Cable TV (Coax) Drops Using House Wiring

[Joe Scarfo]

My shop is a 1200 sq ft building about 100' or so from the house and it's power is from a 220 breaker off the house braker box.

I have found a few units that will allow me to use the house wiring for ethernet drops, but I can't find anything for the cable tv...

Any ideas?

Tks
Joe

[Todd Crawford]

Coaxial cable is a very unique type of cable and you are not going to be able to transmit the signal across anything other than coaxial cable.

[Matt Meiser]

I'd be surprised if you get any kind of decent performance out of the ethernet units too. Do yourself a favor and run a conduit. Barring that, you should be able to get wireless to work with for ethernet with the proper equipment which includes some good antennas.

[Bill Edwards(2)]

I have found a few units that will allow me to use the house wiring for ethernet drops,

Signal over electrical wiring has been around a long time, but nobody
seems to be able to get it right (consistant).

Have you tried it? Because our network guys tried several products
and gave up.

Aside: If they could get it right, a lot of rural folks could get better internet.

[Matt Radtke]

I wouldn't bother with running ethernet over electrical wires. You very likely won't get decent throughput (speed) and almost certainly won't get full-duplex communication (how could you? Cat 5, 5e, and 6 all use 2 pairs of wire for full duplex--1one for trans, one for receiving.)

That said, running copper, as in Cat 5, between buildings is generally not a good idea. I forget the technical reason why, but you will likely end up killing equipment on each end due to how "fragile" networking equipment is. A for business associate of mine did this on his farm, with cat 5 running between his house and barn. He'd kill a NIC every 6-9 months.

The right way to do it is fiber (expensive) or point-to-point wireless. For the paranoid like myself, run a VPN endpoint in the house or one on each end.

[Matt Radtke]

Aside: If they could get it right, a lot of rural folks could get better internet.

Rural networking has a pile of problems, everything from technical to financial.

[Matt Meiser]

Actually you can do fiber "on the cheap". Check out Mitchell Andrus's thread (with lots of comments from me) on that exact subject. My total cost was similar to buying enough waterproof cat5e and a couple surge protectors would have been. I used a surplus Corning fiber cable from Ebay and a couple soho-grade transcievers. We also found a source for new built-to-order fiber cables that wasn't too bad.

[David Nelson1]

My shop is a 1200 sq ft building about 100' or so from the house and it's power is from a 220 breaker off the house braker box.

I have found a few units that will allow me to use the house wiring for ethernet drops, but I can't find anything for the cable tv...

Any ideas?

Tks
Joe

I have been using house wiring for a laptop that is not wireless and it works good enough with the slow work computer. When i get home Ill take a look @ the manufactor and drop you a line.

These eithernet add ons are the same as add a phone jack anywhere by using the house wiring I have had good luck with both.

[Thom Sturgill]

If you run coax for the cable, be careful about grounding the shield - it should only be grounded at one end. As to network cable, Twisted pair is good for 300+ yards, so 100' should not be a problem, but again grounding could be. Much safer to go with fiber if you can.

[paul cottingham]

If you run coax for the cable, be careful about grounding the shield - it should only be grounded at one end. As to network cable, Twisted pair is good for 300+ yards, so 100' should not be a problem, but again grounding could be. Much safer to go with fiber if you can.

+1 on all this. Wiring copper to outbuildings for network and coax is more dangerous than most people think.

[Darius Ferlas]

I have found a few units that will allow me to use the house wiring for ethernet drops, but I can't find anything for the cable tv...

See if this would be sufficient for your needs.

For the little that it costs, I'd still pull a direct burial cat5e wire for the ethernet in the shop. The electrical wiring systems work just fine but the home grade ones are limited to about 80Mbps. Some also have problems going through additional breaker boxes (sub panels etc) so you need to make sure the model you get will have no problem there.

As to network cable, Twisted pair is good for 300+ yards

not 300 feet?

[Halgeir Wold]

TP cable is OK up to 300' - but works on at least double that distance.....just use a cheap switch or router in both ends .
your 100' is no problem, but I'd put in som buried conduit- along with a TV coax......

[Matt Radtke]

Actually you can do fiber "on the cheap". Check out Mitchell Andrus's thread (with lots of comments from me) on that exact subject. My total cost was similar to buying enough waterproof cat5e and a couple surge protectors would have been. I used a surplus Corning fiber cable from Ebay and a couple soho-grade transcievers. We also found a source for new built-to-order fiber cables that wasn't too bad.

I'm more talking about total cost: the fiber, termination, fiber nic or switch, etc etc.

[Matt Meiser]

So am I Matt. SOHO grade brand new Fiber-Ethernet media converters $25 each and a surplus brand new pre-terminated fiber assembly with a pull eye for $28. I want to say the quote I got on a pre-terminated assembly was about $125. Obviously none of this is enterprise-grade stuff but its working very nicely.

[Eduard Nemirovsky]

If you will be able to run coax cable to your shop, you will be able to use it for both - TV and Internet. 100' is not a long distance for coax. And using MoCA adapter ($140 for a pair) you wil have a high speed Internet in your shop too.
Ed.