I am bidding on cabling for a second building and LAN must be fiberoptic due to distance (800ft) away but what about telephone? Must I place a repeater for the telephone to allow it to handle the distance? If so, where do I turn for equipment to boast the telephone signal? If this is not the correct forum, any suggestions regarding another place to ask this question?

Mike Zemina

This message was edited by mzemina on 11/01/04 15:42 ET.

We just finished a job that is 650' between buildings. Fiber for the network and 25 pr cat5 UG for the Panasonic phone system. System works well.

Paul Riordan
Riordan Brothers

Telephones of all types except for VoIP will do fine on Cat 3 let alone cat5. Electronic and digital systems have limitations which are peculiar to each system but POTS lines can go a lot longer than 800 feet on wire of lesser awg and twist per inch than any data grade cable. You have some investigating to do as far as what kind and how many phones will be used and don't forget to plan in some capacity for future growth and redundancy.

I agree with Shoe about the CAT-3. I never waste the money on -5 for phones. I use 4-pair -3 and have no qualms about using all of the pairs.

Another possibility is to have a separate phone service installed in the new building, especially if the existing PBX/CPU doesn't have the expansion room.

Larry,

I'm skeptical as to whether shoe is RECOMMENDING cat-3 over cat-5 for phones, just that he is stating it will work..I could be wrong!

However...at less the $.05/foot difference in price, WHY would you EVER jeapordize a current clients ability to change that phone drop to a network or VoIP drop down the road, and only run Cat-3?

and mzemina, welcome to this forum!

if, however, you had done a SEARCH on some of the kewords in your topic, you would have been immediatley rewarded with this result.

[Link: remotecentral.com]

in it, there are numerous accurate answers, including those from a phone system sales/support professional!

sorry if this is harsh...but your number one tool starting out in this industry (says so in your profile) is to use your brain, and ALL available tools, to solve a problem!

Remote Central is one of the best tools ever devised for our industry, and you've found it quickly...learn to use the search features, and google, and you'll get more information than you ever hoped for!

By the way..it depends as much on the GAUGE of the wire as the distance!

Good luck!

WELCOME

I agreed with avdude. Also is easy for me to carry just one kind of cable in my truck that will allow me to do both phone and network wiring.

AVDUDE:
Might you tell me what is the bandwidth of CAT-3? Might it not already be between 8 and 10 times the bandwidth needed for VoIP and far more than is required for any POTs or telephone application?

It can actually be argued that in a residential application where file sharing does not take place you do not need the bandwidth.

Now if Junior is hosting LAN parties or gaming you would almost certainly want the bandwidth but Larry or I would have a data wire for this. But you already have a bottle neck and that is the limited bandwith supplied by the ISP. Cable modems are capable of a miximum of 1.5 bps but speeds rarely approach this in fact. More typical are speeds around 700-750 kbs which is also typical of DSL connections. Data pros run voice and data wires and use CAT3 for voice. There are any number of technical reasons why one might use CAT3 for voice, some of them being a more relaiable termination on 66 block or less likelihood of a wire breaking ( due to untwisting the tight twiest ). Cost is not a factor as both are cheap. But CAT3 is capable of 10MHz and 10Mhz is more bandwidth than you will ever need for any voice application any application. Not long ago data networks existed on 10MHz networks. Digilynx carries full bandwidth uncompressed audio with room to spare on 10MHz networks. They want the rest of the bandwidth of a CAT5e for full bandwidth high definition video. Unless you are suggesting that voice wires will need to carry uncompressed high definition video I can see no reason to use - and find valid reasons not to use - CAT5 for voice. If we are to use our brains you might wish to think through the application. Why not use RG-11 for RF applications. It has lower signal loss. Why not #2 gage for speaker runs. Far less resistance on long runs. People are already voting with their feet by selecting wireless networks that have less bandwidth than a wired network but this has more than enough bandwidth to accomplish what they want: getting on the Internet. 10MHz will be sufficient for VoIP, even if video were added to it; at least with respect to any VoIP specification I have seen.

Alan

This message was edited by Audible Solutionns on 11/02/04 07:17 ET.

I might. I beleive it's 10-20Mhz, but I'll have to get back to you for sure, since it's been SOOOO long since I've used it for anything...


Again, as I stated above, it's NOT neccesarily the bandwidth that's the problem (which, Like I said I'll check into) but the distance. As with any other wire debate we've had here in the past, there IS a a maximum performance based on the length of the run. For POTS, 800 feet would be undeniably no problem, for VoIP, it would also likely not be a huge issue...for ehternet to get any real speed, it would be a huge problem. Since Belden and Liberty both recommend 350Mhz bandwidth Cat-5e for data applications, and further state you can only CERTIFY that run to ~330 Feet, then there must be something to it...

It can also be argued that you are doing your customer's a GRAVE injustice if you are presenting this theory! Someday, it WILL be wrong.


This is an absolutely false statement, at least around here. In North Denver, I have comcast high speed, and I regurlay check my speeds, as they just recently upped them. I used the tests on www.pcpitstop.com, and www.dslreports.com, and www.bandwidthplace.com, ALL three regularly place my connection at 2.9-3.4 Meg, and have been as high as 4.2 meg (their claimed speed, for my service, in my area, 3.5. At our shop, in central Denver, and behind a different node, they claim 4.5, and we regularly hit 4.0

|More typical

I have never had this problem with any high quality 66 Block, I think manufacturers have simply adapted to them, knowing many people would be pulling cat-5 to them.
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( due to untwisting the tight twiest ).
|

have never had this one happen either

Here's all I would advance, and I hope all would agree. We should all be wiring, ALL the time, for maximun potential possibilty at the time. If your client ever decided to CHANGE a single phone jack to a data jack, and would expect it to perform at the same level, wouldn't you rather just have the wire in place to CYA?

I want to thank everyone for the responses (especially avdude for the link that had what I was looking for).

avdude - Sorry that my initial search didn't pull up what I was looking for, I guess I used the wrong search key words. I only came across this forum (actually I didn't know about the custom installer's lounge section) from someone else providing the link that pointed me the right direction. Thanks for your chastising and pushing me to use my noggin, getting started with this job there are so many areas that I don't feel I can do the job by myself (been out of work - corporate layoff in June '04) but have been looking to knowledgeable people who I can ask a few questions and get the answers which will get me over those rough spots of the unknown.

Again, all of you, many thanks for your help!

I was in a time cruch due to getting the fiber-optic dude out this morning to see what he will chare for the pull and termination and am planning to pull 25pair telephone bundle along with the fiberoptic cable down the 2" buried conduit this weekend and just wanted to have my ducks in a row when I met with him. The new building will have an additional 6 phones that will tie into the Nortel system which is in the main building.

Mike

Just FYI, the Nortel system, which I installed in a past life (and am certified on), will support at least 1000ft on cat3 and each instrument requires 1 pr. The phones communicate at 9600bps (may be faster now but not lan speeds) and are fully digital. There is no data (it's on the fiber) on the copper and 25 pair cable in 1000ft rolls is significantly cheaper than the same in Cat5. Can't use it for ethernet because Cat5 is only speced out to 100meters (339 ft?). I would save the dough and it would not compromise the system in any way.