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.
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?
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
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.
Permission granted
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.
you can but you should run fiber instead unless you want lightning to fry a bunch of your stuff
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.
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 🫵
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
I was going to say the same thing …I kept reading to see if anyone else did.
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’ll have to ask my dad first, but I’ll get back to you.
- 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.
I get downvoted every time I respond to one of these posts but hey why not…
I strongly suggest running Fiber with a media converter on each end. This reduces the potential for lightning to travel from 1 structure to the other. Removes grounding concerns. It is by far the safest option.
Yeah I am thinking of going this route
mikrotic switches with sfp+ are relatively cheap and get you 10GB/s. It’s what I use in my separated garage on a 30m run. Melanox makes the card and fiber modules that i use, they are cheap too since most of this will be decommissioned server hardware.
