Cat 5 Cable Conduit

[Tony Hwang]

Hi, And they're talking about power line based broad band. Tony

[John Grabowski]

Call me old fashion. I like my hardwiring. Reminds me of a technician friend of mine. He took his new laptop computer outside to play around with Windows XP while sitting on his patio. He accidentally got into his neighbor's wireless network and was able to surf the web.

[Tony Hwang]

[Dan Hartung]

Oops, I confoozled myself there; those are the CAT5 numbers. Wireless ethernet comes in 11Mpbs and 54Mbps varieties right now.

[Dan Hartung]

They're talking, but you hear a lot of static. (Joke about the problems being encountered in trials.)

Where it comes from != how it gets around your house.

[Tony Hwang]

Hi, As a long time ham op. I worry about that too. Tony, VE6CGX

[Daniel L. Belton]

[Daniel L. Belton]

Well, one problem I see is that you are talking about using it for phone, intercom, computer and cable tv.

Computer: will use one cat5 cable by itself. It needs 8 conductors for ethernet.

Phone: 2 conductors per line.

Intercom: Depends on the intercom, but minimum of 2 per line.

Cable TV: Needs coax, not cat5.

So at minimum, 2 runs of cat5 and 1 run of coax. nope, won't go in a

1/2" conduit.

Ray wrote:

[Daniel L. Belton]

for 100mbps, cat5 is more than sufficient. The only reason you would need cat6 is if you go to gigabit.

[EvoDawg]

Use 2" 20' sections and don't use 90's or 45's. Use 90 sweeps and or 45 sweeps. They bend at a larger radius allowing you to pull cable easily through the conduit.

Rich

[The Masked Marvel]

[Ray]

Thanks to all who replied. Ray

[Jeff Cochran]

I have Cat6 running in 1/2", so, yes. But if you're digging a trench, use 1", or better, two 1" conduits. Especially if you have several bends. You don't know what you'll want next year and you'll be glad you blew the slight extra cash.

Jeff

[EvoDawg]

I always suggest 2". You never know what else you might want to add at a later date. The cost difference isnt that much and I wouldnt want to dig that ditch again, ever!

Rich

[BeamGuy]

Most Cat5 cables contain 4 pairs of twisted wires. So one cable can carry internet and phone. Actually in my house only two of the four phone wires are connected, so one Cat5 cable could carry internet,phone& intercom assuming intercom needs only two wires. Better to be safe though and add a second CAT5 cable.

While in practice Cat5 could technically carry cable TV as well it would require non-standard components and would not be as good as RG-6.

This looks like to me... Three cables...

1) CAT5 for internet, wire up all 8 wires to the outlet on both sides which leaves room for two internet networks should you want to expand in the future. 2) CAT5 for phone & intercom. You could use CAT3 by why go cheap? 3) RG-6 for cable TV.

[no spam for me]

Ray, just run the coax and the cat 5.....who wants to be bothered by Phone calls and the Wife when you are in your shop??!!

;^)

[Daniel L. Belton]

[Chip C]

I this needs to be clarified; 10 and 100baseT use only two pair, the ones on pins 1&2 and pins 3&5. There's a nice picture at

There is no shortage of ethernet tech info on the Internet.

Having said this, it is "out of spec" to use the other pairs for anything, which means if you do so, you'll never have your installation approved as fully cat-5 (or 5e, or 6) compliant. Few homeowners bother with this anyhow since it involves expensive people with expensive equipment. In the early days before the wisdom of pulling multiple cables was widely accepted, it was not unheard of for IT staff to break the other pairs out to another jack and run two ethernet links over one cable, with acceptable results - at least at

10 Mb/s. I can't say I've heard about phone-plus-ethernet. I think I'd do the experiment *before* I committed to the cable pull.

Now, 1000baseT uses all 4 pairs:

Chip C Toronto

[BeamGuy]

I stand by my previous statement...

[Jack Gavin]

I think you mean 1 & 2, and 3 & *6*.

(See your link.)