PC Network Cabling

[smidsy]

Hei Guys,
I need to run about 20 metres of network cable along an outside wall.
Would it be good enough to run it inside black poly pipe along the wall - obviously conduit would be the way to go but finances are where they usually are.
Cheers
Paul

[Sturdee]

Paul, I would use an old garden hose instead of poly pipe, thicker plastic and just as cheap. If you use the black poly make sure you paint it to reflect the sun's heat built up.


Peter.

[smidsy]

Hei Peter,
I see your point on the heat issue, but hose pipe isn't any good because I need to be able to get the cable ends through.
I'm using premade network cable because I don't have the tool to put the plugs on and I don't really want to buy one for a one off job.
What I will do tho is see if I can get some paint to take to the poly pipe.
Cheers
Paul

[Barry_White]

I reckon you could buy enough 20mm conduit for about $25. But go to an electrical wholesaler like Rexel or Lawrence and Hansen. Don't buy it at Bunnings because they mark it about a 100% on a wholesalers price.

[SteveAndBelle]

Smidsy,

Another solution is to buy 'screw-down' type RJ-45 sockets for each end of the cable and use short pre-made 'patch' type leads to go from each device to the socket on the wall. Great for a couple of reasons ... it gets the job done neatly, quickly and without the need to buy expensive crimping tools plus you'll only need to drill small 5-6mm holes to get the cable through instead of 12-13mm holes to get the cable & plugs through the wall or whatever.

Only problem with these is they're not exactly small (about the size of two cigarette lighters) and they're not available everywhere plus they're not too cheap either. Dick Smith sell them (Cat No: F2174) for about $13 each and even though they say they're only designed for telephone networks I've run them with gigabit copper at full speed just fine for hours on end. I wouldn't use them for 'professional' or 'mission critical' networks of course but for simple home networking they might just do the trick for you.

Then again ... black poly pipe or even a full conduit system would probably be a lot cheaper anyway ! At least you've got a few options now.

Steve.

[smidsy]

Thanks guys I will see how I go tomorrow.
At the moment cost is the main issue since I've just spent $300 on hardware to set up ADSL.

If we were going to be staying in this place I would wait till I had the money to do it properly with wall plates and cable in the ceiling. But we're in an area that is slowly being taken over by housing estates so it's not worth the hassle.

Cheers
Paul

[SteveAndBelle]

In that case you might consider just running the pre-made cable without worrying about protecting it at all ... just whack it up and clip it to the wall with as many clips as you could be bothered to use.

It's the cheapest way to do what you want plus the cable will be fine for a year or two without any problems, especially if you throw a lick of paint over it.

Taken over by Housing Estates ? Well I never ;) Should try living in Brissie !! The place where living an hour out of town in a 6 bedroom/4 bathroom energy inefficient concrete 'palace' with absolutely no warmth, character or intelligent design ethics (or yard for that matter), commuting to work in and out of the city each day and paying $500K+ to do so seems to be the latest fashion.

Hmmm, something's gotta give !

[smidsy]

Hei Steve,
We're in a rural area about 20 minutes from the Perth CBD.
Perth is getting a little spread out and there's pockets of rural blocks around although the housing estates are getting closer and closer to us.
Probably six to twelve months and we'll be bought out by develeopers.
Cheers
Paul

[johnmc]

Taken over by Housing Estates ? Well I never ;) Should try living in Brissie !! The place where living an hour out of town in a 6 bedroom/4 bathroom energy inefficient concrete 'palace' with absolutely no warmth, character or intelligent design ethics (or yard for that matter), commuting to work in and out of the city each day and paying $500K+ to do so seems to be the latest fashion.


Fortunately for me, my Brisbane housing experience is almost completely opposite.

8km's from city, 4 bedroom/2 bathroom, hi-set, weatherboard, lots of character and intelligent design, big yard, commute to work away from city, $330K 2 1/2 years ago.

Obviously I'm not keeping up with the latest fashion:D

[SteveAndBelle]

Couldn't agree more JohnMC ... we've recently sold our little post war asbestos cottage up at about the 12km mark and have bought a beautiful Queenslander on 809 squares within the 'magic' 10km range with help from the profits from the sale ! We snapped up the first place for $100K in December 2001 and tripled our money in three years without doing anything to it ! I wont tell you how much the Queenslander cost tho ... ouch :<

I can't understand what the fascination is with these ugly new concrete boxes that need a whole house worth of A/C to keep them comfortable all year 'round. Give me a timber house with rediculously high ceilings, fretwork, leadlight windows, large verandahs, a clawfoot bath and a massive deck out the back overlooking a large garden and lawn anyday. Plus it's only 10 minutes drive to the city or 15 minutes on the train ... can't go wrong !

