Compliment of the season to you all out there. I have been following up with the great discourse in this forum and I will say we really have great gurus out there.
I am just getting into Wireless and really it's being challenging and really interesting.

ISSUE:

I have this challenge with my radio (RB433AH with Version 3.10 licence) which I use as the base for other 4 crossroads(with Version2.9) through WDS. I have notconfirmed if the link works fine between the base and the Repeaters. The purpose of the installation was to creat Wireless enviroment for some IP cameras. At the control room, I ran about 50m of CAT6 cable from the POE to power the base radio(RB433AH) on the mast. The radio works fine but the ethernet interface does not receive packet. I did torching and sniffing. As a matter of fact, I would not connect to the radio if I switch off the WLAN on the Laptop. The LAN status shows no packet received but it sends packet in few hundreds bytes. When I enable WLAN on the laptop and I connect to the radio, on the interface list of the radio, it shows zero packet rx and tx.

I tried with a shorter length of cat6, the story is the same. I tried using about 250m of Cat6 again, the radio was powered on with good Wireless signal but the ehernet interface story remains.

I tried with about 20meters of Cat 5 cable, I got a better and the desired result.

Questions:

1.Could it be that the radio can not transmit data on a 250MHZ Cat6 cable?

2.Could it be that something is missing out in my ethernet interface configuration?

3.I used cat6 purposely because it can carry data in Gigabyte, but can Cat 5 works for me in the same application with the distance of about 55meters betweeon the POE and the radio?

Please someone should come to my aid here.

Thank you and God bless.

Regards,
Salako Oladipupo
Double D Communications Engineering Services.
Lagos Nigeria.
diposalako@yahoo.com

Hello,

I am waiting for a good response on this Topic.

Regards

Hi..

We are the WISP in malaysia and we have last for more than 7 years..
In fact, if you using the cat6 just to connect the Fast Ethernet port, i would say, you have waste you money cause Cat6 mainly is for gigabit ethernet.

Regarding the Cat5 cable, you have to be careful when running on the POE solution, the cheaper Cat5 cable most is because of the cable for pin 1,2,3&6 is fully copper but other, for pin 4,5,7&8 is mix with some other material.

So, this will become the voltage drop and not reliable for your devices.
You may can try to buy the Tyco AMP cat5 cable, as our experience it can run the POE up to the 85meter, if with the DC+Data POE surge protector, it also can go for 75metr.

If you able to connect the the LAN, try to use the winbox see are u able to telnet it or not.
Hope this help u.

Cat6 should work just fine as long as it is wired to standards and terminated properly. Did you test your installation with a cable tester? Did you stay under 100 meters?

I have some older RouterBoards fed by long POE Cat6 runs and I don't see any difference between that and cat 5 or 5e.
They work fine.

Tom

Hello,

Thanks for the response. I did not run up to 100meters. What I have is around 50meters of cat6. the radio is Rb433AH. The termination was done properly ofcourse. I know the cat6 is meant for Gigabyte speed LAN and with Gigabyte switches. That's for Wired Networking.
Yhis time around, my Radio was power on with good wireless signal strenght when i used 250meters of Cat6 in the workshop but the ethernet interface does not rx and tx packets. that's all.

May be you go through details of the problem again in my ealieast post.

regards.

Hello Angboontiong,

"Regarding the Cat5 cable, you have to be careful when running on the POE solution, the cheaper Cat5 cable most is because of the cable for pin 1,2,3&6 is fully copper but other, for pin 4,5,7&8 is mix with some other material. So, this will become the voltage drop and not reliable for your devices."

Sorry, did you mean that the CAT5 can not work with the POE for just between 45 and 50 meters even for the poorest POE in the market?


"You may can try to buy the Tyco AMP cat5 cable, as our experience it can run the POE up to the 85meter, if with the DC+Data POE surge protector, it also can go for 75metr."

It seems I dont get this right. Please state this very clearly.

Thank you as I await your response.

Regards.

Hello,

I did not run up to 100meters. What I have is around 50meters of cat6.
Yhis time around, ... i used 250meters of Cat6

?????????

What I mean is that I did not run up to 100m of cat6 on site. But when I tried in d office, I tried with a longer length of cable, around 250m of cat6 and the radio was powered but the ethernet interface problem persist.

Thank you.

Dear All,

I got this from support[at]mikrotik.com

Janis Megis wrote:
Hello,

AFAIK CAT6 is designed for 1Gbps and up communications - in here you clearly
have 100Mpps link. So in this case you must use 5e

Regards,

Thanks to all that contributed. All I needed is a confirmation. experiment has confirmed it.

