Cordless Phones II

[Boxman]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( Hoosier Daddy, you're a good one for this question.

A friend is about ready to trench his power, phone, cable and gas to his new shop, about 600 ft. He was advised to bury RG6 for his phone and terminate at each end with a block. Is this overkill? )</font>

I'd think that he was advised to run RG6 for his cable as RG6 is coax and suitable for either cable or satellite. I'd recommend that he run either CAT5e (enhanced) or CAT6 for voice and data, he should pull one for each voice and data and not use one to do both.

boxman

 

[dieselsmoke1]

Thanks Boxman. I'll pass it along.

 

[bebster]

Does anyone know what the distance limit is on Cat5e or RG6 wiring? Can the signal go 600 ft without dropping below acceptable thresholds?

 

[dieselsmoke1]

The number often heard is 100 meters for cat5.

 

[Boxman]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( Does anyone know what the distance limit is on Cat5e or RG6 wiring? Can the signal go 600 ft without dropping below acceptable thresholds? )</font>

It's 328' or 100 meters for CAT5, 5e or 6 if you want to be in spec, but if you're only running one connection and conditions are good (no kinks in the cable, no electrical interferrence, no coils in the cable, good terminations on the ends etc.) you can get up to 600' on CAT5e and CAT6 at 100Mb but it's not a certainty. I wouldn't even try this with CAT5.

boxman

 

[Hoosier_Daddy]

Not that it matters but I stated that ATT Phones are made by Uniden. They may be made by VTECH instead. Of course, Uniden and Vtech may be related these days. But who cares.

Tom

 

[bebster]

I've got a 500' distance to go, so it sounds problematical for me. I know telephone cable goes much farther than that, but that's much lower bandwidth. I wonder if what I'll experience is just a slower speed or if it just won't work at all?

 

[Boxman]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( I've got a 500' distance to go, so it sounds problematical for me. I know telephone cable goes much farther than that, but that's much lower bandwidth. I wonder if what I'll experience is just a slower speed or if it just won't work at all? )</font>

You will most likely be able to get 10Mbs out of CAT5e or CAT6 at 500', you'd probably still be able to get 100Mbs out of CAT6. I've run a couple of 500' plus runs with CAT6 that worked at 100Mbs, just remember that there aren't any promises once your distance is out of spec. You can get a 1000' spool of non-plenum rated CAT6 for aroun $300 to $350.

If you have a building or shed, that has power, in between your source and destination you could put in a repeater (any network hub or switch should work).

If you really, really want a network connection that long and can't put in a repeater you could pull in fiber optic and hire someone to terminate it, you'd also need a fiber optic tranceiver on each end to turn the light signal back into electrical (or buy fiberoptic network interfaces for each end). This option isn't cheap but it will be the fastest, most flexible and absolutly gauranteed to work solution.

If you aren't really concerned too much about the speed and you have uninterrupted line of sight you could put in wireless access points with yagi antenna's pointed at each other at each location, you'll get at least 5Mbs (usable) which is faster than most internet connections you're likely to have at home.

boxman

 

[bebster]

Boxman, thanks for the advice. The repeater idea is one I considered, but as you point out I need to install the repeater 1/2 way between the house and barn (at the 250' mark or so)? That would mean I'd need AC power and a weatherproof housing for it, which I could do, but it creates a bit of a complication. Maybe I could use a shed there, and a source of power for other purposes.

The Cat6 cable idea certainly seems to be the easiest solution. If I ran two Cat 6 wires, do you think I could run a data router on one cable and video on the other (by putting an extra cable or satellite box in the barn)?

 

[Boxman]

Wow, you're getting me to reveal just how much of a geek I am...oh well, it pays the bills /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

You'll want to run RG6 coaxial cable for your cable or satellite. You can run video over CAT6 but it's costly to buy the equipment that turns from a coax feed to a balanced feed. If it were me I'd run at least 2 runs of CAT6 and 2 runs of RG6, you just never know what you might want to do in the future. You might want to look into the structured cabling products, they usually have 2 CAT5e or CAT6, 2 RG6, and 2 Fiber pairs included in one bundled cable. It's expensive but way cheaper than individual runs of all of the cables.

boxman