I've got a network question for you all, hope you can help. I'm designing a network, and I have four buildings that I need to get connectivity to. The buildings are laid out in a sort of upside-down U shape, with the closest building to our main switches about 600ft away. We've been able to get connectivity to this building by running 100m of cat5, putting a switch down in the middle, then continuing on.
The other buildings are presenting somewhat of a challenge, however. Ideally, I'd like to plunk down a central switch in a fifth building that's centrally placed relative to all of these, but wouldn't you know
- that building may not be there much longer. So, the only feasible way I can see to get connectivity to my buildings is to daisy-chain them all the way around - run wire to a building, put a switch in it for the local users, and run another wire off that switch to the next building. The distances between the buildings are long, but they're well under the max recommended Cat5 lengths.
So, my questions are: Is this workable, and will the guys at the very end of the daisy-chain (which will be at the end of about 1400' of cable passing through 4 intermediary switches) have any connectivity to speak of?
Thanks!