Advice on CAT 6 Cable
Posted by: CDI on 11 September 2012
My recently purchased NDS and Unitiserve HDD are all bedding in nicely now however I need some help with the cables.
I bought some CAT 6 cables but am confused as when the dealer installed the boxes he used the cheap "borrowed" cable from work in favour of a premium "CAT6 UTP Crossover" cable I had bought to connect the Assetnas NAS to my router.
When I choose to play music from the NAS on Nstream (rather than my ripped files on the Unitiserve) it takes about 15 seconds to load up the music?
I really need a technical definition of the ethernet cables I need. Patch cable? Crossover cable? CAT 6?
Apologies for the ignorance!
On the utp cable itself, the should be a category mark. You could use either cat5e or cat6. It is indicated on the cable. Prices of both are similar.
15 sec to load music should not be the case
Yea thats nit really going to be an issue of the cable.
Whats you router, switch, general network thing going on?
A cat5 cable from 14 years ago will be more than enough for audio.
> CAT6 UTP Crossover" cable I had bought to connect the Asset-NAS to my router.
You shouldn't use a crossover cable ... they are for connecting two like devices together (two routers, two PCs) - some devices auto senses are adapt so you cannot two Apple devices with any Ethernet cable and they'll just work ... some routers do the same.
However you just need a standard Ethernet Cable ... Cat 5e should be find
On audio 5e is cool for cats
Though ordinary Cat 6 should work too.
Thanks for the advice, when I replaced the crossover cable with the standard cable it all works fine from the NAS - guess I just got the wrong cable off amazon!
Router is Virgin Media Superhub and seems fine without any switches ?
Um, well you are lucky then. The superdud will soon let you down. Once it does switch it to modem only mode and hang a proper router off it such as the asus rtn56u
As for switches, again these can be a real benefit, for the sake of a few quid.
But see how you get on, you may have recieved the first no crap superhub.
Sounds like your installer knows what he is doing. The cheap cables were probably real Cat5e patch cables and as such are designed to be connected from the wall to the device whilst hanging free. Normal Cat 6 cable is designed to be rigidly mounted and not to be used as a patch cable. It is too rigid and the single core breaks with the constant movement. Unfortunately people assume that Cat6 must be better than Cat 5 and ironically get a worse solution.
Ian
Cat 6 cable is sold in single core and twisted multi strand. The multi strand goes around corners easier and is usually used for connection from the wall socket to the equipment.
cat 6 is better than 5. assuming the manufacturer is quality
> CAT6 UTP Crossover" cable I had bought to connect the Asset-NAS to my router.
You shouldn't use a crossover cable ... they are for connecting two like devices together (two routers, two PCs) - some devices auto sense and adapt so you can connect two Apple devices with any Ethernet cable and they'll just work ... some routers do the same.
However you just need a standard Ethernet Cable ... Cat 5e should be find
On audio 5e is cool for cats
Though ordinary Cat 6 should work too.
Sorry corrected my second paragraph - glad the standard cable worked for you.
My recently purchased NDS and Unitiserve HDD are all bedding in nicely now however I need some help with the cables.
I bought some CAT 6 cables but am confused as when the dealer installed the boxes he used the cheap "borrowed" cable from work in favour of a premium "CAT6 UTP Crossover" cable I had bought to connect the Assetnas NAS to my router.
When I choose to play music from the NAS on Nstream (rather than my ripped files on the Unitiserve) it takes about 15 seconds to load up the music?
I really need a technical definition of the ethernet cables I need. Patch cable? Crossover cable? CAT 6?
Does the delay happen for each song, or only for the first one? The reason I ask is that I have a similar issue caused by the NAS drive waking up after not being used for a while. I want the sleeping behaviour to save power, rather than have the disks spinning 24 hours a day, but does result in a small delay of the first song.
If this sounds like your problem, cables aren't going to help. Cat 5e is fine for up to gigabit network speeds so unless the dog has been chewing the cable or the connectors are falling off, you don't need new cabling.
If the delay bothers you, try configuring the NAS to disable any power-saving features. Or move all the music to the UnitiServe.
Steve.