- 95 megabits per second,
through a dodgy cable like this
with only one pair connected.
That's crazy, really.
How on earth do we get that amount of traffic
going through a messed up cable like this
with only one pair intact?
True or false,
maximum distance of copper UTP cabling is 100 meters?
You cannot connect IP devices,
such as IP phones or IP cameras or door access systems,
to a network if they're more than 100 meters from a switch.
Is that true or is that false?
Is it possible to use an ethernet cable such as this?
This is an ethernet cable that I've cut.
Only one pair remains.
Is it possible to use a cable like this
in an ethernet network?
You cannot use old cabling types, such as coax cable,
which you may find in a historic building or in a ship,
or in other places.
Do you need to lay new cabling
or can you reuse old cabling in buildings such as this?
You cannot use IP devices
when your network consists of old cabling,
such as Cat 3 cabling, single-pair cabling,
coaxial cabling, et cetera.
You need to upgrade your network
to Cat 5e cabling or Cat 6 cabling
or a modern version of UTP cabling for IP devices to work.
Is that true or false?
Now to help answer these questions,
NVT Phybridge are sponsoring this video.
Arvind from NVT Phybridge reached out to me
and asked me to create a video to show their solution.
In the beginning, I was very skeptical.
But the more I read about this,
the more intrigued I became.
Not only does NVT Phybridge have a bunch of solutions
that solve various problems
that you may encounter in the real world.
For example, you do not need to upgrade old cabling.
You can reuse old cabling and deploy modern solutions,
such as IP phones, even though you've got really old cabling
in a building or in a ship or submarine
or other interesting places.
I was also pleased to see that they are a Cisco partner,
that they have worked with Cisco
on multiple deployments for the U.S. government.
Their solution is also being deployed in embassies
around the world for the UK government.
Now this is one of those times when I thought,
why didn't I know about this previously?
And that's why I wanna share it with you
and help remove these Ethernet myths
that a lot of us believe.
(upbeat music)
Okay, so let's put this to the test.
In this example, I've got two NVT Phybridge switches.
I've also got a little Cisco switch.
These switches support a long range ethernet
using various technologies.
Let's start with really long ethernet.
Is the distance that you can run
an ethernet cable 100 meters?
Well, let's change your viewpoint.
I've got two boxes of 1,000 feet
or 305 meters of cable here.
Big shout out to Panduit for supplying this cable
and making my job really easy.
What I've done is connect
these two 1,000 spools of cable together.
So I now have 2,000 feet of cable.
Okay, so here are the two ends of the cable.
I'll plug one of them into the NVT Phybridge switch.
2,000 feet of cable.
Let's see if it actually works.
So I'll take one of these connectors that they've got.
This is called a FLEX-link, a long range PoE over UTP.
This is cat to 6e cabling
but you don't have to use that type of cabling.
The important piece here is
that we have four pairs of cable.
And what you may notice is that the link light comes on.
So link light is on on the switch.
Link light is on over here.
And what I can do now is take 100 meter ethernet, if I want,
connect this to a Cisco IP phone on the switch port,
and what we should notice is that the phone comes on.
There you go.
I am powering a Cisco IP phone
across 2,000 feet of cable.
It's actually a bit more.
So I've got my black cable over here.
That could be 100 meters in length.
I've got 2,000 feet of cable connecting me
to this NVT Phybridge switch.
Okay, so maximum distance of ethernet,
maximum distance of power over ethernet isn't 100 meters.
In this example, I've gone 2,000 feet, or 610 meters.
Okay, so there you go.
Phone is powered up.
But wait, there's more, as they say.
Here they've got what's called a FLEX4.
I'm not connecting power to the FLEX4.
This is running PoE.
So what I'll do here
is disconnect this FLEX-link
and I'll plug in
the FLEX4.
As you can see here, the link lights come on.
And then what I'll do is plug in this IP phone,
but this has got four ports
and here I've got another IP phone, so another Cisco phone,
which I'll connect to this port.
So hopefully I'll end up having two IP phones
powered by that single port through 2,000 feet of cable.
This is really amazing.
2,000 feet of cable, two IP phones, powered through that.
But, I hate sounding like a salesperson, there's more.
But wait, there's more.
So third cable,
let's take a Cisco access point
and plug that in.
So Cisco access point,
these are little Cisco SMB access points that I've got.
I'll take another cable
and I'll plug in another Cisco access point.
And what you should notice, hopefully,
is that both of these access points are powering up.
I've got two access points and two IP phones
connected to one FLEX4,
connected over 2,000 feet, or 610 meters, of cable
to one port on this NVT Phybridge switch.
I think that's really impressive.
But you may be wondering, what about the speeds?
You can get 100 Mbps of ethernet
through one of these connections at these lengths.
And you may say, well, David,
that's way too little bandwidth.
Now you typically wouldn't wanna put an access point
like this with a lot of clients connected to it
to a port like that.
I just had those devices that I wanted to power up.
And I wanted to show you
that they can be powered using this solution
but IP phones such as these
don't need huge amounts of bandwidth.
A lot of clients actually only use
a small amount of bandwidth.
And you've got to think about IOT devices.
In this blog entry, Cisco talk about 100 billion reasons
that Cisco partnered with NVT Phybridge.
It's because of all the IOT devices.
IOT devices don't need a lot of bandwidth.
