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I have a friend that has a computer in his office which is approx 250' from his house . He wants to get a router and have cable internet in both places . How far can you run cat5 cable without loosing any speed ? His office is in a small metal building so I don't know how well a wireless router would work ? Any recommendations ? Thanks

300 ft for cat5

with my experiance with the wireless router dont even try that far.
a have been lucky to get a signal on my laptop 50 feet out the front door.

Cat 5 isn't recommened past 300ft so he should be fine... If its being ran outdoors definately run it in conduit or get an outdoor cable. It might loose a little signal strength at 250ft but it won't very mcuh its past 300ft where it starts getting real bad. I had one run one time 350ft and the client didn't want to put a hub in the middle which i recommened but to my surprise it was doing fine and we couldn't detect any packet loss at all.

Thanks guys for the fast replies

Sounds like the cat5 in some conduit will be worth a shot .

If you're running it outdoors it needs to be buried - "outdoor" cable just means that if a bit of the wire is exposed when it comes out of the ground into the house that the insulation won't rot away (indoor will).

If you bury it at least 6 inches (deeper is better) I think you can safely do without conduit, unless you're afraid someone may dig it up.

The big concern is shielding from lightning. Burying it deep enough alone will suffice, although conduit will also help - just not a necessary expense. HOWEVER I would also STRONGLY recommend you put a P-NET surge protector on each end:
http://www.apcc.com/resource/include/te ... _sku=PNET1

They're usually around $25 a piece and well worth it. Just make sure that you have a good ground on each end.

ANY long cable run outside acts like an antenna for an EM pulse from a nearby lightning strike, and you're far more likely to take a hit that will damage the network port that the outdoor cable is on, and may also blow the whole switch and damage computers.

I use PNETs on all my outdoor runs. Spend the $50 on the PNETs instead of the conduit.

I vaguely remember seeing either the Avaya or Lucent name on armored CAT5 cable some years back. It was just plain CAT5 wrapped in metal sheathing but far more flexible than it sounds. I'm sure they still make it. Home depot might even have it.