Why didn't anyone tell me about these?

Bmr4life

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 13, 2002
Messages
241
I was going through heck trying to figure out how to get everything wired up in my living room.

Thread here

All I had to do was buy 2 of these.

Now my xbox360 and HTPC can share the single cat5e line that I had installed.

Best thing since sliced bread.
 
Let me know how well those things work, I've seen them before but never had the chance to use em.
 
I'm not sure I understand how that's supposed to work... isn't Ethernet point-to-point, hence the need for switches?

Ninja:
I would hate to load up a netmon tool and watch the collisions that are occurring!

That's precisely what I'm thinking.
 
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I would hate to load up a netmon tool and watch the collisions that are occurring!
 
I have never seen these work. they jack stuff up whenever some thinks about using them
 
I use tons of these at work. For 10/100 based networking, there is not noticeable difference in speeds when you use them.

Before I rewired the buildings I had over 100 of these in use in our dorms so each student would have a dedicated wired connection to the dorm switches. Again without any issues.

**Edit**

You do need decent switches to make them work well. With unmanaged switches they didn't work well, but when hooked into HP Pro-Curve equipment the work perfectly.
 
I guess I am at a loss. One device will prolly work at a time. Not 2 devices fighting for the line. Cat5, Cat6 what not transmit on 1 pair and recieve on 1 pair. Hence the A/B standards.
Do you have one at each end? How arethey set up and working?
A lot of people are having issues with those you linked. They prolly are trying to have more than 1 device running at the same time.
 
Lesse,
It may not work on soem switches.
It doesn't work with gigabit.
Extra piece of headache when troubleshooting.

I honestly think you'd be better serve using wireless...
 
From some of the comments, I'm not quite sure everyone here quite understands what these do.

In 10/100 networking you only use 2 pairs of the cables. Cat5 and higher have 4 pairs. What these do is make it so you can plug in a second ethernet cable and it sends its signal over the 2 unused pairs. Basically it converts your single Cat5/5e/6 cable into a dual Cat3 cable. They don't fight, there isn't any collisions or anything. The only thing that happens is that there can be quite a bit of cross-talk on long runs because of all 4 pairs carrying signal. This is why they work better with higher grade switches that can handle the extra line noise.

Your average house run isn't going to be long enough to cause issues.
 
From some of the comments, I'm not quite sure everyone here quite understands what these do.

In 10/100 networking you only use 2 pairs of the cables. Cat5 and higher have 4 pairs. What these do is make it so you can plug in a second ethernet cable and it sends its signal over the 2 unused pairs. Basically it converts your single Cat5/5e/6 cable into a dual Cat3 cable. They don't fight, there isn't any collisions or anything. The only thing that happens is that there can be quite a bit of cross-talk on long runs because of all 4 pairs carrying signal. This is why they work better with higher grade switches that can handle the extra line noise.

Your average house run isn't going to be long enough to cause issues.

Ding ding ding.

Pretty much what he said. Execpt the part about dual cat 3. Pretty much it saves you from having to run a second line by using all of the cables in the wire. Gigabit uses all 4 pairs as does POE so it will not work for them. Personally I'm not a fan of these suckers but they can work. For a small homesetup I wouldn't worry about it.
 
From some of the comments, I'm not quite sure everyone here quite understands what these do.

In 10/100 networking you only use 2 pairs of the cables. Cat5 and higher have 4 pairs. What these do is make it so you can plug in a second ethernet cable and it sends its signal over the 2 unused pairs. Basically it converts your single Cat5/5e/6 cable into a dual Cat3 cable. They don't fight, there isn't any collisions or anything. The only thing that happens is that there can be quite a bit of cross-talk on long runs because of all 4 pairs carrying signal. This is why they work better with higher grade switches that can handle the extra line noise.

Your average house run isn't going to be long enough to cause issues.

wait... so how are all 4 pairs used on the single end? when the switch only uses 2 pairs? if each "half" uses 2 separate pairs, then all 4 pairs are used at the single end.
if all 4 pairs are used at the single end, 2 pairs are going nowhere at the switch, since it only uses 2 pairs.
right? :confused:
 
So what you are saying is that your switch recognizes teh tx and rx on the "dead" pairs and puts them right going on to the next node? Can auto sensing do that? I thought Autosensing ruled out crossover to straight through issues. Like connecting switch to switch using crossovers and swith to workstation straight through. I will have to research further. Do you have a switch model that can do that auto-sensing off the top of your head?

Technically if you used on at each end of the run you could technically work. That is if they are wired the same.

After thought?
Buy a cheap ass 5 port switch and be done with all this crap.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...34&cm_re=5_port_switch-_-33-166-034-_-Product
 
This is why they work better with higher grade switches that can handle the extra line noise.

Which makes a silly paradox. You may save $10 on not buying the extra cable run but you spend $20 on getting a switch to deal with the deficiencies of the coupler.
 
So what you are saying is that your switch recognizes teh tx and rx on the "dead" pairs and puts them right going on to the next node? Can auto sensing do that? I thought Autosensing ruled out crossover to straight through issues. Like connecting switch to switch using crossovers and swith to workstation straight through. I will have to research further. Do you have a switch model that can do that auto-sensing off the top of your head?

Technically if you used on at each end of the run you could technically work. That is if they are wired the same.