IP cameras often don't need a huge amount of bandwidth.
A lot of people are under the misconception
that you need a gig to the end point,
but that depends on the end point.
An end point like this
or an end point like a door entry system
doesn't need that amount of bandwidth.
But let's put this to the test.
How much bandwidth can I get through this?
They say a hundred Meg, but let's actually test it.
Okay, so in this example, I've got a MacBook.
I'm gonna run iPerf on the MacBook,
send traffic through that 2,000 feet of cable
through the NVT Phybridge, through my Cisco switch,
to a MacBook, which I'm running in front of me
that's running iPerf as well.
So I'm gonna test the speeds across that long cable
through the NVT Phybridge,
through the Cisco switch, to another MacBook.
At the moment, there's no route
from this MacBook to that MacBook.
Pings are timing out.
So what I'll do is connect to the NVT Phybridge switch
to the FLEX-link.
Once again, going through that 2,000 feet of cable.
And then I'll connect
the MacBook to that.
So as you can see over there, link lights have come on.
So that's looking good.
And what you can see on the MacBook
is that pings are succeeding.
On this MacBook, I've turned off the wifi.
It's connecting to the network
using this USB to ethernet adapter.
Pings are succeeding, but let's test ethernet speeds
by using iPerf.
So I'm gonna connect iPerf from this laptop
to the MacBook in front of me.
And at the same time I'll run iPerf
from that MacBook to this MacBook,
and what you should be able to see
is that I'm getting about 94 megabits per second
from this MacBook to this one.
And from this one to that one,
I'm getting about 73 megabits per second.
Now this is obviously not a scientific test
but it's a little test.
Traffic from this MacBook
through that long cable to the NVT Phybridge
and going through the Cisco switch to my MacBook over here,
getting about 92 megabits per second from one to the other,
and about 81 megabits per second from this one to that one.
So I think that's really impressive.
Again, not all devices need a gig of bandwidth.
Now, if I do unplug this
and plug it straight into the switch.
So I'll plug it in
directly onto the switch,
so a link light has come on.
And what you'll notice now is the speeds
are increasing dramatically.
I'm now getting about 929 megabits per second
from that one to this one.
And from this one to that one,
I'm getting 943 megabits per second.
So in this case, I'm connecting directly
from the Mac to the switch.
Don't need these connectors
as long as you're within normal ethernet ranges.
So that works fine.
But in this example, if I move it
from that port to this port,
these speeds will decrease.
Time's out a bit there, but pings start to work.
And now I'll clear this, stop it, and start it again.
And what you'll notice,
I'm getting 88 megabits per second over there.
I'll stop this one, start it again,
and I'm getting about 95 megabits per second here,
94 megabits per second.
So over there, gone down to 70 megabits per second
when I started sending from this side.
But there you go, 2,000 feet of cable.
But there's more, as they say.
Let's try and run it through some dodgy cabling.
So let's start with this.
This has got two pairs.
I'll unplug this
and I'll just plug it directly into the switch.
So port five
and plug it in over here.
Now I've only got a short piece of cable here
but the cable can be much, much longer.
So pings are starting to succeed.
I mean, that's amazing in itself.
Start this again.
And I'll do the same test over here.
Start at that side,
and actually wanna stop this and clear it.
And over there you can see
I'm getting 94 megabits per second, 93 megabits per second.
The side getting like 78 megabits per second.
So that's through cable like this.
But now let's take this crazy cable.
I cut the wires once again.
There's only one pair left on this cable now.
So let's try that.
I'll put that into port seven.
Unplug this cable and let's try that now.
Dodgy cable, does it actually work?
Now what you'll notice is it doesn't work.
If you've only got one pair of cable,
you need to power this locally.
Power of ethernet doesn't get sent through.
Okay, so I'll have to provide power locally.
But what we should see is the link light goes on,
which it does.
Pings start succeeding.
So I'm now sending pings through this messed up cable,
only one pair
on that cable.
And let's start iPerf
on both sides
and what you'll notice this side,
like 83 megabits per second, 78 megabits per second.
This side 88 megabits per second, 89.
I'm sending that amount of data,
90 megabits per second through this dodgy cable.
And if you don't believe me,
what I'll do is I'll simply unplug the dodgy cable now.
So there's my dodgy cable.
And what you'll notice is the pings start failing.
Pings are failing here
and the throughput is nothing.
So iPerf is showing us that bandwidth is down.
I'll plug that back in again, dodgy ethernet cable,
and what should happen is the pings should start succeeding.
There they go.
So pings are succeeding.
And what you'll notice is we can send traffic now.
We're getting an average of 46 megabits per second.
I'll stop that, clear it and start it again.
Stop this. Clear. Start again.
Getting 95 megabits per second.
95 megabits per second through a dodgy cable like this
with only one pair connected.
That's crazy, really.
How on earth do we get that amount of traffic
going through a messed up cable like this
with only one pair intact?
That's really impressive, I think.
Okay, but as they say, there's more.
So let me keep that going.
And I'll get my big,
long cable connected to this FLEX4 again
and I'll get my devices connected again.
Make sure that they get powered up.
So connect this IP phone.
It doesn't really matter how many devices I have here.
I simply want to show you
that another cool feature of the switches
is that they share power.
So if one of the switches loses power,
it can draw power from another switch.
(upbeat music)