Cat5 over 100 meters

[SNC]

I know the standard. I never follow the rules.
But has anyone else had any luck with cat5 over 328 under 400 feet?
I have a 750 foot working now w/5ep I need to know if "anyone else" has done it.

Thanks

 

[gunrunnerjohn]

I've run CAT5e 500 feet and it worked fine for 100mbit links. I don't recommend it as a normal practice... I was going to stick a small hub in to forward the signal, but it ran so well that I just left it alone.

 

[ScottMac]

Yep, and you can use a Ferrari to haul gravel too, but it's generally not recommended.

.02

Scott

 

[JackMDS]

It will work as long as you cut it at the 100meter point and slice it with Scotch tape.

You have to use a Scotch transparent tape so the electrons will see where they are going.


Or you can plug the end of the 100 Meter into a Switch, and plug a second cable to the same Switch, leading to the destination point.

 

[beatle]

Originally posted by: JackMDS
It will work as long as you cut it at the 100meter point and slice it with Scotch tape.

You have to use a Scotch transparent tape so the electrons will see where they are going.

LOL, that got me pretty good!

 

[DannyBoy]

Originally posted by: JackMDS
It will work as long as you cut it at the 100meter point and slice it with Scotch tape.

You have to use a Scotch transparent tape so the electrons will see where they are going.

Erm, what?

 

[gunrunnerjohn]

Joke alert!

 

[SNC]

Problem with that is that it will be under 6 feet of dirt. Not a good idea to stich a hub that far under ground.
It will only be used for a short time to provide access to a trailer. The new building should be up in 2 months or so.

As an aside has anyone been able to really get there hands on a real live copy of Windows 2003 SBS?
I have it backordered at like 5 different places. I would have thought that DnH would have it by now.. But nope.

Originally posted by: JackMDS
It will work as long as you cut it at the 100meter point and slice it with Scotch tape.

You have to use a Scotch transparent tape so the electrons will see where they are going.


Or you can plug the end of the 100 Meter into a Switch, and plug a second cable to the same Switch, leading to the destination point.

 

[JackMDS]

Originally posted by: SNC
Problem with that is that it will be under 6 feet of dirt.

Wireless flies over dirt.

Or you can buy a box of CAT5e at home depot and try for 750'.

 

[gunrunnerjohn]

I'd buy the best cable you can find and run the line. I'll be very surprised if it doesn't work if it's less than 400 feet. Try some of the CAT6 specification cable, even though it's not an official spec. It's got better frequency response, and should handle the longer length a bit better than cheaper cable.

 

[dpain]

If you actually whip out the oscilliscope, you will notice serious signal degredation after 328 feet. Cat 5 can run further than 328 feet, but when you get to far out there without a repeater, you can have some very strange data coruption problems and slow down problems. You may not notice it to much at first, but because of the degredation problem you are probably having a large number of retransmissions happening. As you have more data pumped through that cable, it will saturate quickly because alot of your data has to be sent more than once. I would not recomend going to far over spec for anything mission critical. Just my 2 cents!

 

[Soybomb]

Originally posted by: gunrunnerjohn
I'd buy the best cable you can find and run the line. I'll be very surprised if it doesn't work if it's less than 400 feet. Try some of the CAT6 specification cable, even though it's not an official spec. It's got better frequency response, and should handle the longer length a bit better than cheaper cable.

Cat6 was ratified as standard in June 2002, how much more official can it get?

I know the standard. I never follow the rules.

Indeed, both outdoors cat5 and over the distance specs. And good times were had by all......wireless would have been my 1st choice for that situation followed by fiber and a media converter, but as long as you're happy with the solution.......

 

[cmetz]

SNC, the spec's rules, such as the "100m limit" rule, are actually rules of thumb distilling the engineering details into rules most installers can deal with. You actually need only be within the plant performance specs such as SNR, insertion loss, NEXT/FEXT, impedance, and so on. A high quality twisted pair cable will do better than a minimum quality cable, and that will get you some headroom.

Modern PHYs have extra tolerance, too. Some kinds of performance problems can be compensated for in the PHY, and so if you have a good switch and/or good NICs, they can provide a stable link on cables that are outside spec.

