In article ,
Alan Deane wrote:

"Gordon Henderson" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Alan Deane wrote:
Hello,

I need to get network access into my garage which is about 40m from the
house. I've tried wireless but the signal is terrible in the garage and
typically only 2mb/s at best.
So CAT 5 it is. Does anyone know of an outdoor grade cable, or should I
use
"normal" cable sheathed in garden hose or something?
Any other soultions people have used with success?

Do you have mains power to the garage? If it's on the same phase as the
house, then this might work:

http://www.eazynetworks.co.uk/product.php?sku=00001

I put in a pair of these recently to get ethernet out to a barn which
saved me the hassle of running a catenarry wire and strapping cat5
to that...

Gordon

Gordon,

I like that idea, however I'm already sending X10 signals across the mains
to/from the garage as well, I don't know if the two systems would get along,
and 14mb/s is a bit on the slow side as I plan to use the PC in the garage
for "offsite" file storage amongst other things.
If I run CAT5 / CAT6 I can use gigabit network which is far better for
moving lots of data over!

Ah well, in that case, you want an OrthogonSystems Spectra unit. 300Mb/sec
aggregate bandwidth over a non line of sight radio link

However, since you probably can't afford a pair of those, (~$20K) personally,
I'd run cat5(e) down a bit of garden hose...

Actually, I'd just run ordinary cat5e.. It'll last 2 years underground.
When you take it up at each end, hang a loop down and file off the
underside of the insulation - that way, any moisture that does get into
the cable can escape before going up to the connector (in theory). You're
probably OK without it though - I've been dealing with some outdoor units
that pump 50 volts on top of the signal to power the remote radio units
and those corrode quickly when damp!

You might also want to look at how you are doing the backups - I use
rsync which only copies differences, and keep gigabytes offline and
updated overnight over relatively slow links,, but you might not have
the luxury of a nice *nix server set ...

Gordon