Official rating for UTP is 100 metres from hub/switch to PC, and maximum of five hubs/switches. However, I've seen major latency problems with 5 hubs, so the fewer the better.
I'm not familiar with the maximum length of STP, but I have a run of cat5e here running to 132 metres, and it works full speed at 10 Mbit. I've not tried 100 Mbit on it. If you want to run cable outside, you will need cat5e, and should run it inside some pipe. If you want it above ground then it will need UV protection (ie, UV rated plastic pipe). Building-to-building can also incur problems with power differential, which is where each side of the link are at different points in the AC sine wave. I've seen a 50Hz 7.2 V differential on a UTP conenction between two sides of a building, which kinda blows a 1.5V ethernet signal off the wire. Then again I've heard of someone with 120V AC on their coax cable, which continued to work fine.... Ethernet is a black art sometimes. On Wed, 2002-05-15 at 14:17, Nick Rout wrote: > > I was once going to give my > > neighbours a direct cat5 connection > > I had thought of that, whats the maximum run of 10M ethernet?? I have > about 60 m of that blue cable you stick in walls...... > > The otther altenative is stringing some phone-type copper and putting an > adsl modem on each end. i have seen stuff about this on the net too. > apparently it works fine. again the cost of the two asl modems is a > little steep :-( > > telecom /orion only rarely come up our road, so it'd take them a while > to realise we had hijacked their poles :-) > -- > Nick Rout <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Solicitor, PO Box 25-275, > Christchurch, NZ > ph +64-3-3798966 > fax +64-3-3798853 > http://www.rout.co.nz
