Ethernet sockets

[jfb]

If I am wanting two or three ethernet sockets in a small office/studio does one take a different cable back to a patch bay for each socket or can they be run in a radial fashion?

[Jeremy Harris]

Each cable has to run from the individual output on the switch (which may be combined with a router) to the wall socket.  You can choose to use a patch panel if you have a lot of cables, or you can do as I did and just fit a wall plate with several sockets and use short patch leads from that to a switch.  You could even fix the switch to a wall somewhere  and run the cables direct from there to the sockets, but it's not a great idea to flex fixed Ethernet cable too much, as it uses solid cores (flexible Ethernet cables use multistrand cores).

 

You can get  wall plates that allow several ethernet ports to fit on a single plate, so if you don't have too many cables this can be a fairly neat solution at the switch end.

[epsilonGreedy]

1 minute ago, jfb said:

a different cable back to a patch bay for each socket or can they be run in a radial fashion?

 

 

To me these alternatives mean the same thing. Perhaps you meant "ring fashion"?

 

I don't think ethernet can we wired in a ring configuration so you will need seperate lan cables running back to the hub/switch or hide a small local powered hub somewhere in the office with a single cable running back to the main hub. IBM sold a pre ethernet technology called Token Ring 30 years ago which rivalled Ethernet for a time.

[epsilonGreedy]

41 minutes ago, jfb said:

a different cable back to a patch bay for each socket

 

 

p.s. In my answer I am assuming the "patch bay" is elsewhere in your house?

 

p.s.2 The term "patch bay" is ambiguous in home LAN cabling. The core components that connect up a LAN are (1) Hub, (2) Switch and (3) Router. Big commercial networks often have racks filled with things that look like an audio patch bay but these are really cabling configuration access points to the hub/switch deeper in the rack cabinet.

Edited April 11, 2020 by epsilonGreedy

[jfb]

1 hour ago, epsilonGreedy said:

To me these alternatives mean the same thing. Perhaps you meant "ring fashion"?

Sorry not very clear - by radial I just meant similar to a single radial electric cable run where one cable to the first socket, then a cable from that socket on to the next, etc rather individual cable runs to the main input (which I understand is radial as well !)

 

Thanks for info Jeremy I will think on!

Edited April 11, 2020 by jfb

[dnb]

10 base 2 Ethernet was a "radial" as in lighting circuit.  50 ohm co-ax cable between T pieces on the network cards and a terminator resistor at each end. Nobody has used it for years - almost as long as IBM token rings. A "star" configuration is probably a better description of modern Ethernet (e.g. 100base and 1000base copper)

[dpmiller]

yep, we had coax systems still in use until maybe 5 years ago- car paint systems aren't always upgraded too often.

[PeterW]

If you are using 10/100 rather than Gbit networks, and don’t have PoE requirements, then you can use the spare pairs to double up each socket if needed. Brown and blue are unused in normal wiring so you can wire these as the “other” pair. 
 

Other option is to use PoE to power a passive switch somewhere else in the network and use that to split to your other port requirements.  

[SteamyTea]

37 minutes ago, PeterW said:

then you can use the spare pairs to double up each socket if needed. Brown and blue are unused in normal wiring so you can wire these as the “other” pair. 

I had some adaptors that allowed for that.  

[PeterW]

Shame they only make these for US socket plates 

 

https://www.poetexas.com/products/gaf-usb2

 

[Temp]

Years ago there was 10base5 ethernet sometimes called Thick Ethernet due to the big fat coaxial cable it used. To connect to it you drilled a hole in the cable and connected a thing called a Tap that made connection to the core and screen. Another cable went from the Tap to a card in your computer.

 

10base2 used a much smaller diameter coaxial cable and BNC connectors and was sometimes known as Thin Ethernet. The Tap was integrated into the card in the PC so you could use BNC T connectors and cables to build a network point A to point B to point C like a UK lighting circuit.

 

The modern 10baseT network was derived from the cable that went from the 10base5 Tap to your computer. In effect replacing the Tap with a hub or router. This means it's a star network more like a UK radial power network.. Hub to A, Hub to B, Hub to C etc.

 

[Temp]

13 hours ago, PeterW said:

If you are using 10/100 rather than Gbit networks, and don’t have PoE requirements, then you can use the spare pairs to double up each socket if needed. Brown and blue are unused in normal wiring so you can wire these as the “other” pair. 

 

You could, and I have, but I wouldn't recommend it just to save a bit of wire. Run separate cables to each socket.