CAT 5 cable, how far can you run it?

[telstra]

We live at a 70 drop from from the street cable. Consequently the drop is too far to run payTV and high speed data off the one drop. The cable company refuses to do 2 drops (for a litany of reasons). Im trying to solve the problem by intstalling the modem up at our garage on the road and running the CAT 5 twisted pair ethernet cable from there to our house. However I'm concerned it might be too far.

[Darph Bobo]

In total, CAT 5 can run 100 meters(sp). If my calculations are correct, that's about 300 feet.

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Never underestimate the power of a Dark Clown!

[hmswhitestar]

it's more like 313 feet, but what's a foot or two amoung friends .

[Newsy]

If you buy an enhanced Category 5 cable or better, you will likely be able to get 150 meters but no guarantee. Depends on the modem and your NIC in the house. It's only the "standard" that says to use 100m. But for at home and in a 10BaseT system, most networking harware vendors will tell you 150m before problems like timeouts happen. With 100BaseT 100m would be the max even with a C5+ or Cat6 cable.

You could do it with some copper to fiber converters and a length of fiber but that is a serious piece of coin.

You should also consider that the jacketing on typical "indoor" C5 cable wouldn't last long outside. Some suppliers have an enhanced C5 in a proper outdoor high density UV resistant jacket with a hydrophobic gel. More expensive but it will last much longer.

[Darph Bobo]

whoa.....Newsy is a cable stud....I've never even heard of that stuff Maybe I've learned something today after all....

(my head is starting to hurt for some reason.....)

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Never underestimate the power of a Dark Clown!

[Philip]

Moved to the Security/LANs Forum, CAT seems more appropriate there, besides someone just asked about CAT 5 and snow.

[Thorazine]

LoachDuke,

Just as a physics nerd side note:
Eletrons do in fact travel across the outside of a conductor. Why?

Hint: Provided your car is made from metal of some sort, it is safest to be inside the vehicle when in a thunder storm.

Oh and btw, I miss the trivia questions.

[ZenOps]

Cat 5e is now readily available at most computer shops. It has slightly better s/n ratio, but most importantly it is rated for gigabit (1000BT) over copper when it is released. Neat thing about Gigabit over copper is that it will use all four pairs and has bidirectional signalling < I didn't think it was possible.

Cat 5e only costs a couple of pennies more per foot compared to Cat 5 for the indoor stuff.

[LoachDuke]

I've worked with the CAT standard b4 and I believe it is good for 100 meters. CATx is simply a quality standard which applies to the medium(s) which data flows across. What it does is set a standard which controls many things: conductor materials, wire colors, wire lengths, strand twists per foot, strand breaks per foot, connector type, etc.. it goes on and on.
My brain seems to remember someone saying to me that; electrons like to run at the surface of a conductor, so CAT uses stranded wires to create more surface area for the electrons.
CAT3 is your standard 1,2,3,6 two twisted pair and good for 10Base-T 10MB ethernet. If you want to spend the extra money for CAT 5, which is 4 twisted pair good for 100MB go to it.
B4 you get the cable, are there any electrical wires/switches/xfrmrs/etc near the cable run? If you see any of these, you will need to worry about line noise and may need to filter it, or you can route the wire away from the noise.
Go to Home Depot and buy the cheapest condiut they have to run your wires, after all, is the technology going to be here for 10+ years? And buy a good quality fish 'cause there's a million uses for it down the road.
I believe (in ontario) that you should bury the cable 6 feet to minimize frost damage, but the Bell tech in the neighborhood says 12 inches is fine because of the elastic nature of the cabling. I'd split the difference at about 3'.