Home Networking Using Coax: Possible?

J

Jawadali

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Oct 2, 2003
Messages
1,417
Hi guys,

I know this may sound like an odd question, but is it possible to use Coax wire instead of Cat5e for home networking?

Basically, the cable in my home is set up like this: There is a box outside of house where the cable from the provider meets the cable going into my house. Currently, I have disconnected the provider's cable and have connected a cable from my outdoor antenna. From there, the cable goes into my basement. Depending on which room/jack I want the cable service to go to, I connect the wire coming from the outside to the appropriate coax jack. There are about 8 cables, and currently, it is connected to the wire that goes into the living room jack.

I was wondering if I could use the coax wires for networking, and if so, what kind of speeds I'd get. Would it be worth it?

I know there were some old ISA cards which did support some sort of coax networking, but the speeds were probably 10mbps or less.

I currently have DSL.

Thanks,

Jawadali
 
Note that old coax Ethernet cable is 50 OHM while common coax used in home video is 75 OHMs. The two cable types are not interchangeable.

There are probably some coax ethernet adapters/bridges that work over coax, but I've heard little about them aside from:

http://www.mocalliance.org

Good luck finding any equipment available for it though.
 
You could ... but it would be a step back in time. If I remember my lessons correctly also, you cannot get full duplex with Coax networking .. it's all half duplex. That = lots of collisions.
 
Depending on which room/jack I want the cable service to go to, I connect the wire coming from the outside to the appropriate coax jack.
Click to expand...

Why don't you use a coax cable splitter so you don't have to switch cables all the time?
 
Some helpful info

My curiosity has been peaked about this. I can't find any info that states you can't get full duplex transmission across Coax .. but I'll keep looking.

Some of the disadvantages I saw were how difficult it is to install and pull Coax because of the inflexibility and thickness. Also, you would have to use repeaters specifically designed to work with Coax rather than UTP or STP. This would mean more $$. Repeaters don't switch traffic which means you have to worry about "shared" bandwidth for each device. Your LAN becomes one big collision domain rather than each node exisiting on it's own collision domain in a full duplex environment. You can read about collsion domains here.

What all that means is that I think you would see a signifigant performance degradation over UTP. I'll keep trying to find something that supports my opinion that full duplex is not possible across Coax.
 
Wow..not many IT old timers here eh?

Yes..they made ISA network cards that ran on coax..and believe it or not...PCI cards also. Back then it was called 10Base-2. It was quite popular. 10 meg connections, Tbars and terminator caps. And we used to build quite large networks with them.

For a "home network"...will be fine...no reason to lose sleep over collisions.
 
Thanks for all of the replies.

YeOldeStonecat, that is the basic info I got when I saw some of those old network cards. I was wondering if it could to 100Mbps with newer tech, but it seems that most (all) cards were limited to 10mbps.

I may stick to wireless (I currently have a Wireless router acting as an access point and as a wired switch, and there is only one PC using WLAN at the moment).

EQTakeOffense said:
Why don't you use a coax cable splitter so you don't have to switch cables all the time?
Click to expand...

Heh, the only place we watch TV in the house is in the living room, so I don't switch the cable around.

The other TVs are in the basement and are only used for game consoles.
 
I'm going to make your life a Whole lot easier by saying....

NO

Whether that's a lie or not, it will make your life easier :)
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
Wow..not many IT old timers here eh?

Yes..they made ISA network cards that ran on coax..and believe it or not...PCI cards also. Back then it was called 10Base-2. It was quite popular. 10 meg connections, Tbars and terminator caps. And we used to build quite large networks with them.

For a "home network"...will be fine...no reason to lose sleep over collisions.
Click to expand...

Ah the good old days, you just laid out my early LAN party days to a "T"...pun intended :D
 
hstuehmeyer2000 said:
you definitely don't want to use thicknet or thinnet, its slow
Click to expand...

Slow and you most likely can't use your existing coax; thus eliminating any reason to consider it. It's not worth it.

Sticking with wireless or running cat5 are probably the best options. Some people here seem to like the powerline networking devices, so you may consider this as an alternative (I haven't tried them out though).

I've searched for home network adapters and bridges that use phone wire or typical 75 OHM coax, but actual hardware devices are strangely difficult to find.
 
those wall-power plug solutions work pretty well, but they are a bit of an expensive initial investment.. my friend coughed up like $100 just for one single connection... but, once you buy the first part, then you simply buy each end you want, and its not so bad after that.

speeds are pretty good what what he said.. he said its way better than his wireless
 
Thanks for all the answers everyone. I currently have a few computers connected to wired network upstairs, and one connected via wireless downstairs (one 4-port wired 10/100 router connected to another 4-port wireless router which is acting as an Ethernet switch + access point).

The PC that is connected via wireless is mainly for web surfing/playing media, so I doubt I'd see a significant performance increase if it was using 100mbps Ethernet vs. the current 54g wireless.
 
Ok...the OLD coax stuff for data was 50 ohm, RG58 or RG62, used BNC connectors...In a bus configuration with tees and terminators.
Cable TV coax is 75 Ohm, RG6, uses F connectors. You can not use CATV coax for networking...
Just run some cat 5e and be done with it :)
 
hahah and how many of us old timers who worked with thin/thick coax remembered troubleshooting a previously installed network and they dumb dumb didn't terminate the connection and trying to figure out why the network didn't work properly!
 
Thanks for all of the info. I guess I can live with one PC being wireless. Most of the important PCs are all on a wired network.
 
firebane said:
hahah and how many of us old timers who worked with thin/thick coax remembered troubleshooting a previously installed network and they dumb dumb didn't terminate the connection and trying to figure out why the network didn't work properly!
Click to expand...

Those were the easy ones to figure out, my favorite was the lazy wiring tech that would run coax right above or directly on top of the florescent lighting causing massive amounts of interference.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top