alternative uses for phonenet?

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Last seen: 17 years 12 months ago
Joined: Jan 28 2004 - 12:14
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alternative uses for phonenet?

ive been thinking about using phonenet connectors to build some kind of network that will stretch over my whole house * but for now i still cant think of what to do with it.

has anyone seen any similar stuff that uses the second phone line around?

currently Im thinking an infra red thingy or some kind of printer network to allow me to use my newton anywhere, or forward remote control signals from the phonenet to the room the sound sytem is in.

is there any way to get ethernet or somewhere near that speed?
i take it audio wouldn't go down a wire that well.....or at least not at good quality.....???

mostly i just want some ideas or devices that i can think up a use for....

*my wifi network has an effective range of about 10m for some reason. even then its still flakey.

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Last seen: 13 hours 46 min ago
Joined: Dec 19 2003 - 17:34
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Well, there's a couple proble

Well, there's a couple problems with PhoneNet. First is that it's incredibly low bandwidth--it only requires two wires. Back when it was popular, true Mac geeks would use the yellow and black wires on the home phone wiring to send PhoneNet signals from room to room.

Ethernet? No way. You need a minimum of 4 conductors for 10BaseT connections, and 8 for 100BaseT and up. Audio you could probably manage, but keep in mind that it would 1) only be mono if you're just using two wires and 2) need some boosting upstream in order to arrive at a decent level.

If you're looking for a good whole-house network solution, I'd go wireless (aftermarket antennae can make a huge difference in signal strength) or HomePNA.

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