Extending phone lines

[Bigrhamr]

I want to bring a line for phone and DSL into my shop. The existing house service is over 500' away. Can that be done by tapping into the house phone wiring or would the phone company's primary lines need to be extended? Any details on what kind of cable, etc... would be appreciated. Or if there's a good way to do it wireless I'll look at that too.

 

[MisterCMK]

You can run a wire back to your house. Direct burial Cat5 cable is going to be your best bet for just telephone.

 

[nadogail]

The route the cable will run from the house to the garage will have a direct influence on what kind of cable will best meet your needs.

Are you planning on an overhead or nderground run? How far are you from the nearest working telephone?

 

[Bigrhamr]

The route the cable will run from the house to the garage will have a direct influence on what kind of cable will best meet your needs.

Are you planning on an overhead or nderground run? How far are you from the nearest working telephone?

It will be underground, I'll have a ditch open for water lines and want to put this in at the same time. Distance is at least 500' and maybe as much as 600'.
I'm not there to measure it right now.

 

[mrb]

look at it this way, the phone signal traveled anywhere from 100 to 15,000 feet to get you your house. another 500ft isnt going to matter.

 

[mrb]

you mentioned dsl...will you have a dsl modem at the shop? i doubt you want to pay for dsl service twice. 500ft is too far for network, you have a few options, fiber isnt tooo expensive, but will be a big pain -i wouldnt do it. You could use wireless if you have good line of sight and there isnt a forest blocking the signal. There are also devices called vdsl modems you can use one on each end of a pair of your phone line you are running to get 12Mb of ethernet out to your shop. These arent too expensive.

 

[Bigrhamr]

you mentioned dsl...will you have a dsl modem at the shop? i doubt you want to pay for dsl service twice. 500ft is too far for network, you have a few options, fiber isnt tooo expensive, but will be a big pain -i wouldnt do it. You could use wireless if you have good line of sight and there isnt a forest blocking the signal. There are also devices called vdsl modems you can use one on each end of a pair of your phone line you are running to get 12Mb of ethernet out to your shop. These arent too expensive.

That's right, definitely don't want to pay for DSL twice. So with the vdsl modems at each end would I still need the DSL modem I have from the phone co or would the vdsl replace it? Sorry if these are kindergarten level questions, I'm a metal fabricator and have a pretty good handle on that but computers and electronics are pretty much black magic to me
Any suggestions on what brands to look at or where to buy?

 

[mrb]

those vdsl modems for sending ethernet over the phone wire work in a pair back to back. so it goes like this: existing dsl modem<--->router(may be part of dsl modem)<---->vdsl@house<----line to garage----->vdsl@garage<------>garage computer

ill dig out where to get them cheap and get back to you later. I deal in this stuff here and there, i should probably have some around since this comes up from time to time.

 

[ManCave]

I was cringing while reading some of the replies. 500 feet is too far for DSL on CAT5 or CAT6. It might work, but would be borderline. Cat5 is only rated for 328 feet.

Moreover, you do not want to run wire that distance as its a lighting strike waiting to happen.

The solution is either wireless or run fiber. Fiber is my recommendation. Its a lot more reliable than wireless and offers faster speeds, too.

Also, fiber is not prone to lighting strikes.

As I vaguely recall, It will run you between $500 - $800 to run fiber that distance. You'll have to check around for the best price. But if you plan to stay there a long time, its worth the expense and will serve you well for many, many years.

 

[mrb]

I was cringing while reading some of the replies. 500 feet is too far for DSL on CAT5 or CAT6. It might work, but would be borderline. Cat5 is only rated for 328 feet.

Moreover, you do not want to run wire that distance as its a lighting strike waiting to happen.

The solution is either wireless or run fiber. Fiber is my recommendation. Its a lot more reliable than wireless and offers faster speeds, too.

Also, fiber is not prone to lighting strikes.

As I vaguely recall, It will run you between $500 - $800 to run fiber that distance. You'll have to check around for the best price. But if you plan to stay there a long time, its worth the expense and will serve you well for many, many years.

what are you talking about cat5 is limited to 328ft and you cant run dsl 500ft.... ???????

ETHERNET is limited to 328ft. I specifically noted he is too far for ethernet.

Some vdsl2 gear I am looking at will give you up to 90Mb over 200M and 20Mb over 1400M.

He will need surge arrestors where the cat5 enters the building, but he needs that for his phone line anyways...

