Network across buildings?

mjd

mjd

mjd

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Llanelli, S.Wales
I volunteer for the local RSPCA animal centre and I am currently in the process of getting a domain controller in and introducing a few open source apps to allow them to record animal details/medical records electronically.
The manager of the centre has asked how easy it would be to introduce PCs into a number of the kennel blocks to allow staff to enter animal details in situ.

The main admin block is no problem for a straight cat5 install, but the kennels are where the challenge lies.

The furthest kennel block is around 200ft from the admin block.

I have had patchy results using powerline, partly due to the makeup of the electrical systems and the sheer distance involved.

Based on this I think my only options are wireless or CAT5.

CAT5 wouldnt be elegant , but it would be relatively cheap to implement.

I dont have lot of experience of wireless kit beyond your average home installation. What sort of kit would I be looking at for a wireless link taking the distance between buildings into account?

Thanks in advance for any help :)

MJD
 
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200ft is well within the max distance of 100m for cat5e. A drum of cat5 should set you back £40ish. As for the wireless link youre talking two devices at either end (obviously) you could use something like the wrt54GL on DD-WRT to use as a bridge connection. Not sure you'd get a decent signal at that length. You could use direct line of sight antennas but then youre starting to talk a lot more money.

If you can get the cable fitted in a decent way go for the cat5. If its being run outdoors make sure you get something sufficiently rated to cope with being outdoors.
 
Being a kennels do we assume its in a field so you may get away with radio maybe using Yagis. if its a built up area it would be hard. Cable is all ways better anyway. other than all that you could use a laptop and sync on return
 
Just run 1 cat 5 cable to the kennel and place a network switch at on of the kennels then cat5 from there?

Too simple or what?
 
Cat5e will give you a constant, stable, secure, connection for a quarter of the cost of buying a pair of routers and directional antennas which would be slower and less reliable. You could always use Cat6 if you felt flash :p

That said, I don't believe Cat cables were designed for outside weather...
 
You are not supposed to run CAT5 between seperate buildings due to the ground differential, you are meant to use fibre.

Wireless is probably your best bet
 
howler said:
You are not supposed to run CAT5 between seperate buildings due to the ground differential, you are meant to use fibre.
Click to expand...

I didnt know that...

In that case using a wireless access point and a wireless bridge? If you have a "line of sight" view between points then you should get a decent connection...
 
Being the RSPCA there isnt much room for trial and error. Ideally we need something that I can install and thats it. External grade Cat5 would be my favoured choice. I think wireless is going to be a hit and miss affair and as they are aiming for a certain degree of self sufficiency I dont think it would be the way too go.

I did read something about the ground differential. Can this not be overcome with a lightning arrestor/surge protection?
Perhaps I have that ar$e about face.

I have seen several installations using run of the mill stranded cable across entire fields without any issues in the past. Its crude, but it works.
 
I use cat 5 cable to go from my house to my garage, through the roof, down the wall in the garage, into switch then into anything I need there :)

If you get external grade cat 5, then I don't see why it wouldn't work...

A certain online marketplace has 100m, external grade quality, Gigabit networking cable for £60.

How many computers will be used in the kennels?
 
Ryan111 said:
I use cat 5 cable to go from my house to my garage, through the roof, down the wall in the garage, into switch then into anything I need there :)

If you get external grade cat 5, then I don't see why it wouldn't work...

A certain online marketplace has 100m, external grade quality, Gigabit networking cable for £60.

How many computers will be used in the kennels?
Click to expand...

1 x PC per kennel block
 
I should have just asked how many computers...

How many computers are there going to be in the kennel blocks?
 
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