Yesterday I was with the Senior Network Administrator, helping locate and determine the operational status of several WAPs that are supposed to cover our large parking lot. Both of us have been here for less than 9 months, the equipment we were looking at has been in place for 2+ years or longer, none of it was properly documented, and so we are on a road of discovery.
Suppose you have a piece of commercial property with a large paved parking lot. Around the entire property is an 2.5 meter tall chain link fence. In the back of the lot you want to install two keycard-controlled gates for employees access, said two gates being approximately 75 meters apart.
You have already buried conduit to one gate, through which your fiber carries the connection from the building to a switch near the gate. You do not want to cut up the parking lot to bury another conduit, whether that conduit be from the building directly to the other gate, or along the fence from one gate to the other. You obviously also do not want to zip-tie bare cat5 to the fence. How do you run this cable?
The solution is so very simple! Drill holes in the fence frame tubing and use it as conduit to carry the twisted pair from one gate to the next!
While I’m thinking I would have come up with something involving conduit, I have to give kudos to whoever came up with this genius idea.
13 Spice ups
Nonya
(J-Nonya)
2
Not bad in a pinch!! Wonder who sold that solution?
5 Spice ups
Alas, I don’t think we will ever know…
6 Spice ups
Now that I think of it, I did perform a creative cable run once.
At a previous company we were bringing in business class cable internet services. The previous T1 based connection was running through 100 meters of buried conduit, then under 20meters of paved parking lot, popping up through the concrete slab in the demarc.
Unfortunately that super long conduit appeared to have at least one break in it so we wanted to find another path into the building. We got the cable up to the side of the building and needed to get it from the ground onto the roof. The owners were adamant about not having anything ugly on the outside of the building, for example no conduit. Not even if we painted it to match.
After much brainstorming and chin scratching and walking around (outside, inside, and on the roof) we came up with a plan: the large rain gutter. Yep, we drilled a hole into the plastic connector at the base of the 6” diameter butter downspout, fed the cable up through the spout, then out of the gutter and over the parapet. From there it laid across the flat roof and into a roof penetration into our IDF.
Some day someone will probably notice it and wonder, “What the heck?!”
8 Spice ups
greenbj
(greenbj)
5
Probably an alarm/security contractor. Those guys can sneak cables anywhere.
9 Spice ups
TimJjr
(TimJr)
6
I like it! and if I’m ever in a similar situation, I’ll be sure to use it, thank you for sharing!
7 Spice ups
Using the fence frame as conduit is a clever field fix, but it has significant long-term drawbacks.
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Corrosion: Moisture will inevitably get inside, corroding the cable and connectors over time.
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Maintenance: Replacing a damaged cable would be extremely difficult, requiring drilling out old holes.
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Grounding/Surge Risk: A metal fence can conduct lightning strikes or power surges directly to your sensitive network equipment.
A more robust solution would be to run a direct burial rated, shielded Cat6 or fiber optic cable along the fence line, secured with UV-resistant and tamper-proof conduit clamps. For a 75-meter run between two powered gates, using fiber optic cable is the best practice as it is immune to electrical interference and lightning strikes. This provides a permanent, reliable, and serviceable installation.
9 Spice ups
Unrelated - but welcome to Spiceworks!
5 Spice ups
