Allan Lee wrote in a message to All:
 AL> I read an Arcnet FAQ and the person who wrote the faq said
 AL> that one can use other cables besides the preferred coaxial
 AL> cable (which is RG-62 93 Ohm), like a TV antenna cable
 AL> (RG-59 75 Ohm).
ARCnet is very tolerant.  You can use RG-59 cable, but the impedance mismatch 
will result in greater effective loss and therefore shorter maximum length.
 AL> Since those RG-59 cables can be easily
 AL> obtain, I'm thinking of taking the TV adapters off the ends
 AL> and put BNC connectors.  I looked around for the BNC male
 AL> connectors, which cost $7 a piece, so I surfed around the
 AL> net thinking that there's only 1 kind of BNC connector, but
 AL> instead there's places that sells BNC connectors for RG-58,
 AL> RG-59 and RG-62 cables. 
The main differences between the types of BNC male plugs is to accommodate 
the difference center conductor configuration among the types of coax.  I 
have no idea where you are getting a $7 price from, at least not in North 
America.  In the U.S., Radio Shack carries BNC plugs for much less than this. 
 You can buy fairly expensive solder-on BNC plugs which are smooth well into 
the 1 GHZ region, but these are a waste for ARCnet.  Cheap crimp-on 
connectors will work.
 AL> What I want to know is is there different BNC connectors for
 AL> different cables or is there only 1 kind that will work for
 AL> all the cables??
The center top of the BNC plug must fit over the coax center conductor.  This 
has to happen differently depending upon whether the conductor is solid or 
stranded, and taking into account the diameter of the conductor.  So, there 
are different types of BNC plugs, and you get the kind to match the coax.
 AL> The Arcnet cards I have are the 2.5 Mbps ones.  Let's say I
 AL> hook up a server computer to the active hub and 4 client
 AL> computers to the same hub in STAR topology.  The 4 client
 AL> computers at the same time downloads a file (all 4 computers
 AL> downloading the same file), how fast would the transfer
 AL> speed be? 
ARCnet should share out the available bandwidth fairly evenly, dividing it 
among the workstations equally.  Neglecting other factors, including 
acknowledgement data, I suppose the throughput would be 2.5/4=0.625 Mbps.
 AL> Lastly, this question is for the "fun" side of networking..
 AL> Can these cards handle network gaming (Quake, C&C) ? :)
Yes, probably better than Ethernet.  With Ethernet, although you have higher 
total bandwidth, a faster machine can monopolize the bandwidth.
 
-- Mike
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