Cat5 - Shielded or not

I am running a Cat 5 cable close to a 6mm SWA cable over a 15M run.

Is it worth using shielded Cat 5?

It's supplying a garden studio so there will be the occasional electric fire / kettle kicking in and out.

Roy

Reply to
Roy Brophy
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kettle kicking in and out.

Why would you bother when it is now possible to run WiFi at that range and have decent throughput with no risk of lightning damage to kit?

Mains and signal cables inside the same trunking is asking for trouble.

Reply to
Martin Brown

Martin, Thanks for your response.

Good thought - I will give wifi a try first.

I?m a bit concerned that the wifi signal will be shielded by the foil on the Celotex insulation that will be in the walls, ceiling and floor.

Am I worrying unnecessesarily?

Thanks, Roy

Reply to
Roy Brophy

Celotex insulation that will be in the walls, ceiling and floor.

Provided there is a window facing about the right direction I expect the Wifi signal will get in fine. If all else fails I have run Wifi over distance using a simple £8 USB Wifi with detachable aerial and an external high gain antenna. That takes a bit of setting up but has the big advantage of no risk of lightning ground emf destroying kit.

My first (expensive) Boca dialup modem was killed by a lightning strike.

Quick way to find out is to test it with a portable and a Wifi survey.

Reply to
Martin Brown

Provided there aren't a load of other neighbours all vying for the rather restricted amount of WiFi channel space. In a residential/urban area a WiFi survey would be wise before accepting it as a solution. Survey done overa few days and at the times that the link is likely to be used. Not just how many APs are there but also the try to see what throughput you can get.

If you want galvanic isolation I'd look at fibre. No problem of duct sharing either. You can get pre-terminated cables (be careful with thends, they are delicate and can pull of rather too easily) and I don't think ethernet fibre adpaters are excessively expensive.

And technically illegal. The OP hasn't said if the run is aerial or buried.

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

Celotex insulation that will be in the walls, ceiling and floor.

No. I have foil backed plasterboard and wifi range is about 15 feet outside any room its in at best.

wifi is utter shit for the most part. And certainly wont yet do the gigabit speeds cat 5 will.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

I've lost - or been handed the kit, broken - at least three wifi equipped routers that dies postmajor thunderstorms.

In short lightning kills anything. Its at least unlikley to destroy a cable buried underground, even if the kit at each end goes pear shaped.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

If you have modern mobile you can download many apps for free that tell you about Wi-Fi in your area.

Jonathan

Reply to
Jonathan

Surely not illegal, rather contravening the IEE wiring regulations (or whatever they're called now).

It's also allowed in trunking with physical separation between sections of the trunking isn't it? (Though that's being a bit picky I must admit)

Reply to
cl

On Wednesday 05 June 2013 11:48 Dave Liquorice wrote in uk.d-i-y:

Another solution is to shove fibre down there with a couple of cheap end transponders on each end.

Reply to
Tim Watts

Yep anything with a few feet of wire attached is vulnerable to damage froma lighting strike within a few hundrd yards. Had an IP webcam and network card connected by 12' Cat5 zapped... The Webcam still works, just not via the ethernet port, several components on the card were carbonised.

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

likely to

They'll tell you what is on which channel but do any analyise the traffic levels for each AP they can hear? A channel with 9 AP's all doing nothing but beaconing is probably a better one to choose than a channel with 3 AP's all streaming video... Without looking at the traffic that wouldn't be the obvious choice.

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

On Wednesday 05 June 2013 12:45 snipped-for-privacy@isbd.net wrote in uk.d-i-y:

It's allowed if both cables are rated to the voltage of the higher - though this may not be the case for standard cat5e.

Having said that, Cat5e is isolated at both ends and often lobbed under computer room floors or in trunking on top of a load of mains cables so there isn't really a problem in reality with dry installations.

However, stuck in an underground duct full of water (it may be one day) a minor failure of the LV (mains) cable insulation could lead to the ELV cables becoming significantly energised (due to their weaker insulation) and the possibility of colding a plugged in bare RJ45 whilst standing just outside the shed on wet grass in flipflops is not totally improbable.

