Hey Fools…long time no talk! Amazed to see so many familiar faces after all these years.
Got a question on Powerline Adapters.
I’ve recently retired and moved to rural New Hampshire, and bought my dream space.
In the process of having Boradband Service installed (unsure of flavor…a provider ran service down my driveway to the house, but with two providers in the area (Consolidated Fiber and Comcast Cable), I’m unsure who ran the service.)
Regardless, I’m currently trenching to deliver service from their demarc at the power pole to the main residence. I also want to run service both to my carriage/guest house, as well as my auto/wood shop. carriage/guest house is approximately 100 feet away from the main house, and the shop is almost 500 feet away.
Needless to say, I’d hate to trench to the shop…even with my backhoe, it would take for ever to reach that far.
I have my own transformer on the final power pole on the property, with 200 amp service to each of the buildings.
Does anyone have any experience with Powerline adapters? I’ve used them in-house, between rooms, with great success, but I’ve heard that if service was on the same transformer, it’s possible to run service between buildings.
The powerline adapters need to be on the same leg of the AC, so it doesn’t have to cross the transfer, too much signal loss is my guess… I used a pair to get from my ‘office’ to the garage where the drip controller was. Worked great for years until that drip controller failed and they were no longer in business. Replaced it with a WiFi Rachio unit, so I pulled the power line units out… My shop is 40 feet away, I’ve never brought ethernet out there as my wifi has worked OK, but I’d try the power line adapters, see if they work, if i had the need… I’d hate to dig it here, even at 40 feet, it’s a concrete pad to deal with!
A small rental ditchwitch might be easier as long as you know there are no other services in that path… Mark & Locate is a free service here…
Regardless, I’m currently trenching to deliver service from their demarc at the power pole to the main residence. I also want to run service both to my carriage/guest house, as well as my auto/wood shop. carriage/guest house is approximately 100 feet away from the main house, and the shop is almost 500 feet away.
I would not expect a powerline adapter to work when going 500+ feet.
I would probably rent a ditchwitch trencher, and put in conduit.
The rental will probably cost you $1k, but I think it’s the right tradeoff vs. doing it with a backhoe.
In the conduit, for 500+feet you’re going to need to do fiber. 500’ of fiber is ~$250. The hardware at each end will probably be another $250.
So you’re probably at $2k+.
But if you wanted to run water out to there, (ex. put in a hose bib / yard hydrant) you could do both at the same time in the same trench
I have a trenching bucket for my backhoe that works pretty well in my soil, so will be able to save some money going that route.
And I’ve already reached out to a friend in the business, who owns a WISP in Northern Virginia who will sell me Fiber and Media Converters at cost…so I got that going for me…
And great idea on taking the opportunity to lay down some water to the shop…
I’ll look into the link provided for the Point-to-Point…my friend in the biz primarily provides PTP Directional Wi-Fi connectivity to his customers in Rural Northern Virginia, and said he’d provide the necessary hardware (Radios and Antennas), again, at cost…but due the fact that I could kill two birds with one stone and lay fiber and water, I’m leaning towards the fiber solution.
It doesn’t involve an outage affecting other customers.
If a power line, it won’t risk electrocuting anybody.
If a gas line, it won’t risk explosions.
If a sewer line, it won’t risk creating a public health hazard.
And if you’re going to claim a right to run a line across someone else’s property, and then expect them to leave it alone, you really should be willing to let them know exactly where it is.
Do keep in mind that they won’t necessarily mark things that are your own underground activity. For example, they aren’t required to mark the circuit you have buried in the yard that’s going out to a light. But if you ask nicely, they probably will.
And for the OP - if you’re going to trench and put in conduit (and water line) - I would definitely put in something that can be traced - plastic pipes, conduit, and fiber don’t show up on the locators. But there is detectable tape that you can put just above the conduit and PVC pipe. (pricier than I thought it’d be for the detectable tape) And pulling a strand of wire through the conduit so it can be detected is an option too.
There is a maximum length to ethernet cable runs for an internet connection. This distance limit relates to the frequency of the signal and I want to say the limit is something like 100 meters.
I also am in the camp that says Powerline is not going to work. I have used Powerline connections and they are fine for things like email and browsing. Things like video that require more bandwidth are another item.
I suggest you investigate 5G service. This is recently available at our location – Gainesville, GA. The tower we would use is about 1.4 miles (as the crow flies) and according to T-Mobile we would have something in the range of 400 Mbps available. All the cell phone people are pushing their 5G, but T-Mobile currently has the broadest and densest coverage.
