[ale] Ethernet

[Daniel Howard]

Jim's right about 100 m (330 ft) being the max spec'd distance for 
Cat5/5e/6 for their respective max data rates, and it's both timing and 
attenuation that get you when you go beyond that.  But Terry there are 
some good cost reasons for trying to make it work with Cat5e or Cat6 
versus fiber.  I'm assuming you haven't run the cable, so your choice 
is either Cat 5e, Cat 6, wireless, or fiber.  Fiber has the advantage of 
being pretty much guaranteed to work over a really long distance, and 
the added advantage of lightning protection and max technical 
performance, but the cost really is still on the side of Cat 5e/6 cable 
and wireless.  Consider the following:

500 ft. Cat5e cable: about $50 per spool.
500 ft. Cat 6 cable: about $85 per spool.
With these two solutions, assuming a single cable from your router to 
your garage, you need only buy a new switch for the garage, $20 if you 
can stand to limit it to 100 Mbps for now, twice that if you want Gigabit.

Fiber cable: if you buy it already connectorized then it's on the order 
of $400+ for at least 350 ft.  Otherwise you can get a spool and buy the 
tools to connectorize it yourself, but I think you'd still be in the 
same price range since you'd have to get a spool and the tools.  And you 
need fiber media converters, one on each end, those are at least $50 
these days, so for the whole run, you're talking probably $500 vs. $70 
if you can make Cat5e work with a 100 Mbps switch.  For the minimal cost 
difference, I'd go ahead and run Cat6 just to make Gigabit possible when 
you're ready.

And there are other ways to make it work, even if the run is slightly 
more than 330 ft total: you can put a switch at the point in your house 
closest to the garage, and in the garage closest to the house and if 
that keeps the house to garage cable run under 330 ft, you're good to 
go.  If the run is a lot more, but you have a midway point with AC 
power, you could set up a switch in a weatherproof enclosure; the 330 
ft. limitation is from switch to switch, not computer to computer. 
Finally, you could use wifi with directional antennas, I think they're 
only about $50-60 these days.

Fiber is the best from a technical performance perspective, but 
unfortunately unless you can buy in bulk and already have the tools to 
connectorize, it's more expensive from an End-to-End viewpoint.

My two cents,
Daniel


Message: 11 Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 09:28:42 -0400
From: "Jim Kinney"
Drop the coax format as you almost can't get NICs for them (that work). 
The rule is 100m for the top rated speed per cable type.

...Not so fast - he didn't specify his Ethernet rate (10/100/1000/10000)
 > > nor his cable (UTP, Thinwire, Thickwire, fiber).

 >> > >     How far from a router can I safely run ethernet?  I have 
heard all kinds of answers to this - 25 feet - 100 feet- 300 feet.  I 
will be running from a router inside my house to a device  in my garage.
The garage is not attached to the house.


-- 
Daniel Howard
President and CEO
Georgia Open Source Education Foundation