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Running cat5 outdoors

J

jtvang125

Diamond Member
What are the building codes regarding running outdoor rated cat5 cables along the outside walls of a residential house? Wireless N just isn't cutting it for streaming 1080p HD content through out our 2 story house, especially with multiple streams at once. Without tearing through the whole house I think it'll be easier to just go outside and back through the walls at their destination. What do you guys think?
 
Not my preferred method. You would need outdoor cable that is stable to UV. Often you want a flooded cable also to keep water out. Don't use staples as the staples crush the cable and you can miss and staple through the cable. You also normally want to seal the punch through.

Read the sticky up top. Running the cable outside doesn't bypass proper termination and the like. If you are on a single floor flat, it isn't all that hard to run it in walls in most cases.
 
Yes it will work, but exposed wiring isn't going to pass code. Also, if your runs are exposed for long distances you may have issues with interference, because your outdoor wiring works essentially like an antenna. The longer the cable is, the more static charge and interference it will pick up along the way. Be mindful of the risks you are taking by running ungrounded exposed wiring to your computer equipment.
 
One of the more critical things is to remember to use protection devices at both ends. Make sure they are rated to the same Cat level as your cabling (or higher).

Without entrance protection, one good stroke can hurt or kill someone, or worse, wipe out your whole connected system!
 
Is there even a code for that? I would think so for electrical wire, but those codes are for safety, not asthetics. There is nothing inheriently unsafe about running cat indoors or outdoors. After all, it's perfectly acceptable to have exposed RG6 and telephone wire and I can't imagine any different for cat5. The amount of current going through it is negligible at best, unless you guys are talking about some wierd application I've never heard of.

The only code violations that might crop up are for asthetics if you live in a community with a regulatory board, but thats about it.
 
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Anteaus said:
Is there even a code for that? I would think so for electrical wire, but those codes are for safety, not asthetics. There is nothing inheriently unsafe about running cat indoors or outdoors. After all, it's perfectly acceptable to have exposed RG6 and telephone wire and I can't imagine any different for cat5. The amount of current going through it is negligible at best, unless you guys are talking about some wierd application I've never heard of.

The only code violations that might crop up are for asthetics if you live in a community with a regulatory board, but thats about it.
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Outside, yes. Indoors, no. All of that exposed phone and RG6 must go through grounding blocks and in some cases lightning attestors depending the region before entering the property. This is why there is often a 12-14 gauge wire running from your phone box / cable box to a pipe / copper rod in the ground.
 
imagoon said:
Outside, yes. Indoors, no. All of that exposed phone and RG6 must go through grounding blocks and in some cases lightning attestors depending the region before entering the property. This is why there is often a 12-14 gauge wire running from your phone box / cable box to a pipe / copper rod in the ground.
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I totally forgot about this possibility but then what's the deal with RG6? As far as I can see there's nothing before entering the property or at the device to stop a strike coming through the line.
 
Anteaus said:
After all, it's perfectly acceptable to have exposed RG6 and telephone wire and I can't imagine any different for cat5. The amount of current going through it is negligible at best, unless you guys are talking about some wierd application I've never heard of.
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Exterior wiring precautions are all about safety.

In the event of a lightning strike, the wire is only used as an initial guide for current to find a path to the ground. At these extreme currents, the wire itself will likely be vaporized. After current starts to flow to ground, the ionized air surrounding the wire is more than sufficient to carry a damaging or lethal shock to anything in it's path.
 
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ScottMac said:
One of the more critical things is to remember to use protection devices at both ends. Make sure they are rated to the same Cat level as your cabling (or higher).

Without entrance protection, one good stroke can hurt or kill someone, or worse, wipe out your whole connected system!
Click to expand...

Thats definitley worse than someone dying............

@OP, look intp STP CAT6, or even fiber if you can afford it. No EMi and much less attinuation.
 
Anteaus said:
Is there even a code for that? I would think so for electrical wire, but those codes are for safety, not asthetics. There is nothing inheriently unsafe about running cat indoors or outdoors. After all, it's perfectly acceptable to have exposed RG6 and telephone wire and I can't imagine any different for cat5. The amount of current going through it is negligible at best, unless you guys are talking about some wierd application I've never heard of.