[SteveAndBelle]

Paul,

If I were you I'd hang onto the property and cash in on it at a later stage. You might be surrounded by concrete for a few years but imagine how much it will be worth in a few years time ?!?! Whoa.

[namtrak]

Wireless.

We run 3 PC's and one laptop plus broadband, acrosss a network which covers about 20m, trees and about 4 double brick walls. The biggest impediment to a wireless network is the water held in trees. And you can take it with you.

Costs about $80 per PC and $180 for the wireless router.

And to the naysayers it is not markedly slower than a hardwired network. The internet is just as fast regardless and network transfers are only marginally slower - we play music across the network with no noticeable loss

[smidsy]

Hei Steve,
I agree totally on the ugliness of modern houses.
Here in Perth the trend is toward smaller blocks and most new houses are built without eves - the house has to be a certain distance from the boundary so no eves means more floor space.
I understand the practicalities of it, but damn those houses look ugly.

As for this place, we know what we want for it and are waiting for an offer but you have to be sensible. There's a guy 10 minutes up the road who tried to be greedy with the developers and it cost him because they did the development without him. His land is now worth little because no one wants a 5 acre block next to a housing estate and it's not economical to develop only 5 acres. That guys only hope is that the council let him put units on it one day.

I had bit of a brain wave on the poly pipe guys, my plan is to get some silver plumbers tape and encase the pipe with that - the silver should reflect at least some of the heat.
I haven't considered a wireless network, partly because of cost, and partly because this is very much a temporary set up - when we move I will do it properly.
The other issue is that we have high tension lines about 60 metres from the house. I know these interfere with radio control equipment, so I would suspect they would have implications on a wireless network.

Cheers
Paul

[SteveAndBelle]

Well, after installing many wireless networks for friends I'm still not impressed with WiFi. After holding back for ages I decided to give it a go at home so I went and got myself a commercial grade Netgear Access point (with dual removable antennas and all the incredible stuff that Netgear are well known for making absolutely bulletproof) and made sure everything was 100% perfect ... but any of the devices I connected to the wireless side of my home network were all very flakey with their network connections. I went through everything I could and blew amazing amounts of time troubleshooting and downloading firmware & patches for all my networking gear (all 'metal boxed' commercial grade Netgear stuff by the way) and still I've only ever had dodgy performance with anything 'wireless'. There's nothing obvious in the surrounding area that would be interfering either so I'm stumped.

Funny thing is I can grab a piece of cable worth under $2 and have an instant ultra-reliable & very high speed connection to any of the devices. Although I'll still experiment with wireless in the future my money will always be on good ol' copper ... in fact I'm just about to start making my patch panel to feed 6 runs of Cat 6 into each room of the house from my 24 port gigabit switch ! Hmmm, Gigabit ... hmmmmm ;)

[namtrak]

.......absolutely bulletproof) and made sure everything was 100% perfect ... but any of the devices I connected to the wireless side of my home network were all very flakey with their network connections. I went through everything I cou........

We're now using a D-link router and separate Access point which I setup in the ceiling and I dont have a problem at all.

First things first, can you see the router on the network?

Is the Internet OK across the network?

If you have those two sorted then your most of the way there. What peripherals are you looking to connect up?

Check out this sub-forum at Whirlpool
Nerds talking to Nerds (http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-threads.cfm?f=82)

Personally I think that wireless is the way, and as technology improves the speeds and reliability will increase exponentially.

Best of luck

[B.J.Honeycut]

If it's not a long term setup just run it without any conduit at all. Just protect the ends. In my experience Cat5 will last a couple of years in the weather before you run into problems. I work as a Sys Admin and we just recently had a cable failure in a "temporary" cable that was litterally swinging in the wind for 3 years.

[Sturdee]

I had bit of a brain wave on the poly pipe guys, my plan is to get some silver plumbers tape and encase the pipe with that - the silver should reflect at least some of the heat.



Paul, if you're going to encase the poly pipe with duct tape, great stuff should be in every workshop :D , I would definitely use an old garden hose.

Just cut the hose along its lenght with a stanley knife, slip in the cable and then wrap the duct tape around it.

Peter.

[Grunt]

Have you thought about wireless. The latest wireless stuff is fast (802.11g for those tecky dweebs like me). A wireless router will cost around $120-140 and wireless cards are pretty cheap.

I've got solid sandstone internal walls and the wireless stuff works a treat and saved me a great deal of heart ache trying to lay cable through and around the sandstone walls.