Fiber is completely impractical for this situation. If it was my hosue, I would use fiber because I have the capacity to terminate it. Who is the OP going to get over there to terminate his fiber? Even if he gets someone to pre-terminate a piece of direct burial cable, AND manages to install it without damage, it will fail after a couple years as the expansion and contraction of the fiber will kill the connectors. This is why cable runs like this are always spliced to pigtails in a splice tray.

Again, I am recommending vdsl gear to send ethernet over one pair of the phone line he is putting in anyways. This is the cheapest, easist to install, and most reliable installation.

 

[ManCave]

The assumption is that the DSL modem will be sitting in his house. He can purchase a pre-made 500 ft fiber cable -- no need to terminate anything. He could then install a gigabit hub in his garage if he wanted to.

Have you ever actually installed vdsl2 or are you going by what you have read?

 

[mrb]

The assumption is that the DSL modem will be sitting in his house. He can purchase a pre-made 500 ft fiber cable -- no need to terminate anything. He could then install a gigabit hub in his garage if he wanted to.

Have you ever actually installed vdsl2 or are you going by what you have read?

yes the dsl modem stays in the house. The vdsl setup I am talking about uses a pair of devices back to back, one at each end of the phone wire between his hosue and garage. The hosue side connects to his router or dsl modem/router depending on what he has. The garage end connects to his computer or a switch out there if he likes.

ive installed dozens of back to back sets of vdsl modems in highrises. I have also done a couple miles of fiber, and hundreds of thousands of feet of cat5e.

the premade 500ft fiber cable is going to be duplex, tight buffer fanned out on the ends, or someing like a fons cable. hardly something you would run 500ft underground.

with the solution I am proposing, he will already have 75% of the infrastructure in place for his phone line anyways. the only additional cost will be a the vdsl modems and he has network out there.

 

[ManCave]

Can you post a link to the vdsl modems you've used?

 

[mrb]

Can you post a link to the vdsl modems you've used?

used cisco LRE which is vdsl. some products from RAD, and some from Planet in taiwan. Still have the planet distributorship, im waiting for an email back for current price.

out of curiosity, why are you so against this setup, and how is fiber superior in this application all things considered?

 

[rockwithjason]

why would you not just extend the phone line and ad a second dsl modem at the shop? it seems simple enough but maybe i am missing something.

 

[jdkenyon]

why would you not just extend the phone line and ad a second dsl modem at the shop? it seems simple enough but maybe i am missing something.

The trick on this is only one DSL modem can be used and he will already have that in the house. To use a DSL modem in the shop he would need a separate service from the phone company and then would be paying for two lines instead of just one.

 

[Bigrhamr]

what are you talking about cat5 is limited to 328ft and you cant run dsl 500ft.... ???????

ETHERNET is limited to 328ft. I specifically noted he is too far for ethernet.

Some vdsl2 gear I am looking at will give you up to 90Mb over 200M and 20Mb over 1400M.

He will need surge arrestors where the cat5 enters the building, but he needs that for his phone line anyways...

Fiber is completely impractical for this situation. If it was my hosue, I would use fiber because I have the capacity to terminate it. Who is the OP going to get over there to terminate his fiber? Even if he gets someone to pre-terminate a piece of direct burial cable, AND manages to install it without damage, it will fail after a couple years as the expansion and contraction of the fiber will kill the connectors. This is why cable runs like this are always spliced to pigtails in a splice tray.

Again, I am recommending vdsl gear to send ethernet over one pair of the phone line he is putting in anyways. This is the cheapest, easist to install, and most reliable installation.

Thanks for all the info so far. One thing is confusing me, you say Ethernet is limited to 328' but recommend sending over the phone line 500'+. Does that mean the Ethernet CABLE is limited to the 328' but it (Ethernet) will work over phone line at that distance?

 

[mrb]

Thanks for all the info so far. One thing is confusing me, you say Ethernet is limited to 328' but recommend sending over the phone line 500'+. Does that mean the Ethernet CABLE is limited to the 328' but it (Ethernet) will work over phone line at that distance?

not the cable, but Ethernet itself is limited to 100 meters, or 328 feet. Ethernet is the signal used by the computers and other network devices. If you use the cat5e cable for something else (ie: phone) you dont have that distance limitation.

The back to back vdsl modem setup I am suggesting, turns Ethernet into a vdsl signal which rides on one pair of copper phone wire for quite a distance, the back into Ethernet on the other end.

 

[mrb]

ok...looking at $225 for a pair of the vdsl modems. These will send ethernet quite a distance over one pair of copper wire.

 

[Bigrhamr]

Thanks for the info, that sounds like the way to go.

