Network Switch as Repeater?

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Hi guys,

Looking to find out how to boost a signal on a Cat5e cable, it's currently run from a house into an outbuilding but the length of the wire seems to mean that it causes to loose signal.

A signal tester seems to show all working but when plugged into a router and to PC it doesn't get assigned an IP address and so fails.

Was looking into how best to overcome this, I have read network switches can act as repeaters? So if I were to buy a cheap switch and place in the middle of the cat5e, would this work in boosting the signal?
 
Switches as repeaters are fine but it has to be a very long run of cable to need one, I've run a 25m cable easy between a PC and a Router.

No breaks in the cable?
Proper protection from environmental variables?
Away from other electrical noise sources?
Tried coiling the cable and testing it first?
 
Hm, having thought about it my father placed the cable very close to a power cable for a long stretch, I assume this is where the issue is. Only way around that is powerline or wifi I'd guess.
 
Shielded Cat5e cables (FTP/STP) rather than your normal UTP might help if you are running close to power cables or other sources of interference. Interference won't just stop the cable working, it'll just reduce the working length. The more it's next to power cables the more reduced the length will be before all signals are messed up by the crosstalk.

Anyway what you should aim for is minimising the length that the power and Cat5e cables are next to each other (and by this I mean around 50mm).

If a switch doesn't work, and you'll need to position it as close to middle of the run as possible, then depending on how the cable is running you might be able to move it enough to reduce the problem. If it's already ducted underground then run another appropriate exterior solid core cable. A cheap 4 port switch would be fine to test this out.

I'm not sure if a switch could recover a badly corrupted signal if that's what you were hoping for, it'll need to be more or less intact for it to be re-assembled. Not sure about network repeaters though, maybe they are cleverer.
 
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how long is the cable outside? if you are going to say 200m then you will need a switch in the middle of the run.... NOT at one end...

100m is only a rough guide I would expect you can get away with more...
 
I'd say that the cable is only around 30-40m but the issue is the fact for at least 5ish metres it is next to a power cable going into an out building. The Cat5e is FTP also.

Running another cable out of the way of this power line is not possible as there is no way to get to the out building.

The issue is that the stretch of cable where it passes a power cable is the last stretch for the cable, and is outside, so placing a switch in the middle is a hard thing to do, placing before would be possible but may make slim to no difference.

May just have to use a powerline as the outbuilding draws the power from inside so is a common earth
 
You wouldn't think 5M on a relatively short run of 40M would cause much of an issue.

I would recommend attempting to separate the cables from one another as much as possible minimising the length they run in parallel. I've never knowingly used shielded cable but apparently you have to have shielded connectors and they have to be earthed properly. If you don't do this it can make things actually worse and could explain your issues.
 
are you sure its the power cable thats the issue,

I was with a guy thats been putting in cables for 18 years on sunday and this issue came up - running a cat 5 in the same conduite as speaker and power cables, it was a very long run as well he said no issue's.. probably a 70M run with the cables on the last 15M in the conduite.
 
I'd defiantly say its the power cable as the cable is large enough to power a house, not that it does but it will power a recording studio, so I'd imagine the power cable is the culprit
 
If it's 30-40 metres and it doesn't work, then the cable is damaged, or the ends are damaged.

Buy a 100M reel and make a new one. You can buy specific outdoor cable that will last way longer. ~£35 a reel

Personally, I've never had an issue with using generic cable and just burying it in the ground :D The last one I installed, we used the whole 100M length. That was over a year ago and it's been faultless.
 
Can't turn off the power since it has no form of switch.

And bledd, I have tried using a LAN tester and the sequence of LED's works fine. I've tried re-crimping them but that made no difference. There isn't really an option to bury the cable to get there as it is up a hill and will take a lot of effort to do. The cable as it goes to the building is an overhead cable so it's hard to space it from it also.
 
If there's no separate fuse and switch, and there really should be for an outbuilding, isolate all electrical appliances in the outbuilding by unplugging and try as PhillyDee suggests with a laptop direct into it's network connection. Not as good as switching it off by consumer unit switch but as good as you can get.

I ran a solid core FTP Cat5 cable once that was about 50M from an incredibly noisy electrical area (workshop), then outside, across a metal roof and down into a factory, along lighting circuits and also near 400v three phase cabling and it just wouldn't work at 100Mbps but worked ok at 10Mbps. As it was a direct PC to PC cable I configured one NIC and it started working. I never really thought about why it didn't work until today but the electrical interference probably had a large effect on that cable. That was about 10 years ago. Maybe if you direct connect the NIC to the PC and tell it to go 10 or 100 Mbps it'll help.
 
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