CAT5 Repeater-400 Manual
1
CAT-5 Repeater-400™ REPEATER MANUAL
A. Topology
Unibrain's CAT-5 Repeater-400™ provides an excellent low cost solution for extending the Firewire bus
by using standard CAT-5e or CAT-6 (crossover) type cables. A typical configuration is shown in figure 1:
Figure 1: CAT5e/CAT6 Repeater typical configuration
The
CAT-5 Repeater-400™
utilizes its UTP RJ45 port and a
crossover
CAT5e/CAT6 to transfer 1394
signals over long distances. The pin out of crossover cable is shown in Figure 2:
Figure 2: Crossover cable pin out
Crossover
-CAT5 is the type of Ethernet cable that is used to connect computers with each other, not
the cable you typically use to connect your computer with the wall Ethernet plug. You can find the
crossover cables on typical electronics or computer store.
By plugging the CAT5e/CAT6 cable into RJ45 ports of two repeaters the transmission distance can be
lengthened according to the following table:
Max 1394 Speed
UTP Cable Type
CAT5e
CAT6
S100
70m
70m
S200
70m
70m
S400
70m
70m
Table 1: Maximum cable distances vs various 1394 speed modes
Alternatively a pair of typical, non-crossover Ethernet cables can be used with a CAT5-crossover
coupler.
Notice
that in this case, the maximum distances may decrease due to signal loss on the
connections. A CAT5-crossover coupler is shown in Figure 3:
UTP
cat5e/cat6
cable
1394
network
1394
network
1394
network
1394
network
1394a
cable
1394a
cable
1394a
cable
1394a
cable
power
power