"Regarding the Cat5 cable, you have to be careful when running on the POE solution, the cheaper Cat5 cable most is because of the cable for pin 1,2,3&6 is fully copper but other, for pin 4,5,7&8 is mix with some other material. So, this will become the voltage drop and not reliable for your devices."

Sorry, did you mean that the CAT5 can not work with the POE for just between 45 and 50 meters even for the poorest POE in the market?
-Oh, sorry cause i didnt tell u clearly, the stupid or cheaper cathttp://forum.mikrotik.com/posting.php?mode=reply&f=7&t=292435e cable i talking most is from Chi.a (cannot tell the country).
-The poe can work with the good quality cat5e cable, and the more famous and good reputation brand over malaysia is the Tyco AMP cable.
-The thing you need to take care is the wire (blue, white blue, brown, white brown) is fully copper or mixed with other material, a simple way to clarify is you burn it with the fire and see it's the condition same with the wire colored orange, white orange, green, white green. if the wire come with fully copper, there will nothing happen. then, the next is, use it for you poe solution but cable length do not over 80 meter. ok..

"You may can try to buy the Tyco AMP cat5 cable, as our experience it can run the POE up to the 85meter, if with the DC+Data POE surge protector, it also can go for 75metr."

It seems I dont get this right. Please state this very clearly.
-explained as above.

Thank you as I await your response.

Regards.

Thank you for that additional info. I am indeed thankful. I will be careful in selecting a cat5e cable, I think there are goog ones in the market here. Chi.a products are all over and ppl opt for them cos they are relatively cheaper.

I am also planning on using CAT6 with RB433AH, so means CAT6 won't work or what?

There is no reason why a CAT6 cable shouldn't work with the RB433.

The response you got from Janis from Mikrotik Support is very surprising, as it is completely wrong. CAT6 is designed to be fully backwards compatible with CAT5e (and CAT5... and CAT3). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_6_cable

The only problem with CAT6 is that, since it is usually thicker, the 8P8C (or RJ45) connectors must be made for CAT6. Using connectors made for CAT5 *may* or *may not* work... I've been working on an installation for a couple of years where CAT6 cables were laid but the contractor used connectors made for CAT5, and some runs work fine while others are very unreliable (and it's not related to the length).

Having said that, the RB433 does not have Gigabit interfaces, so there is no real benefit of using CAT6 over good quality CAT5. Even if you were to upgrade to an RB600 (which has Gigabit), a good quality CAT5E cable will work just fine (the specification says it works up to 60m).

THANK YOU. Finally an accurate post. This topic had my head spinning. Geeze.

There is no reason why a CAT6 cable shouldn't work with the RB433.

I did not say it did not work, afterall I made mention the radio was powered even with about 250m of Cat6. The data transfer over the ethernet interface was the issue. If i am not mistaking, janis cleared the air on that and going through your post, you even said it all.

The response you got from Janis from Mikrotik Support is very surprising, as it is completely wrong. CAT6 is designed to be fully backwards compatible with CAT5e (and CAT5... and CAT3). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_6_cable

This is a very reasonably elementary link I have ever checked. Thanks for that. I advise everyone with interest in this topic check it out. See also this,http://www.ertyu.org/steven_nikkel/ethernetcables.html ,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TIA/EIA-568-B ,

The only problem with CAT6 is that, since it is usually thicker, the 8P8C (or RJ45) connectors must be made for CAT6. Using connectors made for CAT5 *may* or *may not* work... I've been working on an installation for a couple of years where CAT6 cables were laid but the contractor used connectors made for CAT5, and some runs work fine while others are very unreliable (and it's not related to the length).

The termination should be importantly paid good attention to. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TIA/EIA-568-A ,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TIA/EIA-568-B

Having said that, the RB433 does not have Gigabit interfaces, so there is no real benefit of using CAT6 over good quality CAT5. Even if you were to upgrade to an RB600 (which has Gigabit), a good quality CAT5E cable will work just fine (the specification says it works up to 60m).

RB433AH can equally be used with Cat6, in my case, the conector was wrong as well as the termination. but I think if you are into VSAT deployment and you want to power the radio on a long distance, my experiment confirmed that Cat6 will help. I stand to be corrected anyway.

In conclusion, cable is another world on its own and I think IT experts(like me) mostly pay little attention to its structural composition and suitability than the equipments(radios, switches, etc).

Thank you to you all.

I am sorry for any ambiguity along the line.