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Network expansion problem

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the_cultie

Member
Joined
Feb 3, 2005
I set up a network in an office for a friend. It is beside his house and when he first started building the office he told me that he'd like to have the network expanded into the house. I told him to get a network cable put in when he was getting the wiring done by the electrician.

Instead of putting in a normal CAT5e cable the electrician put in some cable that has 20 strands in it. I thought it was an underground cable specifically for networking or telecommunications but now I'm not sure. There was no twisted pairs like in a normal network cable so I picked 8 wires to be the network cable. I connected it to the switch and then in the house I connected a wireless access point.

The problem is the connection is unstable. It drops in and out and when you ping the switch up to 1 in every 4 packets sent are lost. I am looking for ideas on how I can get this to work. I cant add a network cable to the rest of the cables underground as they are buried and covered with concrete. :(
 
Sounds like you pulled a bunch of CAT-3 cable - great for phone lines, but not enough twists in the line to support 100mbps or gigabit speeds. Short of running new cable (in which you could use the CAT-3 cable as a pull string) there is not much you can do to stabilize the connection. Of course if your friend has the cash, why not pull fibre between the two buildings? Have the fibre terminate in either a switch or even some media converters for cheap/quick setup. It would be a bit more future proof as well as much more flexible to be pulled underground.
 
Argh. I knew he should have got me to do all the network wiring instead of the stupid electrician; but it was his decision and now his loss. I'll have to see what we can do now. Fibre would be a bit overkill I think. There are only 2 or 3 people working in the office so its not under pressure for bandwidth.
 
I understand, and while it may be a bit late to run conduit, I would strongly recommend pulling some rope or pullstring alongside the new cable if you choose to run it. That way if you ever have to run additional cable then it will not be nearly as painful as this time.
 
You could look into an HPNA setup between the buildings. It will cost around probably $200 for a pair of converters. I have installed many of these for customers who want internet in a shop on their property. Work great, 125Mb/s.
 
Its a possibility, but I don't think he'll want to spend more money especially when he told the electrician to put in cable for a network. I think he's going to get the electrician to put in the cat5e at no cost since he did it wrong.
 
If the electrician is going to rewire, why not go with cat6 instead of cat5e?
 
For what he is going to be using it for I think CAT5e will be enough. Its only connecting to a 54Mbps wireless access point in the house so the data transfer is not going to be to high. Its mainy to access the internet and maybe a few word docs on the server.
 
But why not run at least Cat6 to future proof it. Fibre would be best, but there is no reason not to run Cat6. If it is run through concrete there is no reason to have to run it again in a couple of years.
 
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