[PLUG] Docking Station! was: Right angle cat6

Ronald Chmara ron at Opus1.COM
Fri Oct 26 04:12:47 UTC 2007


On Oct 25, 2007, at 1:12 PM, Russell Senior wrote:

>>>>>> "Rogan" == Rogan Creswick <creswick at gmail.com> writes:
>
> Rogan> The full dock (at least one of them) does offer some pretty
> Rogan> impressive benefits though [...]
>
> All this brainstorming has got me thinking of the *perfect* solution.
> Strip the outer jacket off of some cat6, crimp a tip on, make a right
> angle bend with the now-quite-flexible wires, and then hoop-staple the
> loose pairs along the edge of the case to the back, where you can
> hot-glue a keystone jack.

<http://www.google.com/search?q=Cat+6+bend+radius>

I've seen networks crippled by 20-30% throughput by people  
"neatening" their connections, throwing harsh right angles into the  
mix, or cramming/crimping them all together with zip ties, or using  
poor lengths for patch cords (etc. etc.). It's fairly counter- 
intuitive, and meaningless for idle net-surfing, but if you really  
need to squeeze *every last drop* out of your cables, it's nice to  
know the dark arts (aka "standards based on science") for cable  
handling.

Amusing anecdote, I ran across this *one* workstation where:
a) all the desktop power cables, network cables, the whole shebang  
was zip-tied into one big CF of bleed through. Every time their laser  
printer fired up, their network performance dropped. (Uhm, of course?)
b) Since there was *so much* cable, it was zip-tied into a neatly  
stacked *coil*. (This was apparently not somebody who passed high- 
school science basics, or they slept through the day on making  
electromagnets).
c) Since it "looked nicer", all the cables had harsh right angles,  
which, for *some* reason, were hotter than the rest of the cable, and  
just didn't seem as fast is they should be (hey, lets ram countless  
electrons into our cheap insulation layer, and see what it does!).

While the Malware cleanup tools (*sigh*) were running on their  
machine (based on the above? uhm, yeah, clueless.), I reran power  
with power, reran data with airgaps, removed the bends, re-crimped  
the ends, eliminated coils, etc. Since it's been a few years now, and  
the malware is prolly back, but at least it'll still run faster.

Unless, of course, they decided to "clean up" their cables again.

-Bop



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