Has anyone ever ran cat5e 300 feet or over?

Question

I have an outside run that is about 400 feet, just wondering if anyone has ran cat5e that far without a router between. Does it just slow down the line, or does the signal just fade to where it can not be read?

Answer 1

Depends how powerfull the start of whatever the wire is connected to. Some devices ex. routers are only powerfull enough for about 200ft

Answer 2

The connection will be very slow or hardly work at all.  100m is as far as you should go with cat5.  Install a repeater or use wireless.

Answer 3

You will have signal attenuation. The problem will be more lost packets and so more resent packets. It will probably work, but not very efficiently

Answer 4

have it as long as you want, only time that slows down is the electric running threw it which is fast..

Answer 5

maximum is 300ft, after that you'll need an extender .... but i think even with 300ft you'll get data loss and it's 300ft if it's a straight cable ... if it's going to be twisted around stuff or going around corners then it will go to 150ft only and that's if it's a very good quality cable :)

Answer 6

Wireless was invented for your situation

Answer 7

I was at a conference last Christmas at top of a hotel. The engineer said he'd run a Cat 5e cable from the top floor down the lift shaft to the basement where the external comms were.

He was a bit concerned as he'd been told the recommended distance without repeaters was 100m (about 330 feet) and the hotel was about 100 metres tall.

We had about 20 people run off a router at the top without any problems for a week. However running at 400feet may be pushing the limit.

I believe you'll just get interference and errors in your packets if you start pushing the limit and then may damage hardware and not be read if go too far.