 

[mrb]

Thanks for the info, that sounds like the way to go.

I want to have some of these in stock anyways, im going to go ahead and order a couple pairs. I will post them when they come in. Maybe ill offer underground cat5e by the foot too.

 

[KCCHIEFS09]

ummmmmmm 2 empty cans and some string

 

[Ezzie]

Wait a second guys. I don't think his question has been properly answered. If I understand this problem correctly - he has a residential phone line AND internet access in his house and he wants to extend these services to his shop about 500' away. He would like to have a plain old telephone (POTS) AND an internet connection in his shop without having to pay for double services. There currently is no telephone cable going between the two buildings so he is asking what would be the best solution - copper, coax, fiber, wireless, whatever.

I am dealing with the same problem right now and working on finding a solution.

My LAN is in the house and I want to extend it to the shop for my new office down there. DSL is not available here, we get our internet connections from a WISP (Wireless Internet Services Provider). Solution I am going with is to install a WAP (wireless access point) on my router connected to an external directional 2.4 gHz antenna that is pointed at the shop. I may have gone into overkill for signal strength but I selected a moderately high gain antenna - the TrendNet TEW-A014D. It has a gain of 14dbi. I just got this stuff yesterday so I am in the process of hooking it up and testing it. I don't know what I am going to do in the shop yet, I want to test my signal strength first. I suspect I will also need a directional antenna there mounted on the outside of the building since it is a steel clad structure.

Now for the POTS phone. My phone line is in the shop and I want to extend that phone line to the house. I have been researching but have not found a way yet to do this over a wireless ethernet connection (802.11g) at that distance. I do have a roll of the heavy duty 2 pair cable the phone company uses to run lines into your buildings (Superior Essex) so I might just have to resort to digging a shalloow trench 500' and bury the line. Anybody else have any ideas??

 

[KCCHIEFS09]

well if I read this right Ezzie you have a separate line to shop for pots? If so I take it ,it is fed off another pole or pedestal that is not the same pole or pedestal that feeds your house phone? or do they come off of the same pole or pedestal ? all you have to do is use 2nd or 3rd pair in drop that goes to the house for the shop line from pole or pedestal terminal(the Phone Co. would terminate that pair to the shop line on the terminal block) if different pole or pedestal the Phone Co. they would have to make sure that your Shop Pair in phone cable continues up to next ped if pair was trimmed off to field or if house ped towards Central Office wouldnt matter shop line already goes thru ped and most likely has similair cable count terminated to Block if not its just a matter of Phone Co cutting in the pair.This way you have a hard wire

 

[mrb]

Wait a second guys. I don't think his question has been properly answered. If I understand this problem correctly - he has a residential phone line AND internet access in his house and he wants to extend these services to his shop about 500' away.

yes, his question has been properly answered. The first part of his question was how to get a phone line out to his shop. He will be burying a cable (direct burial cat5). The next issue is connecting the shop to the internet connection at his house. There are several ways to do this.

Wireless while it will work, and would be the best solution if there was no cable being installed ,is slower than a wired connection and there are potential issues if there is heavy foliage between the house and shop. It is also more expensive than my proposed solution.

Fiber would be good, but the issues there are cost and getting the cable terminated. You cant run 500ft of preterminated cable underground.

The solution I proposed is the best for the particular situation. A pair of ethernet over vdsl modems which use one pair of the existing(to be installed) telephone cable. Two of these devices are used, one at the house and one at the shop. They are connected to one pair of the phone cable and give him an ethernet port in the house and one at the shop. The cost is only $225 (less than what proper wireless gear would cost) and gives him speeds of up to 90Mb/s over the link at his distance.

 

[mrb]

Ezzie, I think you are going to have problems pointing a directional antenna at a steel building. The reflections might kill your signal. Take a look at the wireless service provider forum on broadbandreports forums and you will find a lot of good information on PtP links and issues such as metal buildings.

If you do get the wireless link working, you could (for not too much money) use a pair of VoIP (voice over internet protocol) adapters to extend a phone line over the wireless data link. I an not talking about VoIP service, I am talking about two boxes that talk to each other over the data link. Not ideal, but it will work (unless you have terrible latency and jitter due to multipathing and reflections off the metal building).

If it were me, I would bury a cable and lose the wireless.

