Cat 5 limits

Attenuation (supposedly) happens at 100 Meters. Your 150' run should be just fine.

I'm slightly over 300ft and there's slight to considerable degradation = unless I terminate with a commercial grade hub at both ends of the run, = probably because most PC network cards are kind of whimpy.

Plenty of commercial grade hubs still available on ebay though, and for = dirt cheap last time I checked--the one I'm using down here is a bay = networks 24 port which I purchased second hand and it has been running = pretty much continuiously for going on 13 years now.

FWIW, you only need two pairs for cat5...so the other two can be used = for an alarm system or for telephony if you have land line etc.

Steve B Inscribed thus:

305ft/100mt

Steve - use CAT 6. It is shielded and an improved 5. I have 100' string of it from one end of the house to the other and it is running a high speed High Def screen with a gaming program that is extensive.

I got 100 blue cat 6 solid plenum patch cable - the plenum means it has a hard wire wrap and then covered. The hard wire allows it to be drawn through hard to pull points or rubbing on a surface...

I bought mine from DeepSurplus.com They ship Fed-Ex 2-day if you want. I put a 50' length between our offices - 100Mbps on wire.

I just mentioned the place I got it. - Out near Gunner. Laguna Niguel, CA.

We are backing off wireless over the house - still to printers and shop.

The kitchen did nasty stuff to wireless. I have a switcher-microwave that drops 802.11A,B,G,N out of the air. Cell phone also.

Martin

Is there electric power half way ? or 1/3...

Run out to that point - put in a switcher - and have the switcher drive the other half.

Mart> I want to run a hard line Cat 5 out to my shop. It will be inside PVC.

Why on earth would you put a switch halfway when the total run is only

1/2 the max length spec for 100Mbit Ethernet on cat 5 cable (100m)???

"Pete C." wrote

For other installations there is this:

Power over Ethernet runs 48V (like a telephone, but more current) down the cable to power remote devices. The availability of commercial hardware means it could be useful for home surveillance and alternate energy systems, though noncompliant devices could be damaged if you don't observe the rather complex standards. I worked on its R&D. jsw

When the earth rolls on top of you and the driver isn't up to spec as it should be. Maybe marginal.

That is why or maybe he wants to put on on the far end to detect and fan-out for more than one connection.

Mart>

Cat-5 wiring is good for 100 meters (over 300 feet); it should be fine, assuming you have transceivers (hubs, switches, or routers) at each end of the run. If you have any AC wiring nearby, or want to run AC in the PVC conduit, fiber optic is recommended; it might be useful to pull an extra string when you fill the conduit, in case you want to add later. Media converters (fiber optic to twisted pair) and already-connectorized fiber lengths are ... available.

More important, if the shop has a separate electric service, your grounding becomes an issue: fiber optic link or even WiFi is preferable.

Bit late to your query, but i've done this exact thing with a slighly longer run. I did put a powered hub at both ends.

No problems at all in about five year's use.

Karl

The only time I've had a problem with CAT 5 at this length is across our shop where we're running 2 4kilowatt and one kilowatt LASERs. Lots of RFI, so I used shielded cable.

David

Cat 6 is what is needed in shielding area. Look it up - it is upgraded. I added the plenum spec to have a hard wire wrapped and a hard shield over it. That allows pulling it without snagging it on connectors and tearing the impedance out of the wire :-)

Mart> >>

Martin, there is nothing in the CAT6 or 6A standards that requires a shield. If you need shielded cable then you use shielded cable. If you need CAT6 you use CAT6. If you need shielded CAT6 then you use shielded CAT6.

And when you tell people to "look it up" and don't provide a link you're being a smartass, not being helpful.

However you may have been duped. Prior to the release of an official definition of Category 6, many cable manufacturers were selling "CAT6" cables that met no accepted standard other than CAT5E, and some of those were shielded.

If you are running 1000BASE-T or less, you need Category 5E. This can be shielded or unshielded. As long as the installed cable meets the standard you will get the specified performance, and if the installed cable doesn't test to standard then odds are that it's an installation problem that would also degrade the peformance of CAT6 or 6A to the same level.

If you are running 10G-BASE-T you can get 55 meters out of CAT6 cable or

100 meters out of 6A. Again this can be shielded or unshielded.

You should in general not run plenum cable unless it is required by code. The jacket is stiffer and it is more difficult to pull--you are making work for yourself.

And the presence of a steel reinforcing cable is not to allow harder pulls--if you're pulling harder than accepted installation guidelines allow odds are that you're kinking the cable, which will degrade it below spec. The steel reinforcing cable is intended to allow a run to be suspended.

As for "tearing the impedence out of the wire", impdence is only one of the specifications that a cable needs to meet to be certified CAT6A. There's a whole long list and you have to run a $6000 tester on the cable if you want to be sure that it meets all of them.

The general rule for twisted pair cable is that you don't want to pull harder than 25 pounds. If you need more than that then the solution is not to get a bigger hammer, it's to find out what the cable is hung up on and fix it.

It will certainly do no harm (other than to the budget) to run CAT6A where CAT5E will suffice, but there's no real purpose served by it either.

And I would avoid CAT6--it won't run 10G for its full allowed span and doesn't run 1G any better than 5E so it's wasted money. Go with 5E or

6A.

Also, shielded cable is not a panacea. If the shield is improperly bonded and terminated then it can introduce noise levels far beyond anything that unshielded cable is likely to pick up in most environments.

The current standard (EIA/TIA-568-C) can be obtained from TIA . It's not cheap.

I don't think 300' of shielded Cat6 (or the unshielded at ?price?) for the price of $34 and is color coded with connectors is high.

100' lengths are less than $14 when colored in a number of colors and has connectors.

If you were wiring a hotel - yes it would be and you would be using reels anyway.

One buys the Giga internet cable wire since it contains a better noise margin. Cat 4 might work but might be flaky.

I strung plenum wire - contains a shield foil with a wire coil wrapping that protects the inner insulation and wires.

I'd rather have noise margin than no internet when a welder kicked off or a microwave transmitter begins to transfer data.

Our switcher Microwave in the kitchen blanks out Wi-Fi across the band of 16 channels. Must be an RF leak of the switcher.

Mart> >>

It must be that the cheap switcher is modulating the Magnetron, which operates in the 2.4 GHz band.