External cat5e question

Mort · 30 Mar 2008 at 19:59

Hey all

I have just moved out of my house (geek house with 3 other lads), 2 doors down into a 2 bed place with my gf. Anyways We were going to sling a network cable over the roof or something so I can remain on the network (as wireless is poo, and would mean buying an AP at each end as wireless routers wont do).

Anyone suggest any special types of ethernet cable? I notice OCUK dont do reels, but was going to get a load and do the whole house properly instead of wires trailing along the corridors hehe

:cool:

teaboy5 · 30 Mar 2008 at 20:21

Is this so you can have the internet? Or just network access?

DRZ · 30 Mar 2008 at 20:26

I had plain old indoor-grade cat5 outside for nigh on a year with 0 ill effects.

Worked like a charm

bigredshark · 30 Mar 2008 at 20:56

STP cable probably wont hurt but there's nothing specially made for it that I know of...

#Chri5# · 30 Mar 2008 at 21:01

You can get external grade CAT5 which has an additional water resistant coating. Can't remember the cost premium over standard CAT5 though.

bigredshark · 30 Mar 2008 at 21:04

Obviously remember that the practical limit for cat5 runs is 90 meters or so (yes I know it's meant to be higher but thats the sort of distance which reliably works when well terminated in my experience)

londonbairn · 30 Mar 2008 at 22:44

We used external grade Cat5e to wire our 3 storey house (we put the wiring outside because it was easier than wiring internally). The longest we used was 50m to the router, has worked perfectly fine, even during torrential rain, thunder etc.

edgedemon · 30 Mar 2008 at 22:50

We had 50 PC's in 3 portacabins running off normal Cat5E for nearly a year, so I wouldn't worry too much. 95mt run + patch cables must come to a maximum of 100mts - Cat5E will do gigabit ethernet over short distances, but that is with proper network switches, not a home router set up..

richard smith · 31 Mar 2008 at 12:43

You can get external cat5/cat6 no problems. We're using hundreds of metres of the stuff at work. Usually have a 10 year guarantee or something like that.

Sone · 31 Mar 2008 at 13:03

i just used bog standard indoor stuff, been there for years and still works fine.

When it does break its cheap and easy to replace

errata · 31 Mar 2008 at 13:16

Make sure you use continous wire, no external connctions and put 'drip loops' in to ensure water does not travel along the wire into connections or the house.

Other than that cheap cable will last for months or years until the sun degrades the plastics and water gets in. How good the plastics are to UV degradation cant be proven unless you buy the external grade cable.