 

[dan_evv]

I would not waste your money on Cat5 cable for your Pots line to the garage, you only need Cat3 for phone, you can probaley get the wire free.. Just find your local telephone company phone man (probably sitting on the side of the road) and ask him for some buried drop wire. If you ask nice most of us phone guys would give it to you. The roles we have @ my garage are 600' and are direct bury filled cable. If you cannot find someone to give you the wire, go to your local Electric supply house and ask for 22 or 24 awg Direct bury 2 or 3 pair wire, you will only need one pair but the extra pairs could come in handy down the road. Maybe for an intercom or anything that will work over a pair of wires. This style of wire will have a metal inner core that protects the wires. Just be careful when you open the cable up because the metal is very sharp. Also make sure you ground the metal sheath at both ends of the wire. This will help with any power influence and protect against lighting strike.

As for the network side you are stuck with fiber or Wifi, the fiber options would cost more in my opinion because the media converters and fiber patch cable will cost more that the Wifi method. I would add an access point with high gain directional antenna. Just place the antenna outside the house facing the direction you need it to go. I have seen it work many times at over 1000’. Then would setup your computer with a Wifi adaptor and you would be good to go.

 

[mrb]

Dan, good suggestion about asking a phone guy for some wire. The cat5 isnt that bad, about $120 per 1000ft for gel filled direct burial cable. Due to economics of scale with cat5, there isnt much money to be saved by cat3 these days.

Fiber and wireless are NOT the only options. Read back through my posts about the VDSL modems, ethernet/vdsl converters or whatever you want to call them. I have some on order I will post them when they show up.

 

[ddawg16]

For the record....100 meters (328.0839895 feet) is the 'official' distance for Ethernet over Cat5.

But I've run it 500-600' without any problems.....and there are little devices called Ethernet repeaters that can be installed.

I always prefer simple.....I think Ethernet over a good quality Cat5 would work just fine....without a repeater....

 

[mrb]

For the record....100 meters (328.0839895 feet) is the 'official' distance for Ethernet over Cat5.

But I've run it 500-600' without any problems.....and there are little devices called Ethernet repeaters that can be installed.

I always prefer simple.....I think Ethernet over a good quality Cat5 would work just fine....without a repeater....

500 is really pushing it. The reason ethernet can only go 100meters doesnt have anything to do with signal degredation, but at distances over that the timing gets messed up and there is a ton of packetloss.

True, he could install a switch somewhere midspan, but thats going to require an outdoor waterproof enclosure, power, and unless he springs for an industrial grade switch that can take the temperature swings its not going to last long.

Putting a 'repeater' isnt going to do anything unless you split the run into segments of less than 100meters using a switch.

 

[Ezzie]

well if I read this right Ezzie you have a separate line to shop for pots? If so I take it ,it is fed off another pole or pedestal that is not the same pole or pedestal that feeds your house phone? or do they come off of the same pole or pedestal ? all you have to do is use 2nd or 3rd pair in drop that goes to the house for the shop line from pole or pedestal terminal(the Phone Co. would terminate that pair to the shop line on the terminal block) if different pole or pedestal the Phone Co. they would have to make sure that your Shop Pair in phone cable continues up to next ped if pair was trimmed off to field or if house ped towards Central Office wouldnt matter shop line already goes thru ped and most likely has similair cable count terminated to Block if not its just a matter of Phone Co cutting in the pair.This way you have a hard wire

Close, but a bit more complicated. My property sits on the split between CO's. The house is on a different exchange than the shop. I want to bring the shop line to the house but as I mentioned it is over 500' away. The shortest run would be to bury a 2-pair from the pedestal that services the shop and run it to the house. Then I could connect my live shop pair to this new cable to get my POTs in the house working on the same line. The other unused pair (to both the shop and the house) could be used for some other service - maybe the security system or something. What I am not sure about is what ma Bell's view would be of me going into their pedestal and doing some wiring of this nature. I thought that was a big NO - NO!!

 

[mrb]

Close, but a bit more complicated. My property sits on the split between CO's. The house is on a different exchange than the shop. I want to bring the shop line to the house but as I mentioned it is over 500' away. The shortest run would be to bury a 2-pair from the pedestal that services the shop and run it to the house. Then I could connect my live shop pair to this new cable to get my POTs in the house working on the same line. The other unused pair (to both the shop and the house) could be used for some other service - maybe the security system or something. What I am not sure about is what ma Bell's view would be of me going into their pedestal and doing some wiring of this nature. I thought that was a big NO - NO!!

you're correct there. You cant open their pedestal. Everything on the phone company side of the demarc belongs to them.

 

[MisterCMK]

For the record....100 meters (328.0839895 feet) is the 'official' distance for Ethernet over Cat5.

But I've run it 500-600' without any problems.....and there are little devices called Ethernet repeaters that can be installed.