So in this case, fiber, seperate ducts or run the Cat5e in a small flexi conduit inside the larger duct would seem to be a valid requirement.

Reply to
Tim Watts

If you want to run building to building wifi, then you tend to get far superior results with proper external wireless bridge units, rather than normal wifi kit.

Reply to
John Rumm

Do they show video senders? That is what was killing wifi around here (until I turned it off).

Reply to
dennis

On Jun 5, 12:47 pm, Tim Watts wrote:eth

You could do the whole job with fibre for around £50 sourcing everything from eBay.

30m long multimode patch cables (OM1 65um, OM2 or OM3 50um) with duplex LC connectors at each end can be obtained for a few pounds each if you wait for a week or two. OM3 is better than OM2 which is better than OM1, but for such short lengths it will make no difference at all which you use. Avoid single mode because the transceivers usually cost more and you don't need to send the data many kilometres anyway. 850nm SFP multi-mode transceivers are often available for £0.99 + postage in speed ratings of 1, 2 or 4 Gbit/s. It doesn't matter whether they are specified for gigabit ethernet or fibre channel - either will work fine for gigabit ethernet. It doesn't matter what make they are either.

Gigabit media converters such as TP-Link MC220L are just under £20 each. Note that these ONLY work at Gbit speed, not 10/100Mbit/s. Alternatively, some low-cost network switches which work at

10/100/1000 take SFP optical transceivers. The cheap ones don't care what make of SFP treansceivers you use. GS110TP is an example of a nice switch which works with any make of SFP, but there are cheaper ones around too.

John

Reply to
John Walliker

All,

Many thanks for all the responses - very helpful and much food for thought.

I think I will probably end up going the fibre route. I have never used that before so it will be interesting and something new!

When I do it in a couple of months time I'll try to remember to post back here with the results.

Roy

Reply to
RzB

Nope, nor leaky microwaves, BlueTooth etc etc...

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

before so it will be interesting and something new!

with the results.

The chief problems with fibre are terminating it, and the fragility of the fibre.

A pre-made length installed very carefully in smooth ducting should be OK.

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I think an ethernet bridge of fibre is easy to get the bits for.

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Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

On Thursday 06 June 2013 09:16 RzB wrote in uk.d-i-y:

I am NOT a fibre expert (though I've used it industrially and seen it terminated by experts).

With that proviso, this might be worth some checking on Google for reviews etc:

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£37 each (you need 2 obviously), gigabit, short range (for fibre) - more than what you need.

Here's the full spec:

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Now - the fibre. I would suggest getting preterminated patches as termination is fiddly and needs special tools. Just buy something longer than you need and coil (not fold or knot!) the excess.

Protect the connector[1] when pulling through duct and do not pull by the connector. In fact, pull very gently as it is quite easy to damage.

[1] Perhaps put the end of the cable and connectors in a 40mm long bit of blanked off 15mm pipe/conduit and tape the pipe to the fibre with insulating tape - and fix the pull cord to the blanked end of the pipe. You pull the protective cover which in turn pulls the cable by the sheath. Should work through a smooth duct. Pull the fiber last.

As to the cable - the above device needs:

1) SC terminators on both ends. These are chunky but are actually in 2 halves so you can split them and pull one back slightly to fit the pulling cover pipe.

2) You'll need either 62.5/125um fiber for 220m range or 50/125um fiber for

500m range. Assuming the former, this will do:

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£18 buys a 30m lead. 10m and 20m also available.

BTW - lasers are dangerous, and invisible to the eye. DO NOT go peering into the ends of the cable or the adaptors. Having said that, these ones are not too bad as they are low power short range. Some of the long haul ones are pretty lethal.

To test the cable before and after pulling, have an assistant shine a torch into one end - the other end should light up as 2 bright pinpricks of light, similar brightness for each fibre. If the cable is broken, it is usually fairly obvious at this stage.

HTH

Tim

Reply to
Tim Watts

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