Hey all A friend of mine has just purchased another shop, the new one is only about 100 meters away from his old one and he wants to network both together. I have recommended running CAT6 cable between the two shops and putting a small Gigabyte switch into the new branch, and then connecting all the printers / pc’s / clocking in machines etc into that one unit. The only problem I have is that the cable will run very very close to other premises and my friend does not fancy the data going down the network to be visible if someone connected into the network. Does anyone know of a small switch like unit that I can put into the network to encrypt the data between the two links so no once can eavesdrop. I have done a small diagram below to demonstrate what I need to accomplish. http://i80.photobucket.com/albums/j... Does anyone know of any hardware like this? I have thought about using windows based encryption to protect the work stations, but they will also have network printers / clocking in machines and proprietary hardware connected to the network, so it will have to be transparent. Thanks

You'll be pushing the distance limitations at 100 meters with Cat 5 or 6. Would you consider fiber? You could run fiber between the buildings and then use fiber optic converters on each end to do what you want. Fiber would also be much more difficult to tap into, I'm not saying impossible, but very impractical unless someone is truly determined. I'm assuming you are going to either have this on a pole or buried. Use the fiber, place it in conduit and bury it for better protection. Good luck.

Pushing it my eye! At 100m distance you're exceeding it. This distance doesn't likely include going up/down in walls and around objects in the way. Even if the final pull is 100m on the nose, it's still too much. My experience is you don't want to exceed 85 to 90m tops on copper. If you do, you start to get attenuation and problems with interferance. Your signal will be degraded and connectivity will be spotty. You'll also have a lot more lost packets than if you stay under 90m. The best answer in this case is definately fiber. You can buy preterminated fiber in whatever length you require. Then all you require is either to fibre capable switches (on at each end) or media converters at either end to go from fiber to copper (and vice versa).