I always prefer simple.....I think Ethernet over a good quality Cat5 would work just fine....without a repeater....

That 100 meters also includes all patch cables and whatnot. You don't want to go over 300 feet as a general rule.

As far as 500 or 600', good luck getting reliable service. A repeater or switch is only going to make a difference if you split it up into 100 meter sections like mrb mentioned.

 

[Ezzie]

I have done some more research on the extending of a LAN to over 500' away (distance between shop & house) and discovered an interesting thing I thought I would share.

The method I am going to try first (cheapest) is to extend it using wireless technology. I bought a couple of 2.4GHz external antennas (14 dbi gain) and a wireless access point (WAP) so I can plug into the existing 802.11g router (Linksys 4 port) in the house. I am going to try setting up a point-to-point link line of sight between the two buildings.

When searching for hardware, all the computer geeks in the stores suggested I use the latest 802.11n networking hardware rather than the older 802.11g equipment for this since it has higher throughput (100mbs vs. 54mbs) and a greater range. This however is not true for this application from what I have read.

The basic difference between 802.11g and 802.11n is that 802.11n uses MIMO (multiple in - multiple out) antenna technology to establish seperate signal paths and then recombine to get the greater throughput. Usually these signals arrive at fractionally different times as they have travelled different distances by different routes, and can cause some interference when using just one antenna. With MIMO, by using multiple antenna, these reflections can be used to improve the signal, as instead of having just one copy of the original signal, the hardware now has multiple copies and can use whichever one is best, comparing them many times a second.

By having more than one signal to choose from, MIMO allows the wireless hardware to reach much greater ranges, with better signal strength ( and hence better speed ) than conventional wireless hardware.

One downside to MIMO hardware, is that it is usually not suitable for very long range point-to-point links using an external antenna, as the multiple antenna of a MIMO access point are usually not removable. Some MIMO routers don't have and external antenna at all. So if you want to connect two buildings wirelessly, it would be best to use conventional 802.11g harware rather than MIMO specific hardware with multiple antenna.

I'll let you know how it works when I get it all up and running.

 

[Falcon67]

Nice antenna - you could have made a couple of directional antennas out of plastic pipe and some fittings. Google "Pringle can antenna" sometime. As a wireless guy - I would use an ethernet extender and drop two CAT5 cables in the trench. My experience with 802.11B or G over point-to-point has been dismal. I have a nice decoration in my office - it's a 12 dB Cisco dish that can throw 1mb for about 20 miles. I'd have a pair but the other one is too far up a pole to bother with. We were using them to throw a signal about a mile. A $25K solution that didn't solve a problem. Hope yours works better - 500' is not that far.

 

[Ezzie]

Thanks for the input. I don't have much into it, the TrendNet 14dbi antennas are only $60 ea. and the WAP about $70. I don't have a trench between the two buildings but if the wireless approach doesn't work, ethernet cabling will be Plan "B". I bought a big roll of twisted pair outdoor telephone wire (2P) but haven't got around to burying it yet. Is direct burial Cat5 expensive??

 

[thdewey]

This thread has got me thinking of adding a phone line and thus DSL to my shop.

PLEASE keep this simple. I'm a rookie at this kind of thing.

My garage is only about maybe a total 30' cable run from my phone company's splitter box. We have DSL in the house. I opened the box and on the inside gives instructions for adding a line. There is room to expand. I've burried an extra 1" conduit for low volt stuff like this.
Can I just buy some phone line from Lowes and fish the line through the conduit and put an outlet insdie the garage and a DSL modem in there? I've seen many type of phone line at Lowes and quickly really confused as to what I really need.

 

[VHF]

Yes, but if you add a second DSL modem in the garage you would need to pay monthly for a second DSL service (and might be required to pay for an additional phone line as well.)

To use your existing internet service in the garage, you would need to run Cat5 from wherever your DSL modem is located in the house out to the garage. The Cat5 would then need an RJ-45 style plug or jack at each end.

Or just use WiFi wireless. If the distance between buildings is close enough there's a good chance it will reach w/o needing special equipment or antennas.

For phone you can just run Cat5 (or Cat3) from the demarc point to the garage. Only one pair of wires is actually used for phone.

 

[mrb]

Is direct burial Cat5 expensive??

not really, about $145 / 1000ft

 

[nate379]

Can't do wireless internet?

I pick up the wireless from a house in my neighbor which is about 600ish feet away.

As for phone, dunno. I haven't had a land line in nearly 10 years. Do have one here because of the DSL but I don't own a phone that could hook up to it.