Flat CAT6 Cable

I recently purchased some Flat CAT6 Cable for a grand total of £4.64 for 15M from Ebay with the intention of passing it through some double glazed window seals. When it arrived I was slightly taken aback at just how thin the cable was, around 6mm wide and 1.5mm thick. Great for squeezing through a tight window seal, but perhaps not so great for pushing packets.

2p for scale

To see if my scepticism was warranted I ran some iperf tests, and at 925 Mb/s I can't fault it-

C:\Users\matthew\Documents\iperf-3.1.3-win64>iperf3.exe -c 192.168.22.1 -b 1G
Connecting to host 192.168.22.1, port 5201
[  4] local 192.168.22.2 port 57144 connected to 192.168.22.1 port 5201
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bandwidth
[  4]   0.00-1.00   sec   100 MBytes   843 Mbits/sec
[  4]   1.00-2.00   sec   101 MBytes   846 Mbits/sec
[  4]   2.00-3.00   sec   112 MBytes   941 Mbits/sec
[  4]   3.00-4.00   sec   113 MBytes   947 Mbits/sec
[  4]   4.00-5.00   sec   112 MBytes   944 Mbits/sec
[  4]   5.00-6.00   sec   113 MBytes   946 Mbits/sec
[  4]   6.00-7.00   sec   113 MBytes   947 Mbits/sec
[  4]   7.00-8.00   sec   113 MBytes   946 Mbits/sec
[  4]   8.00-9.00   sec   113 MBytes   947 Mbits/sec
[  4]   9.00-10.00  sec   113 MBytes   945 Mbits/sec
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bandwidth
[  4]   0.00-10.00  sec  1.08 GBytes   925 Mbits/sec                  sender
[  4]   0.00-10.00  sec  1.08 GBytes   925 Mbits/sec                  receiver

PoE to Micro USB Converter

Someone recently showed me their latest cheapo Chinese import gadget - a PoE to Micro USB Converter that they were using to power a non-PoE enabled device.  As I'm never too far away from a PoE enabled port and they've reached a reasonable price point (£5.19 inc P+P) I thought it was worth picking one up on Ebay. I ordered one on the 12th January and it arrived on the 26th which puts shipping bang on 2 weeks - not bad from China.

I've done some testing and it seems to be a little picky about its power source. The converter works fine with a 'proper' HP Procurve managed switch, but with a Netgear Prosafe switch the power light pulses on and off and the USB cable doesn't power up.

The converter is also lacking the molded tab to prevent the RJ45 from snagging shown in the picture above, so I'm not too optimistic about how long it will last before it needs re-crimping. I'm considering opening it up and placing it in a new enclosure with a proper USB A female socket to aid compatibility with other devices such as iPhones.

Overall for £5.19 I can't complain too much. I will use it a little more 'in the field' and do some load testing and follow up in another post.