Home networking - what type of jacks to use?

[nautskye]

I am going to run cat5e from my family room to my bedroom.

The cable is going to be ran on the outside of the house, and I want to have jacks on the interior of the house to make everything look clean. (The last house we had, we ran the cabling through the attic and dropped it down.) My mom doesn't want to put up with that, and she doesn't want to spend the extra money to go wireless.

My question to all of you is this:

What type of ethernet jack should I use on the inside of the house? The little box? The one piece jack? Or the two piece jack where you snap in the RJ-45 connector to the wallplate?

Thanks for reading.

 

[Santa]

I know I didn't just read that you were planning on running unsheilded network wiring outside the house.

If it is normal Cat5e they are Ungrounded and unsheilded and running them outside the house will be very risky.

Highly unrecommended if you value your equipment or your life.

Interior jacks should be just typical Cat5e certified RJ45 and either or methods punch down or adapters will be fine.

 

[nautskye]

Hmmm...
Would it be safer if I got some conduit or something like that, or just buy STP?

 

[Santa]

This may help with STP from allowing electrical current past the unit and sheild it from EMI.
Link

You also must ground it correctly on both ends

 

[Maserk]

Some outdoor grease filled cat 5 would work with some cat 5 certified jacks, although you might need a special tool to punch the wires on with.

 

[amdskip]

Why doesn't your mom want the cable inside of the house? It is hidden and looks great when finished. Are you going from floor to floor or is it on the same level? Have a basement/crawlspace under the house?

 

[nautskye]

outside

__cat5e__
___/________\____
bedroom | living room ---- ok looks like my diagram didnt work
|
|


the house is a single story on a slab and we have no access to the "attic"
the two rooms that I want to connect share a wall, and and an outside wall... so it's kinda like a " T "

I had no idea running cable on the outside of the house was such risky business... I mean, the cable guy and the phone guy both ran their cabling on the outside of the house and it doesn't look that special. I would be putting this under the overhang of the roof, so it would probably *never* get wet.

*shrug*

 

[networkman]

I think the other guys would be more concerned with electrical safety if you were doing something along the lines of what I did: running a Cat5e line from my house, across one street, up to the pole, across another street, and down to my friend's house.

That definitely required electrical protection - what you're doing is of no concern(safety wise).

 

[ScottMac]

It's still dangerous, and well out of spec.

There is no gel-filled Cat-anything. With a rare exception (Avaya) Cat-anything is not an outdoor cable.

The phone and cable guys have entrance protection for their copper.

Don't run UTP / copper outdoors unless you know what you're doing.

Forget the "But I wanna.....": it's a really bad idea.


FWIW

Scott

 

[nautskye]

Hmmm... my mom has her heart set on having this cabling being on the outside of the house.

I have come contractors coming this week, I will see what their suggestions are.

The contractors are going to knock a hole in the same wall that one of the network jacks is supposed to go on. In the process of knocking out the wall, they will need to re locate an electrical switch... My thought is this (and yes, it does involve jimmy-rigging), when they relocate the electrical outlet, i get the ground off the cat5 and plug that into the ground on the newly relocated electrical socket... Will that solve anything? Or am I just proving that I don't know jack squat about electical engineering? Heh.

Thanks for your time and patience.

 

[wicktron]

I've had Cat5 outside of my home for approximately a year and a half now with no problems whatsoever. Did the installation myself along with assistance from my cousin, had no problems doing the job, and have yet to see a problem with the network.

 

[nautskye]

gg chad.

 

[MercenaryForHire]

Originally posted by: nautskye
The cable is going to be ran on the outside of the house

OMG!!! OH NO! AIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!! NOOOOOO!O!OO!O!!!!

Before you go any further, you must convince your mother to run the cable inside. No other option.

- M4H

 

[Maserk]

Originally posted by: ScottMac
It's still dangerous, and well out of spec.

There is no gel-filled Cat-anything. With a rare exception (Avaya) Cat-anything is not an outdoor cable.

The phone and cable guys have entrance protection for their copper.

Don't run UTP / copper outdoors unless you know what you're doing.

Forget the "But I wanna.....": it's a really bad idea.
FWIW

Scott

I work for a telephone company and we do have grease filled cat-5.

 

[ScottMac]

Cat5? or just UTP?

Can ya post who makes it so we have a reference for future posts?

Thanks!

Scott

 

[amdskip]

Originally posted by: nautskye
Hmmm... my mom has her heart set on having this cabling being on the outside of the house.

I have come contractors coming this week, I will see what their suggestions are.

