Messages in this thread | | | Date | Tue, 12 Jan 1999 00:10:58 -0500 (EST) | From | "Mike A. Harris" <> | Subject | Re: Cheap network for two hosts ? |
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On Sun, 10 Jan 1999, Brandon S. Allbery KF8NH wrote:
>More careless --- UTP is more forgiving than 10Base2; if you leave a cable >dangling unconnected (or accidentally snap the cable) a UTP LAN will still >work aside from the machine(s) disconnected by the cable break, whereas >10Base2 will probably give you many errors and kill throughput on the entire >LAN.
No kidding. That is one of the advantages of UTP. In a scenario where the cables are NOT dangling or in a position to have 1000 pound steel plates dropped on them, this advantage is meaningless however, and coax is just as good. Coax is more unlikely to get broken than UTP as well. The cable is thick and strong. In a home environment, this is good enough for most cases, ESPECIALLY cheap quick solutions. If someone were wiring their house with network cable, I would heavily recommend going with UTP however, and forking for the hub. It is much more worth it in the long run to go for UTP, but not all situations demand forking out the extra cost. A simple 2 machine network, or even a simple 3 machine network is a good example. It really depends on the customers usage and other needs though.
>It's considered bad form for a cable break on one side of the building to >screw up a file transfer between two machines next to each other on the >other side of the building... bot with 10Base2 this can happen.
Yes, it can, but the scenarios that you are describing sound more "business" networkish to me. It's not like all kinds of people are out there with 20 computers networked in their houses with all this space between machines... We're talking SIMPLE NETWORK in the home. UTP is not needed.
>And Cat.5 is more flexible; I can run a cable under the floor a lot more >easily and with less risk of damaging the cable (see previous paragraph). >Putting a kink in coax can put a pretty serious kink in your network even if >the cable isn't broken!
That I will strongly agree with. Again though, it really truely depends on the exact scenario. If someone came to me to set up either a home or business network, I would want to see the site itself, and know how much they want to spend. I'd make some recommendations based on that. I'd likely recommend that they got UTP if there were more than 2 machines, for the advantages that UTP does have, but I'd also give them a price for coax too, and let them decide. Most 2-3 user home networks would likely go with the coax I believe.
-- Mike A. Harris - Computer Consultant - Linux advocate
Linux software galore: http://freshmeat.net
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