Thoughts on direct burial cat6

Jessie.slimer

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I'm going to be running a couple of 200+ ft cat6 cables out to a pole where I plan to mount a PTZ, and was wondering what you guys thought about cable, since I don't want to have to redo it. Cable will probably be around 12 inches underground.

I'm looking at this one from Monoprice

Monoprice Cat6 Ethernet Bulk Cable - Outdoor Watertape Direct Burial, S/FTP, Solid, 550MHz, Pure Bare Copper, 23AWG, No Logo, 1000ft, Black (TAA)

Any other suggestions? Watertape the suggested method vs gel?
 

biggen

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I've never done direct burial myself for Cat5e/6. I've always buried the grey electrical PVC pipe and run outdoor rated (but not direct burial rated) network cable through that. I have done direct burial of electrical conductor (e.g. trailer cable feeder) and never had an issue but that was much deeper at 3 feet.

Reading the reviews it seems the main issue with that cable is its so thick that putting RJ45 connectors onto it is a challenge. Other than that, I don't see why it wouldn't work so long as you are careful where you dig in the future.
 

Jessie.slimer

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In Illinois you probably want to go deeper than 12". Check local code. Also there is red 'Buried Electric Line' tape that you should/could bury over the cable to alert anyone digging in that area.
Good call, ill check code. Hopefully it will be fine, probably considered low voltage.
 

mat200

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I'm going to be running a couple of 200+ ft cat6 cables out to a pole where I plan to mount a PTZ, and was wondering what you guys thought about cable, since I don't want to have to redo it. Cable will probably be around 12 inches underground.

I'm looking at this one from Monoprice

Monoprice Cat6 Ethernet Bulk Cable - Outdoor Watertape Direct Burial, S/FTP, Solid, 550MHz, Pure Bare Copper, 23AWG, No Logo, 1000ft, Black (TAA)

Any other suggestions? Watertape the suggested method vs gel?
HI @Jessie.slimer

This is how I would do it based on what I have read from posts here:

PVC pipe, gel filled cat5e/6 burial cable.
( pipe protects from critters digging, some protection from a shovel strike,.. gel-filled protects when water eventually gets into the pipe )

While running it consider another parallel PVC pipe for AC electrical line.
 

spammenotinoz

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I'm going to be running a couple of 200+ ft cat6 cables out to a pole where I plan to mount a PTZ, and was wondering what you guys thought about cable, since I don't want to have to redo it. Cable will probably be around 12 inches underground.

I'm looking at this one from Monoprice

Monoprice Cat6 Ethernet Bulk Cable - Outdoor Watertape Direct Burial, S/FTP, Solid, 550MHz, Pure Bare Copper, 23AWG, No Logo, 1000ft, Black (TAA)

Any other suggestions? Watertape the suggested method vs gel?
Where possibly lay fibre to mitigate the risk of lightning strikes from nearby trees, or install additional lightning arrestors. I have seen a deployments where a nearby strike, absolutely fried every Ethernet connected appliance at both ends of the run.
The risk varies by geographical location, but be warned it won't just fry the switch ports at each end, but can fry the entire physical ethernet network.

Ohh and laptops and devices on wireless were fine, just the physically connected ethernet devices (PC's, TV, switches, smart hubs were all toast)
 

Jessie.slimer

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Where possibly lay fibre to mitigate the risk of lightning strikes from nearby trees, or install additional lightning arrestors. I have seen a deployments where a nearby strike, absolutely fried every Ethernet connected appliance at both ends of the run.
The risk varies by geographical location, but be warned it won't just fry the switch ports at each end, but can fry the entire physical ethernet network.

Ohh and laptops and devices on wireless were fine, just the physically connected ethernet devices (PC's, TV, switches, smart hubs were all toast)
Will look into surge protection. We don't get lightning near us, and our flagpole out front is grounded 12 feet into the ground, but I don't need fried electronics either.
 

th182

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While running it consider another parallel PVC pipe for AC electrical line.
Definitely go PVC conduit larger than you think and an extra run of it if you can. I ran ethernet and power out to my shed last year and included an extra PVC run. I ended up using it for more low voltage cable and already wish I had used bigger PVC for ease of running more Ethernet through it.

