What is an Ethernet cable? Here's how to connect to the internet without Wi-Fi (2022)(businessinsider.com)
businessinsider.com
What is an Ethernet cable? Here's how to connect to the internet without Wi-Fi (2022)
https://www.businessinsider.com/guides/tech/what-is-an-ethernet-cable
39 comments
Besides ethernet cables providing more stability to your network connection than WiFi, it isn't mentioned in the article. Not many people know about this: most houses have coaxial cable lined throughout. If your router is located in a different location in the house, you can use the coaxial cable to help create a network. You need two MoCA adapters (coaxial to ethernet) on both sides (one at the router/switch/gateway and another at your computer). Connect it all up… bingo, bango, bongo, and you got stable and fast internet! This is how I have the most stable connection in my house :)
Also remember that even if you can't or don't want to connect your device via Ethernet, you might be able to use MoCA to easily move your WiFi router to a better location, or add a second router/mesh node with a reliable wired backhaul instead of a crappy radio backhaul, and that might make all the difference.
I’m not sure I’ve ever been in a house with pre-existing coax, apart from possibly an antenna connection. Is this a US thing?
Lots of US houses have coax to all the main rooms (family, bedrooms) because that was how you got cable TV.
(I still see it in new construction, though if I was having a build done I'd say run multiple Ethernet instead of any coax)
(I still see it in new construction, though if I was having a build done I'd say run multiple Ethernet instead of any coax)
I'm just building a new house this year and Ethernet to every room is standard in this area. In a different state in the US coax is standard in new construction. (We just moved) It varies by location.
Around here it's coax + Ethernet to any "TV" room, Ethernet to all rooms (think - phone line).
I've lived in both Australia and the UK, and the only coaxial cables in any home I had/have have been direct point-to-point connections from the roof-mounted TV antenna to the corner of the sitting room where the TV was intended to be placed. Not terribly useful for computer networking.
In DK I would say it became common with the kitchen and maybe bedroom TV around 1990 and TVs in the kids rooms around 1995.
Cable TV became common in the 1980s (around here). So distribution is just a question about point of entry.
Are the aussies and UKensians that different?
Source: I worked at a TV/electronics shop in the early 90s.
Cable TV became common in the 1980s (around here). So distribution is just a question about point of entry.
Are the aussies and UKensians that different?
Source: I worked at a TV/electronics shop in the early 90s.
Cable TV (from cables under the road) is much more common in Denmark than in the UK.
Digital, broadcast TV in the UK is mostly received by radio broadcast or satellite broadcast, so the house would only have the appropriate cables from certain rooms up to the roof. Thinking of the houses I lived in, it wouldn't have been practical to put a router of any kind up there.
From recent UK statistics:
- 95% of households have at least one television
- 30% receive TV over satellite
- 13% by cable
- 80% by IPTV
- 48% by terrestrial radio broadcast
- 96% have broadband internet
That's 13% of houses using their cables for a TV subscription, so more than that number have the cables available, but some big chunk probably had it installed to a single room in the 1980s and have never expanded it — the kitchen and the kids' room use terrestrial broadcast.
Digital, broadcast TV in the UK is mostly received by radio broadcast or satellite broadcast, so the house would only have the appropriate cables from certain rooms up to the roof. Thinking of the houses I lived in, it wouldn't have been practical to put a router of any kind up there.
From recent UK statistics:
- 95% of households have at least one television
- 30% receive TV over satellite
- 13% by cable
- 80% by IPTV
- 48% by terrestrial radio broadcast
- 96% have broadband internet
That's 13% of houses using their cables for a TV subscription, so more than that number have the cables available, but some big chunk probably had it installed to a single room in the 1980s and have never expanded it — the kitchen and the kids' room use terrestrial broadcast.
Nope. As you say yourself: Possibly an antenna connection.
Exactly that. When we redid the floors i our apartment we renewed the electrical wiring and added ethernet and coax. The coax was intended for radio/tv.
There is however an overlap of people who have the foresight to add coax cabling also add ethernet a well.
If I was was re-doing today I would add more empty pipes and fiber.
Cabling ahead has a very high WAF (Wife Approval Factor) when adding new gear :-)
Exactly that. When we redid the floors i our apartment we renewed the electrical wiring and added ethernet and coax. The coax was intended for radio/tv.
