"tnik" wrote in message ...
On 2/2/2012 3:05 PM, Steve B wrote:
I want to run a hard line Cat 5 out to my shop. It will be inside PVC.
What is the limits of length of Cat 5 before you start running into
problems? I'd estimate it at 150' run.

Steve



Attenuation (supposedly) happens at 100 Meters. Your 150' run should be
just fine.

I'm slightly over 300ft and there's slight to considerable degradation unless I terminate with a commercial grade hub at both ends of the run, probably because most PC network cards are kind of whimpy.

Plenty of commercial grade hubs still available on ebay though, and for dirt cheap last time I checked--the one I'm using down here is a bay networks 24 port which I purchased second hand and it has been running pretty much continuiously for going on 13 years now.

FWIW, you only need two pairs for cat5...so the other two can be used for an alarm system or for telephony if you have land line etc.