If you ever need another Ethernet wire or one goes bad, you'll be glad you can just pull another through instead of having to dig it again.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

looney2ns

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Will look into surge protection. We don't get lightning near us, and our flagpole out front is grounded 12 feet into the ground, but I don't need fried electronics either.
Where in the world in Illinois do you NOT have lightning? The flagpole has nothing to do with your Ethernet run.
A strike two miles away can cause an induced surge on the Ethernet run.
I'd go the fiber route or use Ubiquity nano stations.
 

ctgoldwing

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Where in the world in Illinois do you NOT have lightning? The flagpole has nothing to do with your Ethernet run.
A strike two miles away can cause an induced surge on the Ethernet run.
I'd go the fiber route or use Ubiquity nano stations.
THIS ^^^
I have a 120' amateur radio tower up. Last summer we had a lightning hit. It did not hit the tower. I have an 'solar powered electric fence charger'. There is approximately 800 ft of wire parallel to and 4 feet above the ground. The fence charger literally blew up. Induced currents came into the house on (apparently) the cable line. Almost everything connected to the ethernet was destroyed including my NAS, 3 computers and every device on my lan except one computer. This was BC (before cameras) so I had no ethernet wire outside.
The 'hit' was quite some distance away. We were in the house and didn't realize we had been whacked until I found all the computer gear down. We never heard a quick flash bang that you would if the strike was close.
 

Jessie.slimer

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Yeah after some more research I'm thinking I will go wireless or fiber. Even though I don't think I've seen a lightning strike close to the house since I've been here, I see what yall are talking about with induced voltage from nearby strikes. Thanks for talking me out of a bad idea, maybe saved a bunch of electronics.
 

biggen

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So long as you have line of sight, wireless works really well. I have a pair of Nanobeams running at one location that bridges the "gap" between two buildings that don't have a hard line between them. Works wonderful.
 

Jessie.slimer

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Nice. Yes, definitely line of sight. I'll be back likely to get some advice setting it up. I may put a cam in my barn too if its that easy. Can one transmitter send to two recievers? Not sure if there is switching capability there. Im still new to that tech.
 

shalem2014

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From experience and investigation into lightning induced network damage, the problem is usually caused by having multiple grounds. For example, when running an Ethernet cable between two buildings (say, a house and a barn several hundred feet away), each building has its own ground rod. When there is a lightning strike anywhere in the area, it creates a big voltage gradient over the surface of the ground, and you could have a brief spike of hundreds or thousands of volts between the two buildings. A solution is to install an Ethernet surge suppressor at each location. Double-check that the suppressor protects all eight Ethernet leads, has a ground lead, and that you connect that wire to a good ground as it won't offer any protection otherwise. If you have a lightning strike nearby, you will probably have to replace both suppressors as they often short out with big surges, but do manage to protect your equipment. I wouldn't be too worried about a single, PoE camera on the end of a cable run. Just make sure it's electrically isolated from conductive material and freestanding, and throw in an Ethernet surge suppressor at the PoE switch end for a good measure, and you'll be fine.
Do not make the mistake I made of running extra ground rods and grounding equipment! This is what creates the problem! Next storm that came over, I had many blown devices, an Ethernet switch with burnt traces and a PC with the southbridge blown off the motherboard. Finally realizing that this was not magnetic/EMP related but rather a common ground difference issue, I eliminated the additional ground rods and moved the ground connection for the network/computer circuit in the barn to the neutral bar in the breaker box (which is connected to the ground rod at the house), and haven't had any issues since.
 

actran

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From experience and investigation into lightning induced network damage, the problem is usually caused by having multiple grounds. For example, when running an Ethernet cable between two buildings (say, a house and a barn several hundred feet away), each building has its own ground rod. When there is a lightning strike anywhere in the area, it creates a big voltage gradient over the surface of the ground, and you could have a brief spike of hundreds or thousands of volts between the two buildings. A solution is to install an Ethernet surge suppressor at each location. Double-check that the suppressor protects all eight Ethernet leads, has a ground lead, and that you connect that wire to a good ground as it won't offer any protection otherwise. If you have a lightning strike nearby, you will probably have to replace both suppressors as they often short out with big surges, but do manage to protect your equipment. I wouldn't be too worried about a single, PoE camera on the end of a cable run. Just make sure it's electrically isolated from conductive material and freestanding, and throw in an Ethernet surge suppressor at the PoE switch end for a good measure, and you'll be fine.
Do not make the mistake I made of running extra ground rods and grounding equipment! This is what creates the problem! Next storm that came over, I had many blown devices, an Ethernet switch with burnt traces and a PC with the southbridge blown off the motherboard. Finally realizing that this was not magnetic/EMP related but rather a common ground difference issue, I eliminated the additional ground rods and moved the ground connection for the network/computer circuit in the barn to the neutral bar in the breaker box (which is connected to the ground rod at the house), and haven't had any issues since.
@shalem2014 Did you come across a good webpage that explains this?
 

biggen

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Nice. Yes, definitely line of sight. I'll be back likely to get some advice setting it up. I may put a cam in my barn too if its that easy. Can one transmitter send to two recievers? Not sure if there is switching capability there. Im still new to that tech.
Yes but you have to get the right equipment for PtMP (Point to Multi Point): airMAX - Which product should I use?

I'd do something like this for the base station (receiver) and then the NanoBeam NBE-5AC-Gen2 for the camera locations.
 
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