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In my home network, I have a router with 4 LAN connections and currently 2 computers are connected to the router with a LAN cable. Now I want to add a 3rd computer to the network. The problem is that the my computer is close to the router but the other 2 are about 30 meters from it. I wanted to see if there's a way I could connect the 2 computers and then connect them to the router with just one cable instead of 2 set of 30 meters of cable. By the way, I have a spare router if it can help.

Alireza Noori
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1 Answers1

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If your network is 100BASE-TX with a Cat 5 cable you can split the cable, but you do so by using an adapter to use all four pairs in your existing long Cat 5 cable (usually only two of the four pairs are used).

So you'd need two very short patch cables at the router's end, two RJ45/Cat 5 LAN splitters, and some longer patch cables at the computers' end. In the diagram below, 'Y' signifies a splitter and an arrow signifies one Cat 5 cable.

.----------.                                         __  _ 
| Router   |                            .---------> [__]|=|
|          |       .----.               |           /::/|_|
|          |------>| Y  |             .----.
|          |       |    |------------>| Y  |
|          |------>|    |             '----'
|          |       '----'               |
'----------'                            |           __  _ 
                                        |          [__]|=|
                                        '--------->/::/|_|

The above solution won't require an extra power source, but it will require use of two ports on your router, but it would at least be tidier than two separate cables running in parallel.

See also the discussion on 100BASE-TX and its wiring in Fast Ethernet, subsection Copper.

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Jan
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