# Running CAT 5/6 cable on outside of house



## Newshawk (Sep 3, 2004)

Has anyone had any experience running CAT 5 or 6 cable on the exterior of a house? I want to remove the "temporary" CAT 6 run down the hallway and make it permanent. I want to avoid doing any wall fishing or attic work at this time, so I wanted to see if anyone else has had any luck with an external run.


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## Michael D'Angelo (Oct 21, 2006)

I have one ethernet cable outside (about 15' to 20' of it) and it has been like that for a year without a problem. It is ran up the wall on the back of my house in the weather.


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## kevinwmsn (Aug 19, 2006)

I ran several Cat5e runs outside of my parents house that have been there about 5 years and it still working great. But only about 10 foot of it is outside. Just try to keep most of the wiring inside of the house, and close to same path of current exterior wiring to zip tie it up nice and neat.


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## Sharkie_Fan (Sep 26, 2006)

I have an outdoor run at the office, spanning a driveway, probably 50' or so, that's been up for over 5 years.

We bought an outdoor rated Cat 5 cabling, which, I think just has a little more durable covering that's less susceptible to failure in the weather. Since ours is running between two buildings about 15' up, we had it professionally done, and that was what the installer recommended.

I'm not sure how much more durable the "outdoor" cable is compared to the regular stuff, but for this application, it wasn't a question we were going to find out the answer to the hard way. No network, no work getting done, and that's a bad thing.

I'm guessing a run on the outside of the house tacked up with whatever other cables you have out there is probably less susceptible to failure than our setup would be.


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