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Strategies & Market Trends : TA-HARD & SOFTWARE
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To: Derek B who wrote (117)11/25/1997 3:35:00 PM
From: Sean W. Smith  Read Replies (2) of 163
 
I recommend a combination ethernet card - one that can accept either 10BaseT or
coaxial cable. With the coax cable you can daisy-chain together several computers
without need for a hub or special software. I have 4 computers so networked and
nothing more than Win95 for software. Works great.

Yes there are certainly different choices for ethernet cabling. Lets review them briefly.

10Base5 - Thick Coax 500M/segment(max len) uses large F connector
10Base2 - Thin Coax 200M/segment (max len) uses BNC connector
10BaseT - Category 3 or 5 Twisted (max len) pair 100M/segment uses RJ45 connector

10Base5 is a dinosaur and is not suitable for small installs and seldomly used.

10Base2 - as you mention can be used without a hub. Its topology is a daisy chain from one computer to another with termination resistors on each end of this linear segment.

Advantages: You don't need a hub and connect as many computers as you want as long as total length is less than 200M. Robust Cabling. Good for hooking two or more computers together (not in the walls). Doesn't require a hub.

Disadvantages: No Very fault tolerant. If the terminator or the calbing is disconnected any where on the segment all computers on that segment are effected. The cable and connectors cost much more than twisted pair wiring. Hard to use in discrete installations where wiring is pulled through walls or are trying to leverage existing twisted pair wiring installations for telephones. Not very flexable (kinking the cable can result in lots of random errors). No 100M standard exists for this cabling.

10BaseT: comes in two main flavors Category 3 and Category 5. Cat5 uses lower gauge wire and larger # of twists per inch and is designed to carry 100BaseX (100M Ethernet on copper) traffic as well. ALL new installations should use Cat 5. Uses RJ45 connector. 8 wire connector looks similar to RJ-11 which is 4 wire standard POTS (Plain old Telephone system) connector that you have in your house. The little prong can break so I recommend getting patch cables with
protective boots (costs little extra).

Advantages: wire and connectors are cheap (buy from a cabling supplier in your area, I can get 100' Ft Cables with boots for $8.00).
Higher port density. Cable is very flexible and is easy to use in discrete installations via RJ45 wall plates and short patch cables.
Much more fault tolerant. Any lobe wire from the hub can be unconnected cut/shorted and the other stations on the network will not
be effected (Star Topology). Diagnostic and wire Fault LED's on Hubs. Very easy to upgrade 100M ethernet or any type of switched ethernet.

Diadvantages: Have to buy a hub. Hub requires AC power.

Hubs are cheap. Look at www.necx.com or www.cdw.com or any other
big mailer order house and you can buy 4 port hubs for less than $50
and 8 ports hubs for less than $90.

I personally don't buy combo cards because I don't use 10Base2 anymore. There are too many advanatages to 10BaseT to use anything else. Getting a combo card will only adds a couple of bucks to the price of the card though.

2 computers.
10BaseT is cheapest.

3 - 5 computers placed very close together 10base2 is the cheapest solution.

6+ computers 10baseT is going to be your cheapest solution because the cost of the wires will compensate for the cost of the hub. Also the 200M on 10base2 could cause the need for a repeater/bridge/router
to connect computers than are separated by larger distances.

Note: Fast Ethernet cards are cheap now too. 15-50$ more than 10M cards. The hubs are expensive still but have already dropped tremendously in price.

Sean
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