Friends, if you’re like me you probably get asked a lot how much loss there will be on a cable. OK, I admit, most people don’t get asked that a lot. But I do. For well over a decade, I have been using a calculator I found at net-comber.com. Today I went to use it and I found that the domain no longer existed. The calculator there was the best one I’d found on the web and this concerned me. I decided to do something about it.
The Internet Archive to the Rescue
I’ve talked before about The Internet Archive, a growing free repository of old web pages, software, and media. I’m not sure of the legal ramifications of having it, but I’ve found that it’s indispensable for finding old media that’s no longer hosted anywhere else. Luckily, I had the web address for the calculator I used, and I’d found it had been indexed there many times over the years.
I took a copy of the HTML and made a few changes for compatibility, and posted it here. All you do is put the length of the cable you’re using and it gives you attenuation (loss) numbers for common cable lengths and frequencies. You can use it in feet or meters, both are there.
According to the page, all credit should go to the original author, Jim Shook, who published this page back in 2007. It’s simple and not terribly modern looking, but it works and that’s all that’s important.
A VERY important word about copyright
I fully acknowledge that this original work belongs to Jim Shook and that simply because he was no longer hosting it, he has not forfeited his copyright in any way. He is credited at the bottom of the page, as he was on the original page.
Although The Solid Signal Blog and its parent company Signal Group, LLC are for-profit entities, and this blog does exist for the purpose of promoting other Signal Group divisions, the Coaxial Attenuation Calculator is not intended to drive profit to any Signal Group division. It is presented here purely as a courtesy.
If Jim Shook or any legitimate copyright holder approaches me or any representative of Signal Group with a takedown notice, we will comply as quickly as possible, and intend no copyright infringement through the use of the original code created by Jim Shook.
And with that…
Be sure to bookmark that page. You can also find it in the Tutorials menu at the top of every page at The Solid Signal Blog.
