I was wondering if I could run an ethernet cable from my router inside to my shed and connect it to another router so I can have ethernet and wifi in my shed.
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Yes, probably run an outdoor CAT6 cable and bury if needed.
Permission granted
Yes, you can run Ethernet from your home router to your shed.
Ideally you’d use conduit to protect the cable, or use Ethernet cable designed for outdoor use. However, I’ve seen normal Ethernet cables last 10+ years outside without issue.
As others have mentioned, ideally the router in the shed will have DHCP turned off, and the incoming line will go into one of the normal Ethernet ports (not the WAN/Internet port). This will allow two-way communication between your house and shed (IE, your computers, network drives, network printers, network cameras, etc. can all see each other no matter which router they are connected to). However, if you only need Internet you can just plug the Ethernet cable into the WAN/Internet port on the shed’s router.
I’ve seen normal Ethernet cables last 10+ years outside without issue.
Northern New England here, have had a UTP Cat 6 cable running from my house to the shed for about 5 years, I didn’t even bury it. Not suggesting its the right way to do it, but it works fine. I do network installs all day, last thing I feel like doing at home is work :p
Can you?
Yes.
Should you?
Probably not.
I have $6000 worth of burned out electronics to help you understand that this in not the best idea.
I’d use fiber instead. If you are not using fiber and you insist on going with copper you need a really good burial AND really good surge protection on each end.
If your shed is only 15M away, you’ll be fine using CAT6 OSP shielded. It’s designed for direct burial so no conduit needed. If you are really concerned about anything getting fried make sure to use shielded RJ45 connectors and shielded patch panel.
I’ll have to ask my dad first, but I’ll get back to you.
You can, but depending on the setup you should be aware of a few things:
- make sure you don’t have a ground potential difference.
- use appropriate rated cabling and not plain UTP
- you may want surge protection on that line coming in from outside
Do your homework and stay safe.
Study hard, don’t do drugs
For these reasons I would personally use a poe switch in my house and a poe powered access point in the second building.
I just think fiber is cheaper and easier on these cases.
There is no problem with doing that in principle, as long as the cable is protected and the run is less than about 100m.
If longer than 100m what would be different?
Theoretical maximum distance of ethernet.
Another option is just a wireless bridge.
For example (and certainly there are cheaper versions)
https://store.ui.com/us/en/pro/category/all-wifi/products/ubb
Don’t run any copper cable outside your building .WLAN or fiber converter is your solution. You can lose your home not only the LAN 🫵
you can but you should run fiber instead unless you want lightning to fry a bunch of your stuff
Lighting will travel thru fiber .
Or just use a surge protected hub at the shed end.
just use a switch and access point in the shed instead of a router. you would have to make sure you get all the router specific settings turned off and some routers don’t let you do that. if you are unsure about it, access point and switch is much simpler.
Thats a bit more money though
not really. a gigabit unmanaged switch is about 10 quid these days and you can get older enterprise access points from Aruba for about 15 quid on eBay. or a slower consumer unit from TPLink on Amazon for about the same price.
Almost all home routers are really just switches, and you can run them in switch mode. What you want to do is fine as long as the run isn’t too long. 100 meters is the max
Just wanna throw it out, unless you have a brand that allows meshing routers…. Like Asus! It’s literally just a setting in the control panel haha. You just select the backbone method after plugging it in and it pretty much handles the rest!
Just to be clear….”meshing” means a wireless backhaul. Multiple APs delivering WiFi with a wired backhaul is just WiFi as it was intended.
Huh, interesting! While I am in the field, I always thought of wired backbone as still mesh… guess that’s why I can’t find a job 😂
I was going to say the same thing …I kept reading to see if anyone else did.
Yes. Use CAT6 direct burial and appropriate connectors. Good to 328-feet.
- Use proper outdoor/direct burial rated cable (regular cat5/6 isn’t gonna survive…)
- Grounding is an issue. Make sure you do not have a ground potential issue. Also, install an ESD/surge device just to help. Cheap, and better safe than sorry.
- Honestly, media converters and/or SFP capable network switches aren’t expensive. Conduit plus fiber doesn’t have any of these issues. Worth considering.
Fiber… that being said, it wouldn’t cost much to run a few ethernets out as a failsafe.
