LAN and power cables together?

[Fretzen]

Hi all,

It's my first post so I take the opportunity to present myself to the community.

Now to the point. I have a customer that wants me to expand his LAN to a room in his office that doesn't have any LAN connectors on the wall. They need high speed networking so WiFi is not an option. I will have to throw a new cat5e or cat6 cable to that room. The problem is that they are no internal LAN cable tubes to that room and even from the nearest LAN connector it would be a very large and dificult path to take the cable along the wall with a glue pistol. Also my customer says he wouldn't like to see so much cable running through his office.

Other option would be to use over wall cable racks but as I said is a long way the cable has to run and I even would have to drill some holes. He won't like that. Of course he would have to accept it if there is no other option but I found one possibility.

That room has power plugs, of course. Talking with the man that makes general fixes in the office (paint, electricity, etc.) he says that the power cord to that room comes from a plug in another room that has a LAN connector just next to it. So the possibility would be to pull the LAN cable through the same tube along with the power cords. I know this should never be done but it's a desperate case and it would be for only 5 or 6 m. (16 to 20 ft.). As it will be a good cable (cat5e or cat6 as I said before) maybe it's shielded enough to avoid any interferences.

Has anyone done something like this before? Do you think it will work without problems or are you sure it will not work? I will appreciate any feedback from you guys.

Thanks in advance.

 

[tkrabec]

I believe that most electrical and network cabling codes require that low voltage cables (network) and high voltage (power) be separated. There are some Network over power solutions but I'm not sure on the speed. However if Telephone wires exist it would probably acceptable to run network and phone in same conduit, and even over the same cable.

 

[Fretzen]

Thanks for your answer Tim.

I know that power and network cables should be separated. It would be ok if the room had a telephone connection because I could use that tube to bring the LAN cable in but it hasn't. It seems that in the past this room was some sort of store room so it only has a power plug. Now they want to throw in a small desk with a PC and they need a LAN connection.

What I would like to know is if someone has ever put together in the same tube LAN and power cables for a small distance and what was the result. If it doesn't work at all I won't bother trying and wasting cable and time with this idea. If no one knows I would have to try myself and then I will post here the results!

Thanks again.

 

[Blues]

I know of a place that has network cable outside near power lines this cable is also in trees and been run over. This cable is over a distance of 500 feet so how much damage will that really cuase not much. The real concern is about any code violations you don't want your client slapped with some fine. Find out those details and then you can just tell them that the options you have for them are X, Y, and Z. This means X which requires running the cable in some manner that hides it will require extra cost. Y might be an unknown where you know what it should do but you have yet to use this solution. Z being it will work it is cheap but they will not get full preformance ie Wireless. I don't see a real problem with wireless as at 54 megabits unless your transfering 1GB+ and frequently they aren't even gunna know.

 

[tkrabec]

I personally would not worry about the code violations, I would just advise against them and not make the code violation my self. They separate the low and high voltage for the simple reason of electrocution and electrical shock. I would hate to have screwed up and stripped enough insulation to get some one killed because I mixed my wires.

 

[Fretzen]

Oh, I thought that Tim was talking about technical codes not laws!

In this case it will be a very short cable run so I hope it will work. Thanks for the info Blues. They have a 1Gbit network and they move around very big files. They will notice a WiFi.

So I will try it and post here the results. I hope the cable police won't come to take a look!

I will clearly identify the cables in both sides to be sure no one ends shocked touching the wrong cable.

Thank you all.

 

[Blues]

What he means by shocking yourself is if while running it the wires get stripped and touch and you can fry yourself or electronics on the ethernet. Yes we are talking about legal code violations building codes which if they have any type of inspection then it can easily be found in many cases. The problem is not so much the fines and legal problems they will encounter but the fact they will recal quickly and with little hesitation just who ran that cable.

 

[greggh]

Simple powerline ethernet equipment.

http://www.icintracom.com/america/h....html?osCsid=a4d363f87d272b9eff577a7f12558fc9

Speed: 200 Mbps Networking Across Your Entire AC Powerline Network

You connect one end to your router and then a wall socket. The other end to a wall socket in the room you want networking in. You can go from that one to a computer or a switch (to split it up for more systems.) OR you can go right into one of these on the other end to get a wireless access point:

http://www.icintracom.com/america/h....html?osCsid=a4d363f87d272b9eff577a7f12558fc9


Thats what I would use.