How long of run can I have for reliable performance from a Cat5e and DB-9 adapter for serial control?

I've gone 50' with no problems. You may have to slow down the baud rate for long runs. I believe someone makes a RS232 'repeater' for long distances.

I have gone hundreds of feet on cat5 with zero trouble. I have done this hundreds of times. The spec for rs232 was written like in the 1940's and most engineers cover their butt by including the original spec but really I have seen very few problems related to just length, mainly you are more likely to have other issues.

It will depent on the Baud rate. Slower will run longer.

That's an interesting read. At the end it talks about maximum lengths, etc.

[Link: lammertbies.nl]

Actually I wanna convey my msg clear, that is I wanna access my lighting tower through RS-232 as per protoclo we could do this but.. exactly the same question arised in my mind too.. How much distance it could sustain.. the signal.. let me know.. 

Regards,
James.

Yep, this has been my experiance. I have some runs as long as 50' no issues and then I have a 35' run which I needed a powered repeater.

By protocol, 60 feet is the maximum length. In fact 100 feet wil work reliablly. Gregg's response is correct. At 9600bps you can go much further, reliably, than at 11500bps. I believe that sending RS232 hundreds of feet very bad practice, if you are not using short haul modems or RS-422, particularly with CAT5. On a shielded, twisted pair with very low capacitance, like Cresnet you will do better, more reliably.

Up to 125 feet I'd use CAT5. Over that try a device server or some other protocol converter.

Alan

I agree with Alan but will add one thing. Over long distances it may work great now but likley won't after a year or two. 422 is much better over longer distances

Yes, all true...

simple rule of thumb.

Long Distance, lower your Baud (if you can !!)
and I have sent 232 over all kinds of cables too(RG6 if I had too), as long as the baud is low enough.

if you need to send 232 over long distance and you want reliability try this product.

Digi One SP
[Link: digi.com]

Cheers guys.

Alan is right on this. We did a project a year ago where we were attempting to control an Orion Video Wall. We intially ran cat5 (75 - 100 feet) to the screens for control. The Orion Baud rate was 11500 bps and ran into all kinds of problems. We had to run crestnet to an ST-COM at the video wall and it finally worked for us.