On Tue, 27 Dec 2011 20:14:57 -0800, Jeff Liebermann
wrote:

On Wed, 28 Dec 2011 11:44:54 +0800, who where wrote:

Just to clarify, the building construction is brick on concrete floor
slab. Power to the island section is via conduit through the slab.
You guys obviously use different construction materials/ methods ;-)

I live in a forest, where houses tend to made from wood. The big tree
roots tend to make houses move around, so concrete slab foundations
are not very popular (except when they can located on a sand pile).

This is in suburbia, where the norm (at least here) is slab on
compacted sand. If big tree roots cause a problem, that is the
owner's concern, but practically none of the indigenous species cause
this type of problem. The fig family of course is another story.

Yeah, notching the concrete floor isn't going to work. Sorry(tm).

The option with the least impact was superflat under the carpet's foam
underlay. There had been serious thought to chasing a conduit down
the wall but that would have been both disruptive to the workstation
and $$$. There was but a passing mention of EoP.

Going through the foam pad under the carpet will work. If thick
enough, you might be able to use real CAT5.

The foam is a Bridgestone product. It starts life around 1cm thick
but compresses down with use to probably 4mm. Ratjher than trying to
notch/groove it, going under it is a lot less work and the result -
apart from being undetectable - is very well protected even against
wheeled/dragged loads which can ripple the carpet.

What's EoP? Ethernet over Plumbing?

Ethernet over power. "Reverse" of PoE.

If you can run fiber optic cable
throught the sewers, you might be able to run fiber through the drains
or water pipes. The fiber is easy, but the fiber to ethernet media
converters are expensive.

If the island has power, you might consider power line networking
(HomePlug).

See EoP above. But no services other than AC power.

Another possible is Multimedia over Coax:
http://www.mocalliance.org
Instead of the common RG-6a/u coax cable, use some really thin coax,
such as RG-179b/u coax (0.100" OD). Use MoCA bridges on each side of
the coax run. Or, if you can live with only 10Mbits/sec, use 50 ohm
coax, such as RG-174/u (0.100" OD) and an old 10base2 hub as a media
converter.

There's plenty of 10base2 stuff available, but the speed compromise
compared to Cat5E and the simplicity of the flat-cat would have ruled
it out had we even considered it.

But yes, there a multitude of ways to skin that cat (ouch!) Superflat
Cat5/5E under the carpet works best in terms of speed and cost.