Is this an ethernet booster?

[thecompu-doctor]

A friend asked me to assist him at his fathers office. They have two buildings beside each other, about 150 feet appart. There was a cat5 cable run between the two many years ago underground.

They are having some stability issues with dropped connection at the second office. Details are still sketchy as to weather it is full drop, or just dropped from the server, but still have internet connectivity. I tested the data run on each end and checked the terminations and they all checked out just fine.

In each office the line feeding the patch panel goes into one of these boxes, before it exits the building. I'm not sure what this is, but I think it may be a booster.

 

[oldtech]

It's a demarc or grounding block. required by code a lot of places. Its function is to keep any lightning strikes from entering the building without a path to ground.

 

[thecompu-doctor]

Ah. It didn't look like any booster I'd ever seen, but now I know why. Thanks

 

[citizensmith]

150 feet should work, that lightening protector looks suspect. I'd throw a new cable at it or a fibre optic link

 

[thecompu-doctor]

I Re- terminated these connections and at both patch panels anyways. I just heard from the customer and he said things have been going great so far today. But it is too early to say it's resolved.
Citizen, what makes you think it looks suspect?

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Yup old style ground/surge break.
Newer styles, we use some that APC makes, NetProtect.
If you just need 100 meg it does the job, if you need gigabit I'd replace it with something newer.

 

[citizensmith]

I Re- terminated these connections and at both patch panels anyways. I just heard from the customer and he said things have been going great so far today. But it is too early to say it's resolved.
Citizen, what makes you think it looks suspect?

Goog job on making it work.
Old school comms guy - miles of point to point cables on airfields without arrestors. Admittedeley it was armoured cable with an earthed at one end braid. Im not a fan of chock block / terminal inline connectors.
Is lightening that bad over there? I've never seen an arestor on tv aerials in uk or here. Some of the had core HAMs have them on there aerial farm

 

[frederick]

Thays an ugly ground. I only see them in older buildings here. If you are having connectivity issues, have you traced for signal leakage?

I'd replace the unit. APC makes a great product to replace this. I'd upgrade the cable, replace the Cat5 with some STP Cat6 Outdoor cable to join the buildings. Two runs should be adequate connecting to a Load Balancing switch using the APC NetProtect.

 

[thecompu-doctor]

Thanks guys for all the great advice. I don't think the client is going to want to spend the money to run new cable, as long as we can make it stable. They have about 4 client machines in and a printer in the second building. SO, i think they will be happy with 100m if we can make it stable. They've been living with this connection for about 10 years from what I was told.

So far, so good with the re-terminations. But it has been less than 24 hours thus far. Though they did say that over the past week they were dropping connection 20+ times per day.

 

[tankman1989]

It looks like some kind of fused surge protector. See if those 4 red things, with the 27 on them, pull out. I'm guessing those are the fuses if this is a fused block.

 

[frederick]

If they are happy with 100Mbs, then remove the block and replace with a more modern unit (I.e. NetProtect).

 

[Mercenary Roadie]

You say the buildings are 150 feet apart, what's the cable footage?

Nothing really wrong with what is installed except for the poor terminations that you fixed. It's in an office environment and I doubt they are even coming close to 100 meg.

 

[thecompu-doctor]

I estimate the cable is not much more than 150'. I don't know for sure, but the two rooms that the cable goes into in each building are on the outer edge adjacent to each other.

I haven't heard anything thus far today, so i'm keeping my fingers crossed that it was just old/poor terminations that were causing crappy connections.

Thanks everyone for the assistance.