What cable for voice, maybe data?

[mhm993]

So,
I have an empty conduit buried from the house to the detached garage. I need phone service now. Maybe in the future, I'll want a hard wired computer network since my wireless modem doesn't reach the garage. It's about 125' from the phone junction box to the garage. The computer is another 75 feet farther. I'm on the moderately low geek side, not a bandwidth pig, and don't need "gigabyte speed plus!" speeds, just basic voice and maybe data.

What cable(s) am I looking for?

 

[Git]

Cat5e is pretty cheap and can be used for both phone and data - I would run at least two and just to be safe throw a coax cable in there

 

[mhm993]

Already have coax in a separate conduit. I assumed it would be cat 5 or 5e of some sort, but can I run voice and data over a single cable? I can always pull a string at the same time for future wires. Is there conduit specific cable or am I looking for ground bury cable?

 

[Stuart in MN]

The cable doesn't have to be rated for direct burial, but it does have to be rated for use in wet areas since the conduit is underground.

 

[gatchel]

Definitely pull a Cat 5e or better. I would pull more than one. At least two...minimum. Everything can be converted to transmit over cat 5e or 6 cable these days.

You can use one cat x cable for data and 2 analog phone lines. You won't be able to get gigabit speeds over the cable if you use the excess pairs for phone, though.

Plan on protecting the garage on an alarm system? A Cat x pair could be also used for a zone on an alarm system if need be.

 

[gonzoengineer]

Cat-5e/Cat-6 would be perfect. I'd run redundant lines as well in case you expand or have a cable pair go bad down the road. (May have already been stated)

Why not go to VoIP instead of continuing with POTS? Your voice can be sent across the data path and lots of additional versatility can be gained. You could even have extensions in the house and with a basic router at the head of the connection you could set quality of service policies to assure any high data-rate connections such as downloads or streaming media do not impact the audio quality of your voice channels.

 

[Torque1st]

Pull two Cat5e cables. The wire is cheap.
For VOIP I use:
http://www.phonepower.com/

 

[hetkind]

I pulled for my shop two cat5e and one RG/6...right now we are only using 1/2 a cat5e.

Howard

 

[bry@n]

If I was pulling new, I would rub Cat6 cable. That's just me. If you around any new construction, look for the cable guy. Maybe you can score the footage you need cheaply.

 

[mhm993]

Keeping it simple--one cable, and a string for the future. Keeping my phone service--not switching to voip. (We all know that a simple, what "kind of door hinge?" question becomes "you should build a new house addition for that door hinge! around here, LOL.)

Finishing my question, how many strands will I need for a simple, basic bandwidth network? And how many wires come in cat 5e? Is it available with different numbers of twisted pairs?

Appreciate everyone's help. Tomorrow I ask about how the heck to deal with the odd sized coax that the cable company provided for free, but is sure larger than rg6.

 

[jkeyser14]

You will need two seperate cat5e or cat6 lines to do both phone and internet (unless you go DSL, then you can use a splitter in the garage and just run 1 line). A single ethernet line will support up to two phone lines, but they can't do both phone and internet simultaneously hence the need for two ethernet lines.

 

[Git]

Cat5 and related cables are 4 pair or a total of 8 separate wires.

For an ethernet network, only 4 wires are actually used. Telephone requires two wires, so you can actually run your internet and phone over a single cat5/cat6 cable but as pointed out above you won't get extremely fast (gigabyte) speeds

so yes, you can make do with just one cable - but I would run two

It is very important to keep the "Twists" in the wires your going to use for the ethernet. Probably the easiest way to do it is to separate out the blue pair several inches back from the termination ( blue and blue/white) leaving the other pairs alone and properly twisted right up until the temination - usually one of those punch down type connectors for a wall plate that you can find at Home Depot

One last thing - the Cat5 wire that is normally used for "in the walls" is solid strand and can break if your not carefull. The cable used in "patch cable" is multiple strands and is more flexible. I had a solid wire break in one of my connections and I was still able to use the wire for ethernet by using one of the unused pairs

 

[gatchel]

Also be aware that there are different RJ-45 ends for solid and stranded conductor cables.

If you get some Leviton ends (at you local orange big box store) pick a wiring scheme and stick to it for all of your data drops. (568A or 568B) Either standard uses the orange and green pairs for 10/100 data. You could use the blue pair or the brown pair for phone. Here is some info on color codes:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TIA/EIA-568-B

 

[mhm993]

Giving me a good education. Anyone have a favorite web business to purchase cable?

 

[Steevo]

Marc,

In a nutshell, all standard voice/data cable nowadays comes with 8-strands, on four pairs. Cat 3,5, 5e, 6, 6e, 6a all follow the following stanards.

The pairs are twisted together within the cable in color pairs as follows:
blue/white and blue
orange/white and orange
green/white and green
brown/white and brown

This has been true since the days of "Category 3" or "Cat3" cable, and these colors go back before that in voice services.

In a standard cable the orange/white and orage pair and the green/white and green pair are used for Ethernet data connectivity. This complies with T568A and T568B cabling standards, with the only difference being which color pair is on which pins in an RJ45 connection.

T568A has the following pinouts:
Pin 1 = Green/White
Pin 2 = Green
Pin 3 = Orange/White
Pin 6 = Orange

T568B reverses the pairs:
Pin 1 = Orange/White
Pin 2 = Orange
Pin 3 = Green/White
Pin 6 = Green

Pins 1,2,3 and 6 of an RJ-45 connector are used for data, and as long as the cable is punched down with the same colors on the same pins at both ends (straight-through), it really does not matter whether you follow T568A or T568B color schema.
The remaining two pairs are historically available for voice, and both T568A and T568B schemas use pins 4 & 5 for Blue/white and blue and pins 7 & 8 for Brown/White and Brown.

That said, today I would pull in two Category 6 (or 6e or 6a as available) cables, and would not run the legacy telephone service on wires in the same cable with the data connection. You may never experience a problem with it, but with todays standard network gear working at 1Gb by default and with 10Gb being right around the corner, the off-the-shelf network cards, switches, hubs, etc, all try to negotiate a 1Gb link, and if successful, will self-configure to operate at that rate. Running legacy telco voice service on pins 4/5 (blue/white-blue pair) can disrupt and interfere with data communicatiosn at these speeds. Running it on a pair in a second cable within the same conduit is a non-issue, and will have no such potential for problems.
Whether or not you are a "gigabit guy" doesn't change what the computer and network companies are selling, and thier stuff all negotiates 1Gb connections. You might as well wire to allow them a successful and reliable connection at those speeds.

If you watch Craigslist, you can often find Cat5, 5e or Cat6 cable in leftover amounts from spools that were used on large jobs. This is the cheapest way to get it short of finding a cabler at work that will give you his leftover wire. After that, any online wholesale cable supply is a good source, since it is commodity product (except Cat6A, which is still relatively rare).

 

[compman25]

Giving me a good education. Anyone have a favorite web business to purchase cable?

http://www.monoprice.com/home/index.asp

 

[67gto]

I picked up 2 boxes (1000') on ebay for $65.00 each & free shipping. Make sure you are getting solid copper. If you see CCA anywhere, stay away. CCA stands for Copper Coated Aluminum.