I am onboard a USNS Ship working for the US Navy. We have an existing coax network for our satellite and video system and my Captain is interested in setting up a gaming network. My question is: is it possible to use this network for peer to peer gaming using a spliter and cable modems and not affect the television signal? I think in theory it should work, but I am not familiar with the process.
Side by side computers, apparently. We're just joshing you, soup. Glad you can check in. I actually have a friend who just decided to teach math and philosophy aboard an aircraft carrier for six months, so I know all sorts of things have to go on. Some of those ships are like small towns, and if we're not fighting (fingers crossed in the western pacific), you can only spend so much time on ship maintainance. Best wishes to you (assuming you really are on a ship and not in your parents basement).
Go blow up some Saudi Arabians princes! That's entertaining!! (uh oh, I think I just turned this into a D&D topic)
Wow! A-Hole That's exactly what were out here to do. Have you been hacking into government websites again?
I wish I could give you an answer souprocket -- I'll do some looking at it when I go home tonight. I am going to guess that it wouldn't work, but I have NO IDEA. If you try it, remember that you're not on a DHCP network, so you'll need to give the computer(s) static IP addresses (10.0.0.x is a good range to use). Gosh, it's a great idea, and the more I think about it, the more I think you could get it to work, but I don't know. What I wonder about is if the cable modems require some special protocols to work. I know that most of the high-speed internet providers have moved from DHCP to PPPoE, but that's independent of the modem. Good luck with it if you try it right now. I'll look into it a bit more and let you know what I find.
souprocket -- I did some looking into this, and I don't think it's going to work. Here's why: The cable modem itself does nothing until it's connected to something called a CMTS -- a Cable Modem Termination System. They are expensive. Something I had considered was to perhaps try running a 10 Base-2 Network on the cable (although I wasn't sure how it would affect the TV, so I didn't want to recommend it). The other thing that I hadn't considered was that the way a 10 Base-2 network works is as a continuous bus -- you have to start it at one place, and then it goes completely through each device, then terminates at the end. like a giant S (or something like that . . . ). The thing is that your cable branches off to TVs and all manner of other things and it wouldn't work. Unfortunately, I think you may be up a creek there. Do you happen to have any other cabling? phone-line? Power Lines? Can you run any cable? It's possible you could set up a phone-line networking system or a power line networking system that would suffice. Oh, I got that bit about the CMTS from <a href="http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&threadm=3ksd9b-1ns.ln%40speaker.rodsbooks.com&rnum=8&prev=/groups%3Fq%3Dethernet%2Bnetworking%2Bcable%2Bmodems%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26ie%3DUTF-8%26oe%3Dutf-8%26selm%3D3ksd9b-1ns.ln%2540speaker.rodsbooks.com%26rnum%3D8">this post on usenet</a>.
Vengeance, Thanks a lot for looking into this for me. Unfortunately other cabling is not an option, and drilling through the bulkheads is a major job that has to be approved by the coast guard. We have a standard Ethernet network, but the television system is the only one that feeds into each of the state rooms. Again, thanks for the info.
What about a wireless network? I have limited knowledge of acually setting one up but it may be a possibility.
Oh, no problem souprocket. I wish I could help you more. A wireless network would make sense, however there's no way the signal will make it through all of the metal walls and such in the ship. Here's a thought -- I could post a question to <a href="http://www.slashdot.org">Slashdot</a>, and perhaps the nerds over there might have some ideas . . . I'll only post it if you want me to though.
Yea, wireless would never work, the ship has some kind of magnetic charge at all times. I think the entire ship has to be degaussed like a giant monitor from time to time. I also looked into the powerline network, but I am afraid with all the equipment that goes on and offline that spikes would kill any kind of data we might be trying to send or receive. Lastly, I was looking for the CMTS, just out of curiosity to see how much it would be, I was never able to find a price, but our tv networked is daisey chained throughout the ship so that would not work even if we spent the money. So that's that. the dream must die! Until they decide to run cat5 throughout every room, it's not gonna happen. Thanks for the answers fellas
