This is a question for you network gurus. I have Time Warner internet at the house, and I’d like to get it out to the shop which is about 350 feet away. I have a separate conduit run and would really prefer to use wires. Can I run cat 5 that far? Is there a better wire or specific router that I should use that is reasonably priced (i.e. fiber)? By reasonably priced I mean that I don’t want to spend $500. I know the rating for CAT5 and CAT6a is 100 meters, and I also know that it will be longer than that.
Fiber will probably get costly based on your definition of reasonably priced. If you’re just running it out to the garage to have internet access, and it’s roughly 350’, I’m willing to bet you could get away with running cat5e.
I think the actual cut off is 328ft.
In your scenario, which is the longer run, from modem/router to the side of the house or the side of the barn to the AP?
If the router inside the house to the side of the house is 80ft, I would run a 80ft cat5 to that part of the basement(?) then use the cheapest switch I could find and run the other 270ft to the barn with no problems.
Basically all you need is a switch somewhere to cut the length of the run down under 300ft.
No thoughts about wireless?
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or do this
Pull two cat6 runs. Enjoy your alldata and internet radio.
This. You need to get the run below 300 feet in whatever way possible.
is there a way to put in a amp before the long run so that by the time the date reaches the computer the gain is where it needs to be?
As someone mentioned above, you can put a switch in at the beginning of the run from the house to the shop so that the distance basically starts at 0 from there. But if any one section of cable is longer than about ~295 feet, you’re going to see a loss in signal strength. The only way to avoid this would be to put a switch in the middle of the run, and if that’s outside that probably won’t work too well.
I can put the routers at each end of the run. It will be about 300 feet. The conduit is buried, so there is no chance of a switch in the middle. Are there routers/switches rated for longer distances?
The limiting factor is the distance of copper cat5
You could probably pull a premade fiber but both switched would have to support fiber $$$
Another solution would be using DSL drivers over the copper
Btw max distance is 330 feet if your really close it should still work if all else fails and you want a cheap solution wireless
Is there coax ran to your garage?
No, but I could. Is there a way to make internet work with coax without getting double billed by Time Warner?
you are pushing the limit on cat5e distance, but ive seen runs of 400ft certify with no issues. there are lots of issues that affect that magical cat5e distance. 100m is the recommended limit.
you can get 2 media converters, and a pre-terminated fiber line, but thats a little pricy but the more “business” solution.
if you are going to try the cat5e/6 route run 2 wires. , you have a backup data line then, or copper lines for phone/etc
its all in underground conduit? how are you going to run it? for long runs ive used shop vac’s and yarn/fishing wire as pull strings.
there is also a special wire lube to help long conduit runs like this. hopefully this is empty conduit with no electric in it.
Thanks. It is all underground. The underground section is almost 350 feet. I ran two conduits when we did it, one of for power and the other is still empty, except for pull string. It’s a long run but my brother and I were able to pull the #2 aluminum power through it without too much trouble.
Thanks for the tip. I started looking at media converters and that’s not a bad option.
My knowledge is not specific to networking but in the cable industry you can amplify your signal at the source and by the time your data reaches its destination the signal power is where it needs to be if you measured properly. Also with cable using a heavier # wire you significantly increase the cable run distance by decreasing voltage drop and signal loss per foot. Is there a heavier # network cable available for long runs? or one offered with better shielding? If you had a way to get #18 copper into a punch down block I would suggest using 5 lines of DirectTV RG6. It is shielded and rated for 3gig. Just saying I know a guy. You would need a 1" pipe to put that amount of cable through .
This won’t work…
I don’t know much about cat 5/6 cabling. care to elaborate?
Outside of the obvious you couldn’t punch that gauge wire into a RJ45 end…
The resistance/voltage/amperage is completely difference between the two mediums…
You can buy coax to ethernet adapters anyways they’re pretty cheap.
I am a idiot. DirecTV uses those. DECA DirecTV eithernet to coax adapter. I have piles of those. How does that affect the usable cable length for internet traffic? I don’t know that I have run past 200ft because I have never had too on the DirecTV stuff. If I threw in a lnb I would be able to measure the amount of loss, but I can promise RG6 will not work properly at that length you would need RG11 then it would pass DirecTV programming without a problem
Theres a number of variables im sure jabbu will jump in…
Most of my experience is with fiber and cat5/6