Connecting My Garage to my House Network

I want to connect my garage to my home network. I will have 3 rooms connected to a network and woul like to connect the garage using a hub. I don't have the budget to go wireless so I have to use CAT-5 wire. Is it OK to run this wire from the house to the garage? Should I uplink from a hub in the house to one in the garage? How should I run the wire? Should I run it from the attic in the house to the roof on the garage? Please help.

 

I would definately have it insulated in some kind of conduit or PVC. Bury some PVC and run it to the garage.

 

This will sound nuts, but buy some garden hose, and thread your CAT-5 through that, then bury the garden hose under ground.

Thats how I linked two houses together for networking. Total run to the second house is 350 feet. I left plenty of slack and needed 160 feet of hose to run house to house and teh rest is running through walls, under floors, etc. Come straight out of a port on a hub in house #1 and go straight to the nic on a PC in house #2. Running NetBEUI and TCP/IP with no problems. The general rule is to keep the CAT-5 runs to 300 feet or less.

Sounds like your set up is a good candidate for a garden hose network. Have fun puttng the RJ-45's on the CAT-5. Test the cable before you thread it in the hose and bury it though.

 

And don't use a hose that has any water in it!! Just feed the CAT5 through the hose with no ends on them and crimp them when you are done. Get good quality cable and +300 feet isn't a problem.

 

How far should I dig the hole? Once I have dug the hole and placed the hose with the CAT 5 in it, how would I feed it into the garage? Do I cut a small hole in the wall?

 

How should I know? I am a tech Jim, not a freemason....LOL
Be inventive and make a run to the local hardware store or home improvement place for some ideas.