After thought?
Buy a cheap ass 5 port switch and be done with all this crap.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...34&cm_re=5_port_switch-_-33-166-034-_-Product

Yea you buy 2 of those adapters. You plug 2 network cables into a switch and hook them into the spliter which you run a single network cable to the other spliter to seperate it from the single wire to 2 wires. Personally I'd pick up a mini switch and call it a day but thats me. Besides you never know what else you might want to hook up in the future. I take my nintendo wii to friends houses and we plug it in via ethernet to get it online(I bought the nintendo ethernet to usb adapter for it).
 
Yea you buy 2 of those adapters. You plug 2 network cables into a switch and hook them into the spliter which you run a single network cable to the other spliter to seperate it from the single wire to 2 wires. Personally I'd pick up a mini switch and call it a day but thats me. Besides you never know what else you might want to hook up in the future. I take my nintendo wii to friends houses and we plug it in via ethernet to get it online(I bought the nintendo ethernet to usb adapter for it).

ahhhhh, makes sense now.
requires 2 per run.
 
You have these setup right now and they work? Both devices can be on at the same time and using the internet?

Yes, I have it in my living room. It works great.

From some of the comments, I'm not quite sure everyone here quite understands what these do.

In 10/100 networking you only use 2 pairs of the cables. Cat5 and higher have 4 pairs. What these do is make it so you can plug in a second ethernet cable and it sends its signal over the 2 unused pairs. Basically it converts your single Cat5/5e/6 cable into a dual Cat3 cable. They don't fight, there isn't any collisions or anything. The only thing that happens is that there can be quite a bit of cross-talk on long runs because of all 4 pairs carrying signal. This is why they work better with higher grade switches that can handle the extra line noise.

Your average house run isn't going to be long enough to cause issues.

Bingo, and I love it.

Those that say just get a switch, I already have one. The way my house is set up is an airlink wifi router running dd-wrt. Off one of its 4 ports is a simple 8 port dlink switch. From the switch, I have 2 ports going to one of these adapters, then to a cat5e going to my living room with another one of these on the other end. HTPC and Xbox 360 plugged into the ports.

I did not want to put yet another switch in the chain.
 
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I would hate to load up a netmon tool and watch the collisions that are occurring!

You know how many of those things I've thrown away? Over the years I've seen so many of them in duct tape and bubble gum networks I've wandered into to fix..soon as those things get toss and proper cables get run...problems seem to go away on that leg of the network.
 
Yea you buy 2 of those adapters. You plug 2 network cables into a switch and hook them into the spliter which you run a single network cable to the other spliter to seperate it from the single wire to 2 wires. Personally I'd pick up a mini switch and call it a day but thats me. Besides you never know what else you might want to hook up in the future. I take my nintendo wii to friends houses and we plug it in via ethernet to get it online(I bought the nintendo ethernet to usb adapter for it).

OK, now that makes sense! I thought it allowed 2 ethernet cables to connect to a single switch port, hence my "WTF:confused:".
 
1) Im not sure that'll work, its designed for something else
2) If it does work, your only getting 10Mbps

What i think it does is splits the signal, you only need 4 wires for your network connection, but it'll be 10mbps i believe, not 100mbps
 
1) Im not sure that'll work, its designed for something else
2) If it does work, your only getting 10Mbps

What i think it does is splits the signal, you only need 4 wires for your network connection, but it'll be 10mbps i believe, not 100mbps

Should work for fast ethernet, just not gigabit. That being said I agree with YeOld on them being crap. I've seen issues with them as well. We will throw a mini switch in or run a new drop with the new drop being the prefered option.
 
Why didn't anyone tell me about these?
Because they were looking out for you. We had those things in a branch office and wondered why the place had ALOT of packet loss if both networks were being used at once. Packet loss was so bad at times that the connection would seem to drop altogether!

Don't even try to get these things. they aren't worth the trouble that they cause. get a cheap switch or run a second cable as has already been suggested.
 
Which makes a silly paradox. You may save $10 on not buying the extra cable run but you spend $20 on getting a switch to deal with the deficiencies of the coupler.

Not if you are inside of 150 year old stone buildings that were wired when it wasn't important to have everything on the network.

When you have to make a new run through several 3-4' thick solid stone walls, spending $20 to get a bunch of these is easier than spending $1000+ to get a few more wires installed.

Also any business worth anything is already going to be running ProCurve/Cisco/whatever for their equipment, so its not like that is an extra expense. I just love these adapters because I can use them until I there are enough that running new cables to an office is actually worth while.

Finally, look at the OPs application. He wants to hook up an Xbox and a HTPC. I would assume that they are both hooked up to the same TV, so the vast majority of the time he will only be using one at a time anyway. Plus he is only investing $1.40 into this. So if they work, awesome; if not who cares.
 
I use these at our school board on drops where theres 2 computers and only 1 line. Maybe it depends on the quality of the splitter but not once have we had any problems with them over the 5+ years we've been using them. Most of our schools have gone through renovations now though and theyre not being used, but these are not as bad as people here are making them out to be, and in certain situations can be great additions.
 
I have never used one of those, but I use a few 3com Intellijack wall plate switches here at work. It is basically just a 4port switch, but on a wall plate.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...cm_re=3com_intellijack-_-33-105-153-_-Product

No problems with them, we have Cisco switches that do PoE, so I don't have to run power to them. If you don't have a switch capable of PoE, then you have to run a power adapter to the switch.
 
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