Long-Run Data & Voice 1

[sbaldy1]

I need to connect three buildings together with data and voice. For the sake of this thread I will call them building A, B and C which are aligned respectfully. Building A and B are 850 ft apart and building B and C are 420 ft apart. Building A has a Mitel SX-200ML digital phone system and Cat5 cabling with a T1 connection (10/100 windows based network). The new cabling will be placed below grade (trenched) and will be run from bldg A to bldg B and then to bldg C. I need to get a minimum of 3-phone lines to bldg B and bldg C (6-total).

Questions:
1. What type of cabling should I use for the phone/data? What is the ballpark cost (material only)?
2. Do I need some type of booster equipment for the phone or network? What is the ballpark cost for the equipment?
3. Will I sacrifice quality in the phone connection or speed on the network connection?

I am not a network or phone guy and will not be installing this myself so don’t worry about the technical details. I am just looking at the feasibility and performance and then the cost of materials to do so.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

 

[skip555]

use direct bury cat3 cable for voice , distance shouldnt be a factor as I read it your under 1000'
just be sure whoever does it bonds and grounds the cable where it enters and leaves each building .use secondary lightning protection along with the primary

I would bury at min a 25 pair but better with 50 pair for expansion potenial bad pairs

use fiber for data

 

[franklin97355]

And fiber for the data.

 

[jimbopalmer]

50nm multimode fiber for data will be fine, I would bury at least 6 pairs, but 3 pair might do.

I tried to remain child-like, all I acheived was childish.

 

[sbaldy1]

I forgot to mention that this is a short term solution and consequently... is very cost sensitive. (The buildings will be demolished sometime in the next 3-years.) Fiber is a fairly expensive solution, is it not? What about Ethernet Extenders or long range ethernet (LRE)... do you have any experience with this technology? If these are valid options, are they more cost effective than fiber?

Thanks for your help.

 

[franklin97355]

How about wireless?

 

[tweege]

the fiber itself is not that expensive. can buy 12 strand for around .99/ft, or less. if you want it in innerduct that is around .40/ft. connectors around $5/each. can get liu's, fiber patch panel, for around $100/each. i charge $65/hr to run and terminate fiber. takes about 1 to 1 1/2 hrs. to terminate 12 strands. depending on where you are, should be able to get it all done for around $5k.

thanks, tim

 

[jimbopalmer]

if you abolutely HAVE to do it wrong, this is the right way to do it wrong

http://www.tutsys.com/mtu/enterprise.cfm

I tried to remain child-like, all I acheived was childish.

 

[telecomtekperson]

If you are going to do that, why not get Csico's LRE. Same thing but better....

 

[mikeydidit]

I would do this like Jimbo, Franklin, and skip suggested in the beginning this thread. 3 years is not that temporary. For the next 3 years these buildings are going to be depending on what you do right now to provide them with a reliable service for their voice and data needs. None of the cables that they mentioned will be that expensive and you will have something in place that you won't fix all the time and your people being without service.

If you really need to save money on this, I would look into small pair counts on direct buried cables (copper for the phones) to these buildings with small protection units. For the fiber, they do have indoor/outdoor rated fiber cables that have small pair counts and are fairly inexpensive.


Mike Jones
Louisiana State University Health Sciences center

 

[skip555]

the big cost is in the labor to bury , I would suspect that the diffrence between a 6 pair and a 25 pair wouldnt be much more than a 100 or so

compare that to finding that the needs have changed and you now need 8 pair and you have 6 or a couple of pair have gone bad and you have no spare.

you could still go with a 6 pair building protector and just ground the unused 18 pair .

 

[telecomtekperson]

I have Cisco's LRE in a few malls in chicago and they have been working fine for over a year.

Do you have a clear line of site? There are products that are wireless. I have a few of those also....

 

[tschuy]

Do it right and go with Fiber. you have to ask yourself how much will it cost the company for each day a building is down from data and phones. Fiber is not that expensive anymore.

 

[robertjo24]

TSCHUY is correct, and his point cannot be stressed enough.
TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) is more than the initial installation costs. You must also look at what it will cost you to spend many hours per month managing trouble calls, real or imagined, from your end users.
I would agree with many ideas presented in the other posts, if this were a 6-12 month temporary installation. Three years is a long time to manage a “temporary” solution, and often times these long term temp solutions get extended out to five years or more.
In today’s business environment, allot can change in three years!

 

[tschuy]

As for your phone systems I'd do a bit more research and get something more substantial then cat. 3. Heck it's not even a standard now when doing new instalations with my company. We use cat. 5e. Also plan your phone wiring to allow another 50% in growth. so instead of just 3 lines per building plan on at least 5. Sure enough a year down the road you may find that another phone line will be needed and you'll kick yourself in the butt for not pulling the additional line. Least with running cat. 5e you can borrow another pair from the cable if you need to and not worry about the noise from two phones sharing the same cable. Cat. 3 you might...

TCO is all what it is about and if your senior management can't understand that then they are in the wrong positions. But its up to the IT expert to explain what they need and the consequences for going to cheap. Plan out your system with costs for both and help them understand.

http://www.siemon.com

has a lot of good data on thier site that will help you out.

 

[Jtodd]

I"ve mentioned this in a couple other threads, but VDSL works really well for data. Published specs say 15MB, and we've hit 11MB, and it works over one pair of copper. It's a point-to-point solution, so you'd need two sets (one for Bldg B and one for Bldg C if A is your hub). Fairly simple setup and config. Here is what we've been using:

http://www.zyxel.com/product/model....dexcate1=1022823298&indexFlagvalue=1021873638

We've got two buildings running on these (they'll be in use there for about 4 years by the time we take them out), and we also use them for contractors constructions trailers.

This way all you have to run is the copper between each building. I'd suggest a 50 pair if you go this route. No extra installation or termination.

Justin T. Clausen
Physical Layer Implementation
California State University, Monterey Bay

 

[tschuy]

Cool solution...But the first time you have to move a large file from one building location or migrate data from one server in one build to another, I bet one will wish that they went with fiber in the first place.

Just my humble opinion


Cheers....