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Anyone else have long Ethernet runs out of their house?
I have several going to outbuildings, long range wifi bridges set up past the tree line, the perimeter security cameras, that sort of thing.
Right now they're all running through a hole in my exterior wall to a patch panel inside, and this sounds like the normal way to do things. But that makes swapping or adding cables a huge bitch once you foam-seal the hole!
Is there any downside to adding a weatherproof patch panel outside and running my exterior-rated cables to it?
I've done long, ourdoor ethernet and fiber runs for business. Never used an outdoor patch panel. Honestly, we never even considered it. It's not that bad to remove foam seal, run some new cables, and add it back. If you're willing to splice cables, you could run a few extra unterminated strands out before sealing it up, but given how infrequently we changed our setup, we didn't even do that. Often we'd add a hub to an endpoint if we needed a few more drops at a single location. Climate control and security are always better inside buildings than outside them.
That's what I figured the industry position was. Although you're brave to say "always" without seeing my shitbox with vents to the crawlspace plugged with rags...
Some extra strands is a good idea. My issue is if I want to add extra cameras or control units at the property gate, I'm going to have to either add another batch of Ethernet for PoE to individual devices. Or run 120v in another conduit and a local PoE switch in an enclosure, at which point I may as well switch the whole thing to fiber.
But hell, why not just run some extra lines out there just in case, good idea. My time is more valuable than 5e (but less than 6).
Just gotta do a last check to make sure I've got my solid and stranded connectors right, and this damn project should finally be done.
Btw, do you have a favorite fitting for running out of a wall to conduit? I, uh, was going to "improvise"
lol
For the life of me, I cannot remember what kind of fittings we used there at my old job. I think we used 1" metallic conduit like this stuff all over the place, but it's been too long. I do remember we had a good system with pull strings so there was always one in the conduit: attach your pull string to the end of the cable you're pulling and to the end of a second pull string, then you pull them both and have a pull string ready for the next one if you ever need it.
On my suburban house with 4 POE security cameras, I literally just have a 1/2" hole with a bunch of ethernet cables running into my living room that has a glob of silicon caulk keeping for not letting air through. It works fine.
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