What has been your experience in using standard Ethernet cable, cat5 or cat6 in an outside situation? I need to run some Ethernet cable outside, up the outside wall to the top of the 2nd story, then under the 2nd story overhang, adjacent to the gutters and then inside to the access point. Anyone see a need to find specific outdoor rated Ethernet cable or should garden variety cat5/cat6 work?
Also planning to use power over Ethernet. Any adverse implications of this?
What you have to watch for is the jacket of the cable breaking down from the sunlight if it is not UV rated. I suggest using an outdoor rated cable.
Bob Treadaway
Using outdoor CAT5 or CAT6 cable will definitely save you some trouble few years later as indoor cable's PVC will deteriorate due to UV radiation, humidity and temperature changes outside. It will become brittle and will eventually fall off, exposing the internal insulation, which will then follow. Although we are talking years here (I would guess 2-5, depending on your climate), using outdoor cables will make much more sense. Besides, outdoor cables are made with more common plastic insulation, which effectively makes them sometimes cheaper than indoors.
radiation,
depending
I can't ever imagine that happening. A roll of cheap cat5 on sale is $50, and I've seen gel filled outdoor cat5 for four times that much.
Unless of course some of it 'fell off the back of a truck'.
comp.dcom.cabling
I ran some telephone wire between bldgs inside a length of scrap garden hose, and it lasted for decades. That was back before Ma Bell got deregulated and the consumer had to pay for each set on the line. I put a phone in my garage, with the ringer disconnected so they couldn't see it on the line. And the Pac Bell techs caught me. Naughty boy.. :o)
Then you missed the point. Using your reference, gel-filled is $200 per thousand. Plenum Cat5e is running about $160, and PVC about $50. Makes outdoor and Plenum about the same, expecially at 300 feet, the difference is about $12.
Carl Navarro
Well, not sure about the back of the track ;-), but Home Depot sells
1000ft boxes of of General Cable's plenum CAT5E for $189, indoor PVC CAT5E for $66 and outdoor CAT5E for $45. The difference could be more extreme: 0.300 coax cable costs me $3.32/ft plenum and only $0.31 outdoor
Take another look, and I think you'll see that the outdoor-rated cable is only 500', not 1000' - making the cost per foot higher than for the riser-rated cable.
Hi Michael,
I certainly did not mean to sound like a Home Depot salesman that knows his inventory as the back of his hand. You may very well be right because the OSP cable should have slightly larger outside diameter. I may just stop by HD to check it out one more time. But the point is: even at some premium in price using an OSP cable outdoors does justify the save headache to me.
BTW, the coax prices I used are from a valid, recent source, not Home Depot.
Whenever running cable outdoors, I use outdoor rated cable. Of course, I charge the customer accordingly.
I have had a normal PVC jacketed Cat 5e cable running from one building to another for about 5 years now.
The cable is winded around a thin wire wich is going 5 m above the ground, the run is around 25 m. It has lasted for wind, rain, sun, snow and ice.
-Mikkel
Just to follow up on this after a visit to HD:
HD prices are $39 for 500' PVC and $57 for 500' indoor/outdoor CAT5E Indoor/outdoor cable is a different animal from outdoor only, so I guess, the slight price premium is justifiable in this case: no need to transition to indoor cable for indoor pulls over 50'.
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