Friday Fun: Shortest Ethernet Cable

Ethernet cables are all often too long or too short.

People on Reddit are competing to invent the shortest possible working ethernet cable. Ethernet cables are easy to crimp together yourself, and industrious folks on Reddit are currently engaged in a race to see who can make the shortest working length of ethernet. The results are stunningly small.

Redditors Compete to Create Impossibly Short Ethernet Cables
https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxd4pq/redditors-compete-to-create-impossibly-short-ethernet-cables

TINY ETHERNET CABLE ARMS RACE SPAWNS FROM REDDIT DISCUSSION
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/16/tiny-ethernet-cable-arms-race-spawns-from-reddit-discussion/

The smallest Ethernet cable I have ever made. < 3”, is it okay to power u6-iw? https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubiquiti/comments/sqdf2x/the_smallest_ethernet_cable_i_have_ever_made_3_is/

The craze started from this picture:

Things have gone significantly shorter in recent days. Is an ethernet cable shorter than an inch possible? Yes, yes it is. rickyh7 patched together two shaved down RJ-45 connectors that are just over 1 centimeter long.

We want to see this go to the logical end point, though. This would naturally involve hacking away the plastic casings off a pair of laptops and soldering their motherboards together at the traces leading to the Ethernet jack.