[mdlug] Looking for a good industrial KVM

[Dan Pritts]

> 
>     The primary constraint I'm dealing with is cable length.  The 
> complete cable run is a little over 50 meters.  The KVMs we bought were 
> *supposed* to be spec'd for that distance, with a "host" and "slave" 
> module linked by a straight Cat5 cable (no TCP/IP involved, no hubs or 
> switches, just some sort of proprietary direct protocol) and breaking 
> out the VGA and USB cables on each end.  It *looked* like such a simple, 
> COTS-solved issue when we started....
>     Adding a remote PC at the far end to act as a VNC or RD client 
> isn't in the cards.  I just really need a way to get a plain-vanilla KVM 
> to work cleanly and reliably over this kind of distance.

I'm guessing either:

1) cable is getting beat up in the environment
2) there's interference of some sort.  

the first is (presumably) easy to check with a fresh cable.

For the second, the first thing that comes to mind is to get a shielded cable.  
STP instead of UTP.  

I'm not sure whether a category 6 cable would be better for this application,
but it couldn't hurt either.