Garden office internet, ethernet booster/hub options?

crispo99

Hi,
I'm planning on converting shed into a garden office, doing the grunt work myself and getting an electrician to connect it up and sign off.  Will be running cat6 from the router in the house to the shed (about 35m).   

• Any tips or gotcha's i should be aware of?  I'm buying a shielded external cat6 cable but i understand you still don't want to lay it too close to the SWA or you'll get signal disruption
• what options are there once i've got the cat6 to the shed, i want to effectively boost the signal (if possible) but also connect at least 2 appliances directly to ethernet and also have a wifi signal in the shed.  Any ideas how i can do that?

Thanks for any help!

FreeBear

The minimum recommended distance between data & mains cable is something like 50mm as I recall... When a trench is dug for the SWA cable, I'd lay in a run of 25mm conduit (3m lengths, and glue the couplings) in the same trench. Shove a bit of string through the conduit as you go so that the CAT6 can be pulled through. Pull two lengths of cable through plus and extra length of string - If you ever want to pull another data cable (for phone ?) through, having string there will save no end of hassle.

rob7475

If you're looking to connect more than one thing to the network in the shed, I'd look at installing a wireless access point with integrated switch. Will give you a few spare network ports and the option to work wireless too. If you match the SSID of the WiFi in the house, the transition when moving a laptop from the house to the shed should be pretty seamless.
Another option is powerline networking if your shed will be on the same consumer unit as the rest of the house. It's much better than it used to be. I've got a couple of TP link powerline adapters and get around 300mbps out of them which is more than enough for a home network.

markin

I was sure its 200mm.

And a google says..  

"200 mm Current standards clearly define the separation between power and data cables. For instance, the minimum separation distance between unscreened power and unscreened UTP cable is 200 mm. This is reduced to 50 mm for screened data cable and to just 30 mm if the power cable is screened."

So to avoid problems if you don't get the shielding perfect at both end of your cat6 i would stick to that.

The U in UTP Stands for unscreened, Twisted pair.

crispo99

Thanks for the replies guys
Prompted me to check with the manufacturer of the cat6 and even though its FTP shielded, their installers recommend leaving as much as 30cm from the SWA to be safe, so i guess i'll do that.

@rob7475 thanks for the suggestions, i've used devolo powerlines and found mixed results (netflix drops out etc) even when on the same ring circuit so want the ethernet connection for consistency.  Are there any models of wireless access points with switches that you'd recommend?  I need one with fast ethernet ports.  This all singing an dancing Draytek looks good and has Gb ethernet ports but is bit pricey, and possibly overkill for what i need.  Thanks