Worst case you would need to get two services – one for your house and another for say the shop. Another possibility is a “Mesh” network. I got an Orbi system back in 2016. I replaced that with the Eero recently – Eero is much easier to manage, about half the cost, has a longer guarantee and USA human tech support that you can speak with if email support doesn’t solve the problem quickly. (I got the Eero Pro 6 system.)
There is a maximum length to ethernet cable runs for an internet connection. This distance limit relates to the frequency of the signal and I want to say the limit is something like 100 meters.
You have a good memory. The protocols change (10BASE-T, 100BASE-T, 100BASE-T, 1000BASE-T, 10GBASE-T) and the wire types change (Cat-3 2 pair, Cat-5 2 pair, Cat-5 4 pair, Cat-5e, Cat-6 Unshielded, Cat-6 Shielded, Cat-6a, Cat-7), but going past 100 meters doesn’t seem to be in the cards for copper.
It is not stated there, but well known, that going to a higher type of cable is always acceptable. Right now Cat-6a is probably the logical choice for mainstream wiring, but the shielded version is always another option.
There is a maximum length to ethernet cable runs for an internet connection. This distance limit relates to the frequency of the signal and I want to say the limit is something like 100 meters.
That’s the official limit on total cable length between powered devices. The primary reason is collision detection.
(A collision is when two devices on the same network, thinking that the network is idle, try to send a packet at the same time. It’s important that BOTH devices detect the collision, by seeing the start of the other device’s packet, before they are finished sending their packets - and this relates to packet size, network speed, and distance.)
Actually, ethernet is probably good for somewhat longer runs provided that each end connects to either a single standalone device, or a router or switch (NOT A HUB!), that is operating at full duplex (meaning it can send and receive simultaneously). With such an arrangement, there is no possibility of collision on that cable.
(What’s a hub? You rarely see them anymore, fortunately. It’s basically an amplifier with a bunch of ethernet ports. Anything coming in through any port goes out through all ports - the amplifier is so that it goes out at the proper signal strength. No intelligence in the device.)
However there is also signal degradation.
A fiber connection uses a different protocol as well as a different sort of cable, and standard consumer-grade fibers and devices are good for about 3 miles.
Now as for the run out to the barn: often, INSTALLING a cable (any sort of permanent or semi-permanent installation) is more expensive than BUYING it. Also, disruptive. So you’re encouraged to install the highest quality cable that you can afford and can reasonably imagine a need for in the next decade or two. Even if you don’t currently want to buy devices that actually need that quality. For that matter, you may as well install a cable that provides multiple parallel connections - and/or more than one cable. You might need two or more connections in the future, and if a connection fails it’s nice to be able to just try a different one rather than immediately installing a new cable.
…I would definitely put in something that can be traced
Great advice…I have enough detectable underground marking tape from a previous job to take care of most of this current project.
And yeah…stuff is pricey…think I paid around $175 or so for a thousand foot roll…And instead of buying a specific application type (electric, water, gas, etc…) I bought the “Buried Utility” labeled tape…
And agreed; I’ve come to the conclusion after some reading that Powerline is probably not my solution.
Initial run from the demarc at the power pole to the house is on the provider; they confirmed that they will come out and bury the line.
The run to the Carriage/Guest house is relatively short (~100 feet or less) and just because I can, I plan on running that on fiber…that one is on me…
The run to the shop is the long one…close to 500 feet, but I have an office down there, and want the bandwidth required for streaming; mostly YouTube videos. I’ll either dig that myself, or possibly contract that out…depends on workload.
In addition, the shop will be the base of operations for a drone business I’m currently in the planning stages for. Will need the bandwidth for uploads/downloads of video imagery to various cloud based services, and a reliable high speed solution will be required.
5G is a no-go for me…in rural New Hampshire, and we don’t have the accessibility yet.
Need to research the mesh technology; have heard of it, but never investigated…methinks that’s tonight’s “Rabbit Hole”
Need to research the mesh technology; have heard of it, but never investigated…methinks that’s tonight’s “Rabbit Hole”
I wouldn’t try to use mesh to reach another building 500’ away.
But mesh is a nice way to do wifi that your phone/table/whatever can just seamlessly go from one hot spot to the next.
If possible, it is preferable to have all the nodes be have a wired link backhaul.
But if that isn’t possible, you can have your table talk to a mesh node that doesn’t have a wired backhaul, and that one talks to a node that does have the wired backhaul. It reduces the available bandwidth - and adds extra latency - but can help you get wifi coverage in a place that wouldn’t easily have it (ex. having an outdoor node on the deck that only needs power and lets you use your tablet out in the yard because the table connects to that node, which connects to one inside)
And you can keep all the nodes the same SSID, so you don’t have to choose which to connect to when you carry your tablet/phone from the shed to the house or vice-versa.