Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucsd!ogccse!orstcs!cutsys!cutter From: cutter@cutsys.UUCP (Bernie Hoffstadt) Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip Subject: Re: How do you string a thinnet? Message-ID: <431@cutsys.UUCP> Date: 26 Oct 89 17:44:58 GMT References: <1670@tfd.UUCP> <8910241805.AA26176@gaak.LCS.MIT.EDU> Organization: Paul's Auto Imports Lines: 57 -------- In article <8910241805.AA26176@gaak.LCS.MIT.EDU> Michael A. Patton writes: >> >> Now the $64k question: Is there a good reference for this kind of >> info. > >Gee, you found one I don't have a good answer to. I use lots of >references, the most important being my experience and what I've >learned talking to others (in forums like this and just standing >around in the corridors at conventions :-). I've been hacking >Ethernet (and Ethernet-like technologies) since the late 70's and >haven't found the need recently of an overview book specifically >oriented at Ethernet and I don't seem to have such in my collection. > Seeing that this seems to be the question that no one else has been able to answer, maybe you should write one yourself -- there may be some money in it! :-) We have an installation much like Kent's, And I have had a few of the questions that he asked, but fortunately had no real problems with them (I stuck with what I *was* able to read about here and there). That is, until I started thinking about extending our net- work to the Sales building. It's currently confined to our Service building. We already have a bunch of (presumably twisted-pair, though I wouldn't swear to it -- looks like a gob of 22 guage solid wire packed into a sheath) phone wiring installed between the two buildings, only half of which is in use for the phones. I wanted to use this to make the link. I thought that I should be able to put a balun on an end machine in each building, and run the twisted pair between these. I purchased a couple of baluns from Altex electronics which a salesman told me were for thinnet->twisted pair, but they didn't work, not even for replacing a short section of thinnet that I knew was working. I suspect that the baluns were really for IBM networks (RG62, I think -- I've seen lots of these for the ~$6 I paid Altex) and for obvious reasons wouldn't work anyway. But since I haven't seen any manufacturer explicitly explicitly list this scheme as a workable configuration, I'm not even sure it can be done. A guy I talked to at Black Box in CA seemed to think so, and they DO have thinnet->twisted pair baluns. But these things are $75 a pop (probably the same thing as 3-com's "pair-tamers" @ $119), and the catalog still doesn't say I can do what I want to with these. Says you use them with repeaters... Well, what do you think? Would it work? Or do I need to buy a bunch more expensive hardware? In which case I'd save us money by digging a trench and burying some RG58. BTW, the length of cabling in the Service building runs about 150-200' end-to-end, and in Sales it will be about 100'. The distance between the two is about 150'. Thanks in advance for any advice you might offer! Bernie. -- Bernie Hoffstadt (503) 752-5929 * Internet: cutter%cutsys.UUCP@CS.ORST.EDU 1437 N.W. 9th st. -or- 753-1646 * -or- cutter@jacobs.CS.ORST.EDU Corvallis, Oregon 97330 **** UUCP: {tektronix,hp-pcd}!orstcs!cutsys!cutter