300 feet of Underground Cat6 ???

TenOC wrote:
At my long-term parking location I need to run a 300 foot Ethernet cable for my internet connection. I will be using Cat6 unshielded full copper underground cable. Question.

1. Since only 1/2 of the wires (4 of the 8) are used, would I gain any advantage by parallel connecting the unused wired with the used one? For example the Green and Orange as one and the blue and brown as the second. The thought is that this would cut the resistance (drop) in half.

2. I am going to be using underground (non gel) cable - I could not find gel filled Cat6 cable. Is there any advantage in putting it in 1/2 plastic conduit?

To answer your questions...

1. No, don't do that. The pairs are twisted at different rates. If you use part of one and part of another the two runs will be different lengths, causing problems. Even worse, if you used say orange and orange/white together you'd totally lose the benefit of the twisted pair.

2. Get direct burial rated stuff and it should work fine. Ethernet is rated for 300', so you're pushing it but within spec. Actually, CAT6 is a pain to work with and as of yet there's no communication spec that requires CAT6. It will all work over CAT5E, but the CAT6 may future-proof you. As for the conduit, it will give protection against critters and a little against shovels, and if you put in a pull string then you've got a way to run additional cable should you need it.