


Oh, I know that. I was just curious if switching it around would make a differnce.
-Yo, I couldn''t think of anything else for my sig.TobiasA+, Linux+
Dwiel
Dwiel
Quote:
Original post by TMAN
Quote:
Original post by Tazzel3D
Ok, well I got it kinda working. I did the switch and now my second computer is on the inet and the network with the rest of the computers not on the switch. My guess is that my primary computer simply needs a reboot to get the netwrok settings fixed up.

BTW, in that article, by saying that a crossover HAS DIFFERENT ENDS, they don't mean that the order you plug the cable in matters, just that if you but the plugs seperate, you should get an A and a B and wire it up that way. I had to canabalize two As that I already had.

It is working now though and all I did was connect brown->green and green->brown. I havnt even connected the other 4 wires yet just for testing.

Thanks for all of the help!

Dwiel


Oh, I know that. I was just curious if switching it around would make a differnce.


Ah Ok, thanks for the help.

Now I have a new problem... Eithermy router wont give me another IP comming from the same physical port on it, or one of my NICs are bad, or sth. I have an on-board nic on my main computer, A's, mobo. I put a PCI nic in my other computer B. When I have both connected to my switch, only computer B will connect to the network. If I disable A's on-board NIC, and put B's PCI card in instead, I get the network on comp A. If I bypass the switch completely, and go straight to the on-board NIC on comp A, the netwrok works. I am at a complete loss as to what the heck is going on. To me, it seems like I have confounding data...

I think I am going to try to leave the current PCI NIC in comp A where the switch works, and put a second PIC NIC in comp B and see if I can't get everyone running all at the same time. I'll try that tommarow, but if anyone has any other ideas, I'm all ears!

Dwiel
Dwiel

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