As many of you probably know, we have been in the middle of a construction project for awhile. Well we are more or less done and in the process of moving from our “Barn/Studio” building to the House.
I now would like to get the net to work between the two buildings. I did install a exterior type Cat-5 cable in a conduit between the two buildings. I made up I think the correct cable ends and currently have a router at both ends, which the appropriate LEDS do blink on the routers. However I am not getting good communication between them. Hopefully later today I will replace these two routers with switches. I tried hooking up a portable to one of my network spots in the house and did get a little output, but it was really really slow… So currently must go over to the other building to talk on the net…
The problem I believe is in the cable lengths. The Cat5 is just shy of 500 feet long. Looking at some of the specs I believe that 100 meters is more or less the limit for 100mb cat5.
Suggestions?
Looking at some of the specs, it looks like the 10mb cat5 can go longer distances? Should I try removing some wires at one or both ends of the cable to make it go to 10mb? Soon I will contact my internet provider and have them move my microwave dish to the main building, but I will still like to have some communication between the two buildings?
500ft on standard cat5 wire is probably not going to run at 100mbps. can you force your routers to run at 10mbps (actually forcing only 1 of them is necessary)? if that still doesn’t work you could go with an adsl link, but by the time you buy something like that it might be less expensive to pull 500’ of cat6e using your cat5e as a leader. alternatively if you have LOS between the two buildings use a WLAN bridge and two directional antennas between them.
It would be a fun pull as there are also 5 RG6 Quad cables in the same 2" conduit, with several bends. We ended up digging up the conduit near the front of the barn (so we could break the pull up before we got to the last 4 90s). A long long time ago I used to have some 10mbps routers, but I think they are long gone…
A question I have is, there an easy way to modify a cable such that the 10/100 router decides that it can only go at 10mbps?
Another option you may consider is using Ethernet over Power. D-link makes a set that supports up to 200 mbps, but I dont imagine you will get that over the distances involved here.
And, um… dont kill me for suggesting this after you dug a 500’ trench…
It might be worthwhile to dig up the conduit at the 250’ mark and put in an active device. You would then have 100mbps. If you’re careful the other cables could go untouched. One of the RG6’s could be used to carry the DC supply, and still be used for video if needed. 8)
I did phase 1, which was to move the microwave dish from the barn to the house. So now I have my main computer back up and running.
I thought about digging it up at 250’ for maybe a minute or two and decided that I would rather not. This trench is probably 3 or 4 feet down with a little sand on top and then mostly pit run and then crushed rock. Also in the same trench, septic, 3 other conduits, power, water, and at that point probably propane…
I will probably use some wireless bridges between the two buildings. Not sure if the linksys WET200’s would make the distance 250-300 feet, or better off with wet54g maybe with a directional ant… I have talked to both linksys and netgear and neither gave me a solid answer… Hopefully I will find one that is reasonably priced that can span the distance…
I am an amateur roboteer (is that the term) but a professional network engineer. I see several possible problems. First off the length that has been discussed. Bumping down to 10mb won’t help a lot. The signals are actually more robust at 100mb. The other problem I see is the trench/conduit. If your network cable is running parallel with power cables for more then a few feet the alternating current in the power cable with cause noise on the network cable.
I would suggest a wireless connection. That distance should be easily covered. If you want to boast the signal look into a “pringles” antenna. An empty pringles can make an excellent yagi antenna.
www dot netscum dot com/~clapp/wireless.html
It won’t let me post a real link as this is my first post.
and in the process of moving from our “Barn/Studio” building to the House.
alternatively if you have LOS between the two buildings use a WLAN bridge and two directional antennas between them.
