Running internet to a building 660 feet away

   / Running internet to a building 660 feet away #11  
I tried wireless to my shop, but couldn't get signal through the steel walls.

Ran ethernet underground about 200 feet total and works great. Interested to hear from experts if you can go 600.

That was my exact situation. I rented a small walk-behind slice trencher to run direct burial CAT5 line. That worked fine in the grass, but I needed my backhoe to get through the gravel driveway.

When the internet company ran fiber optic back to my house, they used a larger piece of equipment that used the same principle. I was surprised that they even went straight through 4-6" rip rap over my driveway culvert.

It seemed like that would damage the line, but it has been fine for about five years now.
 
   / Running internet to a building 660 feet away #12  
I don’t have actual experience using it at my place, but I know for a 660’ distance Ethernet over Coax would be an alternative to Fiber.Well within the distance. You can get the pair of boxes for about $120.
1,000 ft roll of direct burial rg11 is $240 on Amazon. The advantage would be you could be less careful with the handling and route of the cabling compared to fiber. You also wouldn’t have to deal with polishing the ends.
 
   / Running internet to a building 660 feet away #13  
go fiber, then you don't need to worry about lightning or grounding issues, you can buy premade fiber. just need these boxes.

 
   / Running internet to a building 660 feet away #14  
20 years ago I set up WiFi links to two neighbors, 600' & 700' each; I had a company-paid T1 line and there wasn't anything else remotely as good in our area - people were still on dialup so I shared (there's never been DSL here, there's no cable... more recently there's a wide-area WiFi that they're on now; I'm on VZW cellular internet now). This was old "b" wifi of course. It worked pretty well though one neighbor did have to trim some trees after a couple years. That setup was running for a good number of years, like... 7?

More recently, I ran a fiber optic line from my solar ground mount to my shop, because the setup needed a USB connection between a unit at the ground mount (combiner box which holds the main smarts) and the unit in my shop 550' away as the electrons flow (photons too, on the fiber; there's no clear path through the air); in more typical setups these are all relatively near each other and don't need an extender. Anyways, I got a pair of devices for about $200 which sit at either end of the fiber optic cable and they bridge USB over it.

A similar device exists that's a lot cheaper which bridges Ethernet over the fiber: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B06XBSZJL3
The fiber, of course, will be a lot more expensive, and you'll definitely want it in a conduit for protection, but this is the way to go for maximum speed and distance. Based on my experience with the USB extender, I wouldn't hesitate to use this if I had to go near 100m or more (maximum ethernet cable length).

I bought from fiberopticcableshop.com; I got a 4-fiber pre-terminated bundle with pulling eyes. As it turned out I built the conduit around all the cables as I didn't want to be pulling 4/0 aluminum that far so the pulling eyes weren't necessary but they didn't hurt. I got the 4-fiber because I figured it was like 20% more expensive than 1-fiber, and it gave me options if a fiber or two were to be damaged during construction/pulling, and best case there'd be some in the future I could use for something else - like I could use one of those bridges ^ to put ethernet on that part of my land.

Another alternative you just run ethernet; it may work even at reasonable speeds, because the network protocols will handle the increased errors. Buy 1000' of cable and run it, see if it's tolerable. $200 for 1000' of direct burial; buy it, you may be able to try it without unrolling the whole thing.
A final option is, run ethernet, but put a powered bridge/switch/hub in the middle of the run so that it's effectively two runs, each 100m.

This place: https://paigedatacom.com/gamechanger claims that their cable will provide good signal for 2.5G at 200m, 10Mb/s at 850'. Their direct burial is very pricey - $1500 for 1000', though the more typical stuff is $500/1000'. Still expensive (though there's a pop-up with 15% off oh boy), but it may just get you right where you need to go. I don't have any experience with this at all but they do have a warranty. I'd be pretty tempted to use this tbh.
 
   / Running internet to a building 660 feet away #15  
go fiber, then you don't need to worry about lightning or grounding issues, you can buy premade fiber. just need these boxes.

This is what I did to get 500ft to my metal shop. I used a fiber optic cable that had metal sheathing. It's been laying on the ground for 3 years with no issues. Dogs have dug at it, people have walked on it, 4x4 has driven over it. I'm surprised it still works. Renting a trencher next month and will finally put it in the ground.
 
   / Running internet to a building 660 feet away #16  
This is what I did to get 500ft to my metal shop. I used a fiber optic cable that had metal sheathing. It's been laying on the ground for 3 years with no issues. Dogs have dug at it, people have walked on it, 4x4 has driven over it. I'm surprised it still works. Renting a trencher next month and will finally put it in the ground.
armored fiber is impressively strong, I work with fiber in my job and it can take a pretty impressive amount of abuse. Frontier is putting fiber in the area, and I keep watching them drive over it with the truck. I told the one guy to stop doing it. he said they've been driving over it for years and never seen it break so they stopped caring. I was pretty impressed.
 
   / Running internet to a building 660 feet away #17  
Keep in mind, if you go direct burial fiber optic, the messenger strand , or metal sheath is conductive, so you need to provide a proper ground, like you would for a coaxial cable. The fiber cable of course has the advantage that it doesn’t have an ungrounded center conductor that could potentially carry stray currents into your device.
I would definitely go “Ethernet over coaxial” rather than 660’ of Ethernet cable, if you decide to go wired. It’s specified for such distance at high speeds.
 
   / Running internet to a building 660 feet away #18  
armored fiber is impressively strong, I work with fiber in my job and it can take a pretty impressive amount of abuse. Frontier is putting fiber in the area, and I keep watching them drive over it with the truck. I told the one guy to stop doing it. he said they've been driving over it for years and never seen it break so they stopped caring. I was pretty impressed.
That is amazing it isn’t damaged, and sloppy of them to drive over it. Shows lack of care
 
   / Running internet to a building 660 feet away #19  
Keep in mind, if you go direct burial fiber optic, the messenger strand , or metal sheath is conductive, so you need to provide a proper ground, like you would for a coaxial cable. The fiber cable of course has the advantage that it doesn’t have an ungrounded center conductor that could potentially carry stray currents into your device.
I would definitely go “Ethernet over coaxial” rather than 660’ of Ethernet cable, if you decide to go wired. It’s specified for such distance at high speeds.
This is the armored fiber cable I bought. I don't see how you could access the armor shield to ground it.

 

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