New laptop has wierd network connector

[Tripitz]

I was in a rush and picked up a new Pentium M 'centrino' laptop from Toshiba on Friday. Its an amazing laptop with a great screen. It came with a wierd device that they want to have attached to any cat5 cables hooked up to the network port. What is this device for? its about an inch long, goes around the cable, and obviously has some kind of metal (magnets) in it as it is very heavy for its size. Just curious what this is.

[ua549]

It is most likely ferrite for supressing EMI originating in the cable. Ferrite modules are typically built into video cables.

[Tripitz]

Interesting... I'm assuming that not using the module is not a problem, correct? It worked fine without it, but I thought it was strange that they said to use the device.

[Big_Mac]

it keeps down signal noise on cabling. it's nice that they included it, and if you're ever having connection problems, it could help resolve that.