Making very short ethernet connections

[Scozza]

Howdy peeps,

I'm interfacing my iobridge with an access point.  The AP has been stripped down to a single board and will  be mounted in a case along with the iobridge, an arduino and a couple of relays.  I'm wondering if I can just use ribbon cable to make up the short (7-8 cm) connection between the iobridge & the AP!  Any thoughts?

Cheers,

Scozza.

[nick]

You should be fine.  In theory, even very short connections should be done with twisted pairs.  If you split open an ethernet cable you'll see that it's four pairs of wires, and each pair is braided together.  Those pairs are supposed to be kept together for as much of the run as possible, all the way up to where the connection is terminated.  In practice installers often unwrap them an inch or two before the connection and it works fine.

If you want to take no chances you could make the connection with twisted pairs pulled from an ethernet cable.

You know you only need two pairs to make ethernet work, right?

[Scozza]

Thanks Nick,

Sounds like the best way to go 2 pair will not take up too much room in the case, now to find my crimper (-:

Cheers,

Scott.

[iobridge]

Here is a cool visualization of the color code:



Thanks for the details Nick.