All that said, Ethernet's blessing and curse is that it often mostly works where it shouldn't. That is to say, a cable that's out of spec might end up working most of the time but have a slight error rate. It would be much easier to find that condition if it didn't work at all - instead, you have just an occasional error, and those can be tremendously annoying to hunt down. When you run cables deliberately out of spec, you're into the territory of mostly working - and the difference between fully working and mostly working can be an operational nightmare.

 

[OrganizedChaos]

if your only using it for 100 mbit run some power through some of the unused wires and stick a hub at the halfway point and burry it in a ziplock bag or sumthin. 5-12 volts @500 MAh of DC shouldn't bother much.
disclamair: i'm not an EE doing this may cause damage, injury, acts of god, or WWIII.

 

[ScottMac]

There are also timing issues (as alluded to earlier), things like Late Collisions, re-transmits from timeouts, crc errors...

If you look in the book under "the worst possible cabling installation" there'll be a picture of 500 feet of Cat(anything) stretched from building to building - right after the pictures of the shielded/screened twisted pair installed by most novice users/installers (anywhere).


It won't stop you from trying; most of use know that. Just don't come back here and whine about why your network is so slow, your PCs are suddenly acting funny, or suddenly burst into flames.

Once you've accomplished that, maybe you can help Fatt connect his Ethernet to the Serial port of his Cisco router(or was it vice-versa?)

Whatever...

Scott

 

[SNC]

Boy you guys are rough!! I really wasnt looking for a spanking.
I understand the problems that can occur doing this.
The question I asked was it anyone has done this without problems.
This is a temporary fix for a temporary problem.
Trust me I will not come back after it is done and whine about it not working.
I will however come back and let you guys know how well, or bad, it ended up working.

I have in stand by a couple g routers and antenna with poles ready to go in if it does not work.
With all the construction there will be no resonable line of sight between the two buildings.
Unless we go UP UP UP!!!

I thank all of you for your input.
And will let you know the outcome.

 

[gunrunnerjohn]

Personally, I still believe if you are shipping it less than 400 feet on quality cable, it'll work just fine. I've actually done this, and there was no difference in the performance, and no measurable increase in collisions on the link. I would recommend you use all solid cable and connect the ends directly to a hub or switch at either end with no extra connectors or patch cables.

I don't see what all the fuss is about. You know you're bending the rules, and are willing to accept the outcome.

Why is everyone getting their knickers in a knot about it?

 

[spidey07]

Because this is a public forum and running ethernet out of spec is a really bad idea and we want to stress the importance of that. Kind of a public service announcement.

If you do run this cable then at least force it to 10/full. Using full duplex you can avoid some of the late collision problems and retransmissions.

 

[lobadobadingdong]

why don't you just make a fibre run if it's going underground? then your limited to around 10km.(depending on the cable you get, and the quality of your terminations) since it'll be temporary, you can just use cheap 10/100 to fddi converters at each end.

 

[dpain]

It will probably work, we are just stating there will be some problems that may not be immediately noticable. Unless you are looking at the protocol or physical layer level, you may not even notice a problem, but there are issues. Just not a good practice, but for temporary....Go for it! Good luck,

Dpain

 

[SNC]

Well its in!! Total run ended up being 500 feet +/-.
I am not going to break out the scope unless there is a problem.

Yes I said scope. It an old army issue HP 7623A. does the job.
Im to cheep to buy a penta.

Thanks for the kind words guys.

 

[gunrunnerjohn]

We eagerly await the "performance" report.

 

[SNC]

Originally posted by: gunrunnerjohn
We eagerly await the "performance" report.

I collect old pistols, got any?

I collect new pistols, got any?

I am really trying to get my hands on a tauras 50cal revolver.
I have the 44mag 8 3/8" and the 357mag 12" Both stainless steel from them.
I understand the the 50 packs the same punch at 100 yards as the 44 has at the muzzle!!!
Talk about putting large holes in small objects!!!!!

 

[sswingle]

Longest I have gone is about 200 feet with no problems, switch to switch.

 

[SNC]

Originally posted by: gunrunnerjohn
We eagerly await the "performance" report.

Well here it is. over a week later no one has noticed a difference. This was all I was hoping for.
Being a temp install I dont have to worry about it long term.
I am not going to test it and get true results. Just real world usage.
If you guys could have seen the look on the faces of the other "Network guys", when I said "do it".
I could here a couple of them after the meeting takling about me. Quoting specs and standards. HA!!