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carmine · Mar 7, 2003, 09:43 PM

Ive got a crossover cable connecting the 2 cpus. i can make another xover cable, but i dont want to waste it if thats not the problem. i doubt its the cable, but can it be anything else? im sharing my wifi connection on my tibook (800 mhz) with my 867 quicksilver. do i have to enable full duplex or something? both of the cpus have gig ethernet. in my network utility, the connection reads 100 mb. thanks!

Vanquish · Mar 8, 2003, 02:23 AM

You need a Cat.5 cable I think. I hope this helps.

ARENA · Mar 8, 2003, 10:13 AM

Cat 5 cables will transmit at 100 Megabit. For Gigabit you need to use Cat 6.

Mithras · Mar 8, 2003, 11:06 AM

But note that the TiBook's ethernet port is auto-sensing, so you don't need a crossover cable. The port will 'swap the wires' on its own.

Telusman · Mar 8, 2003, 12:51 PM

I've hooked up two Powerbooks using Cat 5e, it autosensed at 1gb/sec and connected as such.. very fast. speed only seem limited by the speed of the hard disks. I don't see why a Powerbook and a Quicksilver wouldnt be the same way.

Oneota · Mar 8, 2003, 01:15 PM

You don't need a crossover cable; Gigabit ethernet can use regular cables for direct-connections. Crossover cables work too, though, assuming they're of high-enough quality. Either way, it probably needs to be Cat 5e or Cat 6.

[Edit: Whoops...Mithras beat me to it. My bad!]

ChrisF · Mar 8, 2003, 08:21 PM

Originally posted by Oneota:
You don't need a crossover cable; Gigabit ethernet can use regular cables for direct-connections. Crossover cables work too, though, assuming they're of high-enough quality. Either way, it probably needs to be Cat 5e or Cat 6.

With these machines, you can use a regular cable to connect at 100mbps without using the crossover. You must use a GbE compatible crossover cable to get gigabit connections, though.

Angus_D · Mar 9, 2003, 02:48 AM

Make sure the cable is shielded. UTP proabably won't work at gigabit.

Phanguye · Mar 9, 2003, 12:11 PM

Originally posted by Angus_D:
Make sure the cable is shielded. UTP proabably won't work at gigabit.

yes 2 people have already mentioned that they will have to use cat 5e which is stp... it really bugs me when people dont read the post right above theirs before posting

Jellytussle · Mar 9, 2003, 02:55 PM

Just for a matter of record, 1000base-T - Gigabit Ethernet over copper - is designed to run over Cat5 cable. It was the paramount goal of the engineering teams. Alse, cat 5(E or otherwise) does not require stp. 1000base-T achieves its performance by using all four pairs in the cable - does your patch lead have all eight wires connected? I've come across 'Cat5' labelled cables with just pairs 1 and 2 wired into the plug.
From your post, it seems you made your own cable - were the RJ45 connectors Cat5? It's a standard covering construction, installation and testing, not just a cable spec.

Alternately it may be an auto negotiation issue. Have you tried to force the connection speed using ifconfig?

If i get the time i'll try this tomorrow between my TiBook and a G4 or an Xserve, with and without a gig switch.

ngrundy · Mar 9, 2003, 05:15 PM

You don't need Cat6 for GigE at all. GigE is designed to run over Cat5(e). Cat6 is an entirely different beast which is designed to transit data at up to 10 gigabit/sec and is of substantialy different design to cat5.

Save yourself the headache, go and grab a premade cable from your local Bestbuy/cuircitcity/harvey norman/blah

If you just have to make your own cables for the love of god DONT use solid core!

carmine · Mar 9, 2003, 08:47 PM

ok great. i gotta 1gbit running on a cat 5 belkin rj45 cable. looks like my crossover cable wasnt high enough quality. i love the auto-sensing on the cpus...pretty impressive. can a pc do that?