There is however an overlap of people who have the foresight to add coax cabling also add ethernet a well.
If I was was re-doing today I would add more empty pipes and fiber.
Cabling ahead has a very high WAF (Wife Approval Factor) when adding new gear :-)
Most unreliable network I ever had the misfortune to use (not to install) was coax thin ethernet when I worked at the BBC - termination problems were terrible. Twisted pair for the win as far as I'm concerned or better, WiFi. I don't think I have any coax in my fairly modern UK house.
You are talking about two cometelt different technologies. You are talking about 10BASE2 Ethernet which runs over RG-58/U coax cabling and as you mention requires termination at each end. It ran at a speed of 10Mbs. It could be unreliable for a variety of reasons such as connections coming lose, someone deciding to move their computer disconnecting a cable and breaking the continuos connection between stations that is required or a large number of Ethernet collisions because if either misbehaving nics or too many stations on a segment.
Currently there is MOCA hardware which supports speeds up to 2.5Gbs. The standard for 10Gbs has been released but no hardware for it is currently available. At least not to consumers. MOCA runs over the coax that is often already installed in homes to support cable, satellite or over the air antenna TV. It uses different frequencies and thus can coexist with these on the same cable. MOCA is not Ethernet. It is a half duplex shared medium protocol using time division multiplexing. It was originally developed to distribute IP TV without the need to run additional wiring in a house. Today it is mostly used to bring broadband internet connections into a home or to bridge Ethernet connections through a home. Different frequencies are set aside for each purpose and so both can be done at the same time. It is very reliable. I use it to extend my network to several out buildings on my property which had coax run to them many many years ago.
Currently there is MOCA hardware which supports speeds up to 2.5Gbs. The standard for 10Gbs has been released but no hardware for it is currently available. At least not to consumers. MOCA runs over the coax that is often already installed in homes to support cable, satellite or over the air antenna TV. It uses different frequencies and thus can coexist with these on the same cable. MOCA is not Ethernet. It is a half duplex shared medium protocol using time division multiplexing. It was originally developed to distribute IP TV without the need to run additional wiring in a house. Today it is mostly used to bring broadband internet connections into a home or to bridge Ethernet connections through a home. Different frequencies are set aside for each purpose and so both can be done at the same time. It is very reliable. I use it to extend my network to several out buildings on my property which had coax run to them many many years ago.
Thanks for that - very informative. I must admit I haven't done anything with wired networks for many years! But I still like twisted pair, and wifi :-)
Depending on how modern it is, you might well have "telephone extensions". In principle this is Cat 3 cable strung in a tree shape, but in practice the electrician is probably buying wholesale cable - carrying one reel of Cat 5 for all jobs is easier than owning a Cat 3 reel and a Cat 5 reel and bringing the right one for each job, the price is usually either identical or within pennies. So there's an excellent chance it's Cat 5 cable anyway†.
Now, Cat 5 cable is a perfectly good telephone cable, but it's also Gigabit Ethernet (over reasonable distances, you don't live in a mansion). The tree shape won't work for networking, but the individual cables buried in walls or elsewhere are basically just right there already. You just hook the existing cables to new Ethernet shaped faceplates. I am literally writing this from a wired connection in a bedroom, nobody built this to have Ethernet, they built it to put a phone in the main bedroom, but it's 2025, nobody owns a wired phone, everybody needs Internet.
† Also the network cards can't tell, they will try to achieve 1000 Mbit/s and chances are they succeed even if the cable isn't actually rated Category 5. I have retro-fitted modern switches to an ancient building (the old Mountbatten chip fab at the University of Southampton, before it burned down) and in 90+% of cases this "upgrades" the connection to Gigabit because the Cat 3 cable pulled a decade or more earlier was good enough.
Now, Cat 5 cable is a perfectly good telephone cable, but it's also Gigabit Ethernet (over reasonable distances, you don't live in a mansion). The tree shape won't work for networking, but the individual cables buried in walls or elsewhere are basically just right there already. You just hook the existing cables to new Ethernet shaped faceplates. I am literally writing this from a wired connection in a bedroom, nobody built this to have Ethernet, they built it to put a phone in the main bedroom, but it's 2025, nobody owns a wired phone, everybody needs Internet.
