In reply to a post by Ancient_Mariner:

I'm sure I read similar the other day about dropwire...

Cheers!

Good practice is never to run internal grade cables externally and external grade cables internally. People often do of course, in the same way that folks think its OK to run cables inside blue alkathene (MDPE) water pipe...

External-internal cable transitions points and standards are there for a reason.

External is for a good reason. Why shouldn't you run external internally. Waste of money is the only reason I can think of.

In general external grade cable, is made of materials or are of construction that aren't compatible with occupancy building regs either due to flammability or toxicity if they are burnt are are exposed to fire.

For example the majority of internal cables in new builds are now specified as LSZH (low smoke zero halogen) rather than PVC which burns with an acrid smoke. Depending on the construction of external cable they can have internal strength members, jacketing layers and petroleum based jellies to resist water penetration none of which are great from a for internal use for the reasons given.

Finally from a workability perspective they are often much stiffer and harder, designed more for underground ducts and aerial style external cabling than being stuffed into your typical internal conduit or standard backbox.

In reply to a post by MikeJG:

Hi, so after several years of trying my village finally got a community fibre partnership agreed and it has since been installed and is now ready to order.

I have ordered the full fibre 300 package, currently i just use a powerline adapter to get my current broadband connection from one side of the house to the other and it works reasonably well.
However i am now thinking that to get the full 300Mbps and possibly a higher speed in the future, it would be a good idea to run an ethernet cable outside along the bottom of the house and back in to the far side of the house, probably around 20-25m i would say, i was wondering which ethernet cable i should go for and which router should be used for a secondary router? i will likley just use the router/hub provided by bt as my main one.

any input is welcome thanks thanks.

Mike - you have two ways of doing this, either properly or on the cheap/bodge. Which way you choose is up to you and your budget.

"Proper Job":
Get either 100m reel or a full 305m tote box of either Cat5e or Cat6 (solid core) decent name brand cable. Try to avoid the cheap junk from eBay or Amazon. Run 2 x cables from the front to the back. If running outside your walls, then run the cables inside solid wall conduit. If running cable within/inside wall cavities etc then the conduit is not strictly necessary. Conduit is for mechanical and limited weather ingress protection. Bring the cables out onto single gang back-boxes, score and strip the ends carefully with a sharp Stanley knife and terminate/punch down onto some decent quality matching Cat5e or Cat6 sockets. Ensure you maintain the same pair sequence / colour code (wither 568A or B but don't mix and match) at both ends.

"On the Cheap":
Get either 2 x long-ish pre-terminated RJ45 to RJ45 fly-leads. These will typically be stranded wire construction, as flyleads and patch leads are deemed to be "work area" cords and stranded construction cable can deal with repeated flexing etc. without the conductors failing over time as they would with solid core cable used as the permeant link. How you dress the cables into your building fabric is up to you but it generally will be less neat and tidy than cables into socket outlets above. You can also get solid core flyleaves, but there is a risk with bending and cable movement over time that they fail prematurely. Solid core cable should really be run once and left alone (in the wall etc).

Why 2 cables? brings added flexibility, and a bit of future proofing.

In general most people don't use LSZH ethernet cable or even mains cable in domestic environments. In fact you have to search it out specifically if you want to use it. Personally I did my house in LSZH Cat6a but as I have said before that was in part due to the cable being free. That said I actually think it's a good idea for ethernet cable as it usually comes purple jacketed which makes it much easier to distinguish later on. You are under a floorboard in 10 years time wondering what that cable does, argh it's purple it's for ethernet.

That's why I used the same stuff. Wife's school was adding some buildings and the network guy had some 10 metre off-cuts.