[Tfug] Cabling between buildings

[Bexley Hall]

--- On Mon, 5/25/09, Choprboy <choprboy at dakotacom.net> wrote:

> On Monday 25 May 2009 14:04, Bexley Hall wrote:

> > 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).

[snip]

> I think you have pretty much summed up the options available, 
> but we would have to actually know the distances involved to 
> give the best options.  Past 300ft (per the spec, 500-800ft 
> if you don;t mind lots of errors) CAT5 is not going to be an
> option. CAT5 will also require lighting protection on both 
> ends... At that distance lightning will fry it even with
> strikes a couple miles away.

IIRC, there are at least 5 "houses" on the property -- plus
several outlying building (I'm trying to drive around the
property in my mind and recall what is where).

The physical topology further complicates things as the
distance between furthest "nodes" is considerably more than
between any two contiguous ones.  I thin the closest pair of
buildings is probably 150-200 ft (as the crow flies; wiring
distance could be considerably more).

> Wireless is the obvious choice, a properly designed system
> will travel many miles and be highly secure. (I.e. "it 
> wireless so anyone can see me" is a rant by people who 
> either don;t understand encryption or can;t be bothered to 
> set proper options or buy equipment with more than the most
> basic protection built in.) No one, within a reasonable 
> amount of time, is going to break 3DES to snoop on your 
> conversation... It a whole lot more secure than a cable 
> across the desert floor waiting to be tapped.

Using wireless would require adding towers (the property is located
in the mountains north of Denver; nothing is "flat" there) to get
above the terrain and foliage.

I try to educate people but have learned that you never *push*
a solution on a client (or, in this case, a friend) as that
only leads to resentment and sets you up to fail -- in the long
run.  ("See?  I told you this wireless stuff wouldn't work!"
"Yeah, but, Bob, that forest fire destroyed damn near everything
on this side of the mountain!"  "Well, it wouldn't have hurt
anything if it was all BURIED CABLE!"  :< )
 
> Fiber is probably the second best choice for long distances. You 
> can get 1000M spools of military field cable (2 pair MM in a heavy
> jacket) for dirt cheap.

I suspect he has -- or can get his hands on this relatively
easily (think: well connected).

> And the final option is some sort of packet based wireless
> transfer, there is lots of 433MHz/etc. modems out there for 
> playing with.

Aside from the bandwidth differences, I'm wondering why he
can't use something *like* DSL.  I mean TPC runs cable
miles from the CO to the subscriber and you don't see
DSL modems getting fried by the dozens each time there's
a lightning storm.  What's the difference between the
CO side and subscriber end wrt DSL modems?  I.e., can you
get two DSL modems to talk to each other like you could
with an analog modem (assuming you provided BORSCHT)?

--don