The contractors are going to knock a hole in the same wall that one of the network jacks is supposed to go on. In the process of knocking out the wall, they will need to re locate an electrical switch... My thought is this (and yes, it does involve jimmy-rigging), when they relocate the electrical outlet, i get the ground off the cat5 and plug that into the ground on the newly relocated electrical socket... Will that solve anything? Or am I just proving that I don't know jack squat about electical engineering? Heh.

Thanks for your time and patience.

I really don't think this will help anything. I would not run cat 5 on the outside of a house for nothing. I dropped my cat 5 down from the second floor attic. I found a wet wall meaning a vent stack in the wall and just drilled a hole and dropped a string with a bolt attached to it. Found where it was making noise below on the first floor and cut a hole. I filed out the drywall and mounted a normal wall cover directly to the drywall without an electrical box and you could never tell the difference.

 

[Jeff7]

I don't know if I use Cat5 or Cat5e - whatever was there that said Cat5 something.
It's all UTP.

As for running it outside, there might be a special kind of Cat5 that's designed for outdoor use. Regular Cat5(e) is really meant for indoors.

 

[ScottMac]

Well, yes, there is at least one company making an "outdoor" Cat5 - Avaya (formerly Lucent).

It is NOT certified for voice (go figure) and is specified as needing entrance protection at each end. It's fairly expensive stuff, relative to standard Cat5. It's not rated for voice because of the danger of improper installation ... liabilities & all that.

I also work for a phone company, and I've never heard of a/the phone company EVER using Category-rated cabling for ANY voice circuits (or DSL, or ISDN, or even T1). It's not needed for voice-grade lines; so, not wanting to waste money, they use voice-grade (like DIW) cabling (interior and exterior rated).

FWIW

Scott

 

[piasabird]

I have heard of running a special shielded cat5 through the air ducts. I think the cable has to have a special jacket or non-flamable cover. You probably have an air/heat duct in each room. You could also go crazy and run fiber on the outside of the house. I think I priced some media converters and they would run around $120.00 each and you would need a pair.

The easy way is to run through walls or through connecting closets.

The contractors probably have some ideas of their own. There are also companies that specialize in running network lines. I have no idea what they charge.

I think you could take a bore and go straight thru the baseborad or the wall and put a jack on each side. You can put the wire in the same type of box as an outlet and put a fancy faceplate on it. It is probably best to run both to a switch or a router with a switch and then run each to a jack on the wall and use a patchcord to connect. These days a small router or a firewall is ideal with broadband.

Of course there is also phone-line networking which is slower than wireless.

I find it difficult to believe that cat 5 cable is any more dangerous than coax cable for cable TV. It is possible to network with COAX but I wouldnt advise it. Think about it and you can see your network can be zapped through the phonelines and through your cable depending on how you connect to the internet.

 

[amdskip]

The special cable for heat ducts is called Plenum I believe. It doesn't smoke when it burns or something like that.

 

[nautskye]

Hmmm. My phone company is Verizon, is that who you guy(s) work for? Do you think I could make a phone call and try to get some of that special greased cable if they have it..? It would still have to be grounded on both ends, right? Air ducts are out of the question unfortunately, because the vents are literally a maze *sigh*. I told my mom to have the contractors call me at school, I'll let you guys know if they have any ideas (although I doubt it).

I hate having a picky mother.

 

[Maserk]

Originally posted by: ScottMac
Well, yes, there is at least one company making an "outdoor" Cat5 - Avaya (formerly Lucent).

I also work for a phone company, and I've never heard of a/the phone company EVER using Category-rated cabling for ANY voice circuits (or DSL, or ISDN, or even T1). It's not needed for voice-grade lines; so, not wanting to waste money, they use voice-grade (like DIW) cabling (interior and exterior rated).

FWIW

Scott

No we don't normally use category-rated cabling for any sort of circuits like that either since that already run on normal cable outside so there really isn't any point in steping up the quality after it leaves the pole. Just out of curiosity, what do you do for the phone company? I mostly install digital centrix lines for buisnesses and the occations circuit as well.

For the other guy who asked I work for a phone company in Canada so no it's no your phone company.

 

[poohbeer]

Originally posted by: amdskip
The special cable for heat ducts is called Plenum I believe. It doesn't smoke when it burns or something like that.

In airvents and stuff you indeed use plenum cable. But it DOES smoke though!

riser: TOXIC! burn easely and keeps on burning even when the flame is removed. Fuels the fire itself.
Plenum: TOXIC! but fireretardent (doesn't burn quickly) and goes out as soon as you remove the flame
LS0H: non-toxic. europeans use this instead of plenum. burns easely but goes out as soon as you remove the flame