Trouble with wired network between buildings

[Umpa Lumpa]

right now we have both dsl (at the office) and cable internet (at home), we're trying to condence to one service, don't care which. The buildings are about 150 feet apart. I have the house networked already using the cable modem and a d-link wireless router, not using wireless yet. I'm trying to connect the office to it and we have the min 4 wires ran between the buildings for ethernet. My problem is that i tried the dsl first, and was able to get both computers going (one at home and the one in the office) but i wasn't able to get the xboxes working on it, said the cables weren't there when they were all good cables. So i switched to trying the cable service, was able to get the xboxes and the comp at home working, but when i hooked in the office, the connection was slower than dial up over there. wondering if there is something that you know of that might be slowing it down, i know distance can degrade the signal, but i wasn't this slow when i was hooked to dsl earlier. can you help?

alright the signal goes through a motorola surfboard modem directly to the router, and then three ports on the router stay in the house and the fourth goes to the office, have no problems with the house lines they all work fine. at the office as soon as the wires hit the building the go into a netgear switch, just a plain switch, not a hub. the switch shows there is a signal on both ends of it, from the switch it goes to the comp which has a d-link nic in it, home comp is running xp pro, office is xp home. if you need anything else let me know

[kc0arf]

Hello,

Just a minor note: a switch is an upgrade from a hub in terms of packet management and collision avoidance. Your use of "plain switch, not a hub" is misleading.

You also have the hub connected to a wireless router, which is really a router + a switch. This means that you need either a crossover cable, or you need a device that has an uplink port on one end or the other.

Check the Hub to see if there is a special connection slot that says UPLINK. Connect the outdoor line to that UPLINK port. If none is available, you may need to purchase a crossover cable, or re-wire the connection.

But, as the office has some connectivity, there could be another thing involved. You are within the 100 meters for the specification. I am wondering if there are other pieces of interference in the connection, or perhaps a crushed cable, or water in the cable. If this line is running outdoors, you should have purchased cable designed to withstand the elements. Greybar sells cat 5 cable with weatherproof goo inside the cable to keep the rain out.

Let us know,

Christian

[Umpa Lumpa]

Thanks for your input, just so you know the router says it's able to use any type of cable, patch or crossover, on any port. Don't know if that makes a difference. The cable ran between the buildings is in a sealed pvc pipe. I'll try making a crossover cable and see if that helps. i'll keep posting till i get it working.

[Umpa Lumpa]

Switching to a cross-over cable didn't help, when i did that i didn't have any bit of a connection, so it's back to the patch cable right now. With the patch there is a connection, only problem is with the speed. It is slower than dial-up. I can comunicate with the router and everything just it times out b/c the connection is too slow.

[DMR]

1. Sounds like the router has "auto-sensing" ports; you shouldn't have to worry about the crossover issue.

I know you said the connection didn't seem as slow when you were using DSL, but just to cover some general bases:

2.

...we have the min 4 wires ran between the buildings for ethernet.

While 10/100Mb Ethernet only uses four of the wires, a Category 5 Ethernet cable (required for full 100Mb operation) usually contains eight separate wires. If the cable you ran only has four wires total, verify that it's truly a CAT5 cable.

3. A CAT5 cable's performance can be greatly degraded if the cable is stretched, twisted, kinked, etc. in any way. You might want to either run a new cable, or pull back the existing one and examine it for physical damage.

4. The "Link" lights on a switch or router are no indication of the actual signal quality, they just indicate that there's enough of a signal level present to establish a connection. You can't reallly rely on the lights to tell you much more than that.

5. Can you connect the office computer directly to the inter-building wire? That is, bypass the switch and any associated patch cables on the office end of things.

6. If possible, connect another computer to the office side of the connection and se if it also exhibits poor performance.