How many connections through one cable?

waltermitty

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Jan 6, 2013
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How many connections can I run through one length of cat5 or cat 6 cable? In my family room I have a satellite, tv, xbox 360, blu-ray player and a WDTV live hub that require an ethernet connection (don't want wireless other than the satellite).

My question is could I run four cables into a four port wall socket in my office which would then run through one single cat 5 or 6 cable to the other four port ethernet socket in the family room to be split back up into four ports the other end to feed each individual device?

I hope this makes sense and thanks in advance to anyone kind enough to help.
 

john-b691

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Sep 29, 2012
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The answer if you talk about physically doing this is 2. You only have 4 pair of wire in a cable and you need at least 2 pair per connection.

But this is silly. If you use 2 pair you have 2 100m connections maximum. The best way to do this is to buy cheap gig switches. Your 4 devices would then share 1G of bandwidth even if each got 250m it is still more than just 2 devices getting 100m.

You should really only need a switch on one end the other end you can plug into your router.
 

waltermitty

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Jan 6, 2013
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Forgive my ignorance please i'm really quite new to all of this. I already have a switch dispersing connections to other rooms in my home like the bedrooms etc with WDTV's and laptops etc connected at the other ends for the kids to watch films and tv shows etc stored on my server and for internet connections. If i'm reading this correct I just need to run one ethernet lead into my family room and connect another switch at the end and then run leads to each individual device? I hope I got that right.