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Running a cat 5 cable longer than 300 ft

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I have two buildings that are not quite 400ft apart. I had a shielded 2-pair cat5 network cable laid between them (I didn’t know about the ~300ft limit on Cat 5 cables). Is there anyway to add a booster or other extension to the ends to be able to make the network cable work across that distance? I was able to get signal for about 3 days, then it just cut out.

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You can install a repeater (relay device)

In reply to Running a cat 5 cable longer than 300 ft

towards the middle and reduce any single run to less than 300′, dead middle would be best but try for at least 150′ from one end ot the other. This is the quickest and cheapest answer.

The best technical answer would be to replace it with fibre optic, but that may not be economically feasible for you.

You can use Hub or Switch

In reply to Running a cat 5 cable longer than 300 ft

Category 5 UTP have a maximum segment length of 100 meters. So it will be better to limit the maximum length of the cat5 cable to 100 meters.
That is around 328 feet. You can use either a Hub or Switch to connect this 100 meter cable to the rest of the cable required to reach the second building.

Running a cat 5 cable longer than 300 ft

In reply to Running a cat 5 cable longer than 300 ft

Repeaters were used to increase the length of
co-axial cable. Now coaxial networks have now gone down, and now the functionality of repeaters has been incorporated in to other devices, such as hubs and switches. In your case you can use a Hub in the midle just to bust your cable signal.

Streaching the limit…

In reply to Running a cat 5 cable longer than 300 ft

I did the same thing years back. I learned some lessons. On cable run check and see that its away from florencece lights, and use a good operating system, like Windows 2000, hard code addresess in a host file for the far machines.following this I managed to get a few machines at that distance until I could replace it with fiber.

NEED A MEDIA CONVERTER

In reply to Running a cat 5 cable longer than 300 ft

NO SUCH THING AS A LONGER LENGHT FOR A CAT5E CABLE. YOU WILL NEED WHAT IS CALLED A MEDIA CONVERTER AND 300 FEET OF FIBER CABLE.

A switch or active hub will do

In reply to Running a cat 5 cable longer than 300 ft

Working in the field with Cat5e, you must have a switch to connect these two buildings. There are also many factors to consider when determining this option of course. Placing a switch in between them is the most economical way to go. However, most places that I have worked in use fiber to connect buildings to buildings but it is rather expensive.

If it is in the budget go with the fiber however, using a switch (or repeater as one poster suggested) will also work.

Hopefully that helps out.

Don’t use copper between buildings

In reply to Running a cat 5 cable longer than 300 ft

running copper between building (what ever the length) is against the ethernet standards. The biggest problems are a result of the potential differences causing data loss and possible damage to the active equipment at either one or both ends.
As Luiss said the only sensible option is fibre optic. Free-space optical or microwave systems are options as well.

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