Yet again I find myself seeking knowledge from the oracle of HP3000-L, 
(not to be confused with the oracle of Delphi).

We have a factory here in El Paso which is wired exclusively with 
10BaseT.  We have been experiencing network anomalies which we 
have attributed to several causes, including bad hubs, bad 10Base2 
cables, not enough memory on the 918 host, bad PC NIC's, etc. 

After the latest network failure, one in which one particular PC, 
which happens to be the one farthest from the hub, wouldn't connect 
to the network, we invested in a cable certifier tool.  This tool 
revealed that this particular cable was 496 feet long, and failed 
the 10BaseT attenuation standards as well.  Checking the other 
cables revealed they are all (except one) over 400 feet long, 
although none have attenuation problems.  But with the 10BaseT 
standard at 100 meters (~330 feet), I am now wondering if this 
hasn't been our problem all along.

What do you think?  Does size (length) really matter?  Could 
this have been our problem all along?

We are now looking at replacing the 10BaseT with 10BaseFL (a not 
inexpensive proposal), and I was wondering if there are other 
alternatives (to replacement).  Any ideas or other helpful hints 
would be greatly appreciated.

Jim Phillips                            Manager of Information Systems
Voice: (915) 860-9933                   Therm-O-Link of Texas, Inc.
  Fax: (915) 860-9936                   1295 Henry Brennan
Email: [log in to unmask]       El Paso, Texas   79936