The only code violations that might crop up are for asthetics if you live in a community with a regulatory board, but thats about it.
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It is my recollection that National Electric Code and other state or local code provisions specifiy that ANY copper coming in from the outside has to have entrance protection ... phone, CATV, UTP ... anything; even metal shielded fiber has a ground connection.

IF you have coax (any copper cabling) coming in from the outside without protection, it's probably a Bad Thing.
 
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Dry wall and residential building code is more or less made to be "customizable". It's pretty easy to a CAT cable in between drywall panels, floors, etc.

Are you streaming 1080P on the local network only or from the cloud? Are you sure your bottleneck is the AP? You could try 2 wireless routers on different channels w/ different SSIDs.... is wireless attenuation a problem?
 
Dude.... 802.11N is 450M/sec and the coverage for a good N WAP is plenty for a normal sized house. That's fast enough for several 1080p streams. (1080P streams at about 30M/sec) If you're showing full signal then your problem isn't your wireless, it's your switches/router and possibly the wiring/terminations between them. If you're using standard 10/100 consumer crap (Linksys, DLink, etc) then yes, you're going to get choked out streaming multiple HD streams and running a wire probably won't help much. Upgrade to a gigabit backbone and don't use the consumer grade shit you get at office max. Step up to Enterprise grade hardware. Take a look at Pakedge or other higher end gear.

What router/switch are you using? What device are you using to stream with? Is it N rated? What else is attached to your network?
 
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The NEC is fairly clear about wiring like coax, network, phone, they all classify as low voltage wiring . The rules are that anything connecting to the home from the street has to have some way of equalizing the ground potential difference between the home and the last ground point . Coax coming from cable companies is supposed to go through a ground block at the home, this is NOT for lightning protection, it is for equalizing any potential difference. Without a grounding block in place a ground inside the cable box on the street and the ground of a connected device in the home would differ, that causes current to flow from ground A to ground B and that is what the NEC is trying to prevent.

If you are running coax out one wall and into another room you do not have to use a grounding block because there is no difference in ground being created. The same rules apply for CATX cables, run it all you like outside the home , but if the cable connects two independent structures you have to use some sort of grounding between the two structures, from one room to another in the same home is a non issue as far as the NEC is concerned.
 
Modelworks sums it up nicely.

Only addition I would add is "cable tacked on to the outside of the house look ugly."
 
OP, given everything said here, if you do decide to exit and reenter the house with cat5 I'd recommend looking into using some conduit to run the cable through. The wire would then be protected from the elements and you can paint the conduit to match your home (or a near approximation), which would make it more pleasing to the eye. Just a thought.
 
Modelworks said:
The NEC is fairly clear about wiring like coax, network, phone, they all classify as low voltage wiring . The rules are that anything connecting to the home from the street has to have some way of equalizing the ground potential difference between the home and the last ground point . Coax coming from cable companies is supposed to go through a ground block at the home, this is NOT for lightning protection, it is for equalizing any potential difference. Without a grounding block in place a ground inside the cable box on the street and the ground of a connected device in the home would differ, that causes current to flow from ground A to ground B and that is what the NEC is trying to prevent.

If you are running coax out one wall and into another room you do not have to use a grounding block because there is no difference in ground being created. The same rules apply for CATX cables, run it all you like outside the home , but if the cable connects two independent structures you have to use some sort of grounding between the two structures, from one room to another in the same home is a non issue as far as the NEC is concerned.
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The grounding block is not "entrance protection." These days most protectors are some flavor of gas popper. There are several categories of protection, one level specifies primary protection (like the gas discharge device in most NIDs), and secondary / tertiary protection which is usually contained in the device itself that catches the higher-level surges before the Primary device kicks in.
 
This is an interesting question because I just had directtv installed in my home and the installer just ran ethernet from my box along the side of my house, punched a whole through, sealed, and plugged it into my router so we could get the on-demand stuff, exposed. It's in some kind of flexible, rubbery type of conduit with anchors that screw into the stucco. It was the only way to do it because I had a fireplace in between my box and internet connection.
 
All good advice, and I'll chime in with my experiences on actually having ran outdoor cabling.

Plain old Cat5 has an amazing ability to tolerate the elements. In order to get my internet to work I had to cover roughly 300 feet or ground to get to the provider drop point.