† Also the network cards can't tell, they will try to achieve 1000 Mbit/s and chances are they succeed even if the cable isn't actually rated Category 5. I have retro-fitted modern switches to an ancient building (the old Mountbatten chip fab at the University of Southampton, before it burned down) and in 90+% of cases this "upgrades" the connection to Gigabit because the Cat 3 cable pulled a decade or more earlier was good enough.
They don't mean 10Base2 "Thinnet", common in the late 1980s and in cheap installations in the early 1990s.
They mean a modern (ish) device which uses existing TV cabling, to avoid rewiring in houses.
They mean a modern (ish) device which uses existing TV cabling, to avoid rewiring in houses.
Coax ethernet was often deployed as a bus: 20something computers that must be directly connected to a single cable going from room to room. If one of the plugs was unplugged or not tightened correctly, everyone on that line suffered. This happened a lot, people moved computers around. And the tech looks simple.
That is a different situation than installing a fixed, point to point connection.
That is a different situation than installing a fixed, point to point connection.
If you do this doing forget to add a moca filter where your cable enters your house, otherwise you will leak your Ethernet signal to anyone who is on the same cable.
I understand why this sort of article is informative and useful these days but damn I feel old!
I no longer assume that digital natives understand how technology actually works under the hood. They teach me about the latest social media trends, I teach them about computer hardware, networking, and terminology.
My kids: Dad, the internet's down.
Me: The internet's fine. You're just not connected to it.
When I first heard about an Ethernet cable, it was a thick and stiff pipe-like thing.
Kids these days wouldn't now the struggle of finding a weak termination.
Now get off my lawn ;-)
Now get off my lawn ;-)
(2022)
Ethernet might be one of the longest-lived backwards-compatible standards in the computer industry; you can plug one end of a cable into a PC from 2025 and the other into one from 1990, and they will communicate perfectly.
Ethernet might be one of the longest-lived backwards-compatible standards in the computer industry; you can plug one end of a cable into a PC from 2025 and the other into one from 1990, and they will communicate perfectly.
Most computers from 1990 didn’t have built-in ethernet or native support for TCP/IP, though, so you would have to buy and install both of them.
1990 might be a bit early but from 1991 Apple started putting Ethernet in their Macs as standard
edit: I phrased this poorly, all Macs didn't have it as standard but what I meant to say is they started releasing Macs that had it as standard, starting from the mid-range (Centris) and up, the point is just Ethernet had stopped being a niche technology
edit: I phrased this poorly, all Macs didn't have it as standard but what I meant to say is they started releasing Macs that had it as standard, starting from the mid-range (Centris) and up, the point is just Ethernet had stopped being a niche technology
That definitely isn’t true. Which Macs came standard with Ethernet? I know neither of mine did - a Mac LCII (1992) nor my PowerMac 6100/60 (1994).
From what I can tell, iMacs have consistently come with Ethernet after around 1998 and Powebooks starting in 1999.
From what I can tell, iMacs have consistently come with Ethernet after around 1998 and Powebooks starting in 1999.
Yeah I phrased it poorly, all Macs didn't have it as standard but what I meant to say is they started releasing Macs that had it as standard. The low-cost Macs like the LC didn't have it, but
The PowerMac 6100 very much did have Ethernet built-in, in the form of an AAUI port (you needed a transceiver to convert to either BNC or 10Base-T since at the time it wasn't obvious which people wanted)
The PowerMac 6100 very much did have Ethernet built-in, in the form of an AAUI port (you needed a transceiver to convert to either BNC or 10Base-T since at the time it wasn't obvious which people wanted)
Saying that the AAUI port meant that Ethernet was included when you needed an adapter that cost $60-$100+ is a stretch isn’t it?
I remember even back then you could get an Ethernet card for a PC cheaper than that.
I remember even back then you could get an Ethernet card for a PC cheaper than that.
That looks like an "Apple tax".
The principle of the AUI port was that the three Ethernet connections (10Base5, 10Base2, 10BaseT) could all be used with a 'cheap' change of "MAU" adapter. For 10Base5, it would have been impractical to have the thick cable brought right up to the computer.
