I went outside and followed my Ethernet cable from my modem to the living room, where the internets stopped working a couple days ago. My WiFi, 360, XBMC and TiVo had all been interrupted by what I discovered last night was a bad link between my network routers.
As you can see in the picture - it appears the cable was chewed on? It's been installed for years, and actually was tucked under the ledge you see.
So how should I go about repairing it? Short term I'll just bridge the wireless network. 100Mbit is really nice though. Re-wiring will be a big pain and unsightly. I could solder the connections and heat-shrink tube it, but I can't find the materials for htat. Have you seen some crimping or splicing hardware I can use here? It doesn't have to be waterproof really - duct tape should solve that.
Update:
Found some telephone line splicers. They work for solid copper lines, from 26 to 22 AWG, so perfect for the 24 AWG Cat5 cable. These cost about $4 at the hardware store, which was about the cheapest and quickest solution I could find. You basically put in two wires and then squeeze with pliers and a metal contact with two slots is crushed down on the wires. I wrapped everything in duct tape, and at least this solution works better than bridged WiFi. We'll see how well it does with COD4. Pictures after the break...
Continue reading "Well There's Your Problem..."...
On the other hand, some do not:
I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure out which one is located in Mountain View, and which one is in San Francisco.
Check out Angry Aussie's translation of the marketing spin surrounding Alli, the new miracle dieting pill. You'll laugh so hard you'll... we'll you'll see.
xkcd is kind of hit and miss, but there's nothing funnier than sudo jokes, right?
Homer: "BRAIN! Explain!"
Homer's Brain: "$20 can buy many peanuts."
Waiter Rant is a blog run by a New York City waiter. Reading the stories there is like eating crack-laced potato chips: once you start, you can't stop!
So how come no one told me there was a new Angry Kid Series?
Yes! I remain the only true "Just J" name from birth that I know of:
Having successfully launched Xbox Live in November, with its real-time online gaming, J Allard (CAS’91) — known as James back in his college days — was recently named vice president for Xbox.
I just feel this was important research, with the recent Time cover article claiming "Yes, his name really is just 'J'." I don't think so.
In case you're wondering where the third season of Dave Chappelle show is. If you haven't seen the show, both of the first two seasons are on DVD now. There's a point in each show where you'll say "I can't believe he just said that on TV". If you don't like Eddie Murphy or Richard Pryor, you probably won't like Chappelle.
I don't want to make fun of people's problems - this just goes to show that Chappelle can make us laugh even in his worst times. Click through for another picture.
If John had his way, we'd all be walking around like Lobot, Lando Calrissian's right hand man. Bluetooth earphones with built in controls connected to a wireless PDA are just the first step. ;-)
This is a long link, and once you start, you won't stop. Oh sure, once you get 25% through, you'll go get a coke, but you'll come back and stay 'til the end:
I bridged the routers wirelessly, but they're too far for a strong signal. I boosted the DB of the signal from 42 to 70 and although it made the connection stronger, it still dropped as often. Tried to play some COD4 online, but the lag was too bad.
Just strip and twist the wires together and solder them. Tape them individually with electrical tape, then tape the whole mess.
The bigger question is how to keep them from getting chewed on again. I have the same problem with my deck lighting. A year ago I went through and spliced and repaired all the wiring, put in new bulbs and everything. It was great for about 3 months and then half of it stopped working. I have all manner of animals that live under my deck and I can't convince them that wires are not food.
I live in an apartment.
If that's Cat5 cable, it probably won't be after
you repair it. I'm sure it will still work,
but you might get some mysterious network failures
and poor throughput.
I've updated the post with pictures of my fix. My repair kept the pairs relatively twisted. The contacts shouldn't be worse than going to jack, into patch panel and then out to jack again, which is a typical enterprise configuration.
And the results of the COD4 test?
This is a bit off topic, but since you mention it, the default signal setting on your router should already be optimal (at least for the stock antenna). Mostly, that setting is valuable when you want to lower your signal strength.