In order to accomplish this a hole was drilled through the wall and a cable ran from my router through the hole to the outside, up the wall to just under the eave then along the house. From there the cable ran up into a tree, draped over a branch and then ran across the yard as an aerial run to a utility pole at the back of the yard. The cable was wrapped around the pole about 8 times (Making a great coil) and from there ran across the property to another pole, wrapped around about 6 times and then out to the roof of the building where the drop was.

That unprotected, exposed aerial run of indoor Cat5 lasted over a year and a half and was still working fine when I left. I ran WoW raids on it, shot zombies in L4D and tried out SWTOR.

That cable survived birds sitting on it, ice storms, rain and a hell of a lot of UV light. Dont underestimate your plain jane Cat5, it can stand up to a hell of a lot. If you can keep it mostly protected along a house I wouldnt hesitate at all to run the "cheap stuff" where you need it.

I had worked up plans to run a new cable and put in conduit. Again, in true Bubba fashion my conduit was going to be garden hose. The wife shot that down fast, she didnt want a garden hose hanging in the air all across our property but I thought it would have been funny as hell.

Point there is you could work up a really cheap conduit by using garden hose and painting it to match the side of the house.
 
You'd have to be really pressed for cash to use an old garden hose 😛. Proper conduit is pretty cheap to begin with for this type of application, considering it's only going to be a short run. Either way, don't forget the drip loop.
 
ScottMac said:
The grounding block is not "entrance protection." These days most protectors are some flavor of gas popper. There are several categories of protection, one level specifies primary protection (like the gas discharge device in most NIDs), and secondary / tertiary protection which is usually contained in the device itself that catches the higher-level surges before the Primary device kicks in.
Click to expand...

The code doesn't require anything but a basic grounding block, it is not about protection from surges. The NEC is only concerned with safety not if lightning destroys everything in the home, as long as it doesn't start a fire or electrocute the user the NEC doesn't address it.

If you want to put surge protection you can but it isn't a requirement.
 
You guys... He doesn't need to pull more wire. His N Wifi is MORE than enough for a half dozen streams of 1080p.

I guarantee it's his head end gear that is choking the stream. Rather than tell him how to pull a wire, how about helping him solve his problem?
 
Whoozyerdaddy said:
You guys... He doesn't need to pull more wire. His N Wifi is MORE than enough for a half dozen streams of 1080p.

I guarantee it's his head end gear that is choking the stream. Rather than tell him how to pull a wire, how about helping him solve his problem?
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Bit silly to guarantee. If it is 2.4 wifi N then he might be crowded out of the spectrum. Along with the microwave and baby monitors. 5ghz might not reach 2 floors well. He didn't seem all that interested in making the wireless work. Here wireless is only good for casual surfing because there are so many AP's around me.
 
imagoon said:
Bit silly to guarantee. If it is 2.4 wifi N then he might be crowded out of the spectrum. Along with the microwave and baby monitors. 5ghz might not reach 2 floors well. He didn't seem all that interested in making the wireless work. Here wireless is only good for casual surfing because there are so many AP's around me.
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Guarantee is probably too strong a word but all the same, if his switching gear is crap then running a wire might not make any difference. There are ways to reduce interference if it's present.

Understanding the entire system is the first step to solving the problem.
 
Whoozyerdaddy said:
Dude.... 802.11N is 450M/sec and the coverage for a good N WAP is plenty for a normal sized house. That's fast enough for several 1080p streams. (1080P streams at about 30M/sec) If you're showing full signal then your problem isn't your wireless, it's your switches/router and possibly the wiring/terminations between them. If you're using standard 10/100 consumer crap (Linksys, DLink, etc) then yes, you're going to get choked out streaming multiple HD streams and running a wire probably won't help much. Upgrade to a gigabit backbone and don't use the consumer grade shit you get at office max. Step up to Enterprise grade hardware. Take a look at Pakedge or other higher end gear.

What router/switch are you using? What device are you using to stream with? Is it N rated? What else is attached to your network?
Click to expand...
:thumbsdown::thumbsdown::thumbsdown::thumbsdown:

DUDE! I don't know what kind of Wireless-N router you are using but my Linksys E3000 is rated at 300 Mbps (37.5 MB/sec) and actual throughput at best is only about 150 Mbps (18.75 MB/sec) running on 5 GHz band with nobody else using that band in my neighborhood.

Second of all, what is M/sec anyways? Meters per second? Because M/sec doesn't describe anything related to computers, routers or networking. I'm just saying.
 
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