[Tfug] Cabling between buildings

[Jeff Breadner]

Bexley Hall wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I've a friend who has several buildings on his property
> (many acres) between which he would like to run network 
> cabling.  Wireless is out of the question (paranoia
> as well as distances).
>
> I imagine you can purchase CAT5 cable suitable for
> direct burial.  But, I am not sure that even that would
> handle the distances involved (think:  many acre ranch).
>
> Optical fibre comes to mind as a solution (especially
> to tolerate any large common mode voltages that you
> could encounter in such an installation -- think:
> lightning).  But, are there any better options?  He's
> not keen on spending a lot of money to do so (e.g., he
> could always purchase multiple cell phones with "data
> service" and route packets through TPC to get from location
> A to location B  :-/ )
>
> Thx,
> --don
>
>
>   
This is a situation where paranoia will cost you a lot of money.  If 
your buildings are more than 300' apart (maximum Cat5 run length is 
100m), your options are only fibre or wireless; wireless will be the 
lower cost choice by a wide margin.  Use some directional / high gain 
antennas to increase your connection speeds and lower the chances of 
someone listening in, and use something better than WEP for encryption 
to help mitigate the paranoia factor. 

Using directional antennas and AES / WPA encryption on your own property 
will be a lot more secure than using cell phones, and you can get links 
over much longer distances than you might realize. Putting repeaters 
into the mix will extend things even further.  Having a wired network is 
more secure than any kind of wireless, but they will likely be cost 
prohibitive, and the copper cabling is vulnerable to lightning as you 
mentioned.  Fibre optics will be way more money than you want to spend.

cheers
  Jeff