My church has two buildings with 6 PCs in building 1 and 3 PCs in building 2. In building 1 we have a Linksys BEFSR81 10/100 8 port router. I ran about 240 feet of cat-5 cable to building 2 and have an old Linksys 10/ hub. When they are hooked up everything works but the data tranfer rate is very slow. I got a linksys EZXS55W 10/100
5 port switch but when I replace the old 10 speed hub with the new switch nothing works. [ I have the cat-5 cable pluged into the uplink port of the switch but I also tried pluging it into a numbered port. ] The PCs say low connectivty and we can't connect to the network. I can't make the cat-5 cable any shorter but the book says it is good for 328 feet. should I try useing a router in building 2 instead of a switch and if so how do I configer it ? If not - any other ideas

There are a couple of things to remember. The max distance for Cat5 is 100 meters, but that isn't the length of the overall cable, it's for the wires inside which are twisted. This reduces the overall length you can run the cable. You should still be fine with 240 feet though.

Also when connecting a switch to a hub you use a straight-through cable, but when connecting a switch to a switch you need to use a crossover cable. Some switches autosense crossover status and will work either way, but it is always better and will prevent random problems if it is cabled correctly.

The best option for troubleshooting is to use a cable tester on the 240' length, but if one is not available you can try to hook up a computer directly to the end of the 240' length of cable and see if you can get a connection.

If your cable is a straight-through you should be able to get a crossover converter from a local store if you do not feel like running another cable.

I did test the cable with a cable tester and it shows good. Also it works when hooked to the old 10/ speed hub, just not with the new 10/100 switch. I will ck. into a crossover converter and see what happens. Thanks

I tried the crossover cable and it made no difference. I took the switch up to building #1 and hooked it up with a 5 foot reg. cable and it worked ok, so it must have something to do with the lenght of the cable. I guess next I,ll try assigning Static IP addresses to the PCs.
If any one has any thoughts on this I can use the help. Thanks

It's just to long of a run. The technical maximum is 100m, but I think the actual maximum maybe as low as 140 feet. I have never run one longer than around 120 feet.

You either need to get a repeater to put halfway down the run, or use fiber.