The 10Base5 MAU was relatively expensive, I see a card sold with it costing £50 more than the same card with a 10Base2 interface in a price list from 1993 [1].
I don't see a price for a 10BaseT interface alone, but it should be much cheaper — it's just a couple of low-pass filters and some isolation. Even back then I think these main components were sold as a single package ("chip"), so the 10BaseT MAU is two plugs, one "chip" and a couple of capacitors.
Anyway, Acorn¹ computers were sold from around 1991 with an optional Ethernet card. Basic TCP/IP was included in ROM on the card, and it works fine between my Linux and Acorn computers.
[1] https://chrisacorns.computinghistory.org.uk/docs/IntInt/II_P...
¹ Acorn as in "Acorn RISC Machine" → "Advanced RISC Machine" → the ARM chip in your phone.
The principle of the AUI port was that the three Ethernet connections (10Base5, 10Base2, 10BaseT) could all be used with a 'cheap' change of "MAU" adapter. For 10Base5, it would have been impractical to have the thick cable brought right up to the computer.
The 10Base5 MAU was relatively expensive, I see a card sold with it costing £50 more than the same card with a 10Base2 interface in a price list from 1993 [1].
I don't see a price for a 10BaseT interface alone, but it should be much cheaper — it's just a couple of low-pass filters and some isolation. Even back then I think these main components were sold as a single package ("chip"), so the 10BaseT MAU is two plugs, one "chip" and a couple of capacitors.
Anyway, Acorn¹ computers were sold from around 1991 with an optional Ethernet card. Basic TCP/IP was included in ROM on the card, and it works fine between my Linux and Acorn computers.
[1] https://chrisacorns.computinghistory.org.uk/docs/IntInt/II_P...
¹ Acorn as in "Acorn RISC Machine" → "Advanced RISC Machine" → the ARM chip in your phone.
NeXT hardware had 10BASE-T and 10BASE-2 Ethernet in 1990. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXTstation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXTcube
Though that counts as a "PC" only if you were rather rich.
Though that counts as a "PC" only if you were rather rich.
Maybe one or two of them, but I had Macs in 1991, and much later, and they didn’t have built-in Ethernet. You would use a dongle off the ADB port for networking.
The dongle was an AAUI connector off of a dedicated port. AUI was a standard, but unfortunately it was the same connector as the video connector. So Apple redesigned it. https://lowendmac.com/2007/apples-aaui-ethernet-connector/
It seems that the RJ-45 port was first integrated in 1995 (Power Macintosh 7200).
You are missing the point. You are correct that thin ethernet might have been the craze.
On the PC you would add an ISA or PCI card. So should we only count from when it was added to the motherboards?
The point is that the first 10 base T still works if used with modern equipment. That standard is from 1990 and grew extremely fast.
Around 1993-1995 coax was considered totally outdated. Fixing termination problems where never fun. A nail in the coffin was 100 Base T which was standardized in 1995.
Tokenring and ATM was contenders around that time but lost to ethernet.
That kind of backwards compatibility is really amazing.
The point is that the first 10 base T still works if used with modern equipment. That standard is from 1990 and grew extremely fast.
Around 1993-1995 coax was considered totally outdated. Fixing termination problems where never fun. A nail in the coffin was 100 Base T which was standardized in 1995.
Tokenring and ATM was contenders around that time but lost to ethernet.
That kind of backwards compatibility is really amazing.
[deleted]
Is this the beginning of a series that is going to cover all the types of "ethernet cables" such as RG-8/U, RG-58/U, MMF, SMF, and twinax cable? If so, I hope the rest are better than this one on twisted pair cables.
I've had to deal with too many Eloi that are in desperate need of learning about the benefits of a solid, wired connection. If this story moves the needle on that while neglecting Ethernet's long history of mediums, it's fine with me.
If any of those are reading this: Your WiFi makes you sound bad in conference calls and video meetings, and people think you're a low status worker that can't afford a good laptop or internet. Hurry up and get a Ethernet thingy.
If any of those are reading this: Your WiFi makes you sound bad in conference calls and video meetings, and people think you're a low status worker that can't afford a good laptop or internet. Hurry up and get a Ethernet thingy.
Is this real
[deleted]