Most bulk Cat 5e for sale comes in increments of 1000 feet or more.

I have an immediate need for just about 60-70 feet of good-quality (like Belden or Systimax), plenum-rated Cat 5e cable. For reasons that are beyond explanation, it must be blue.

I have swept all of the usual eBay, CL and local sources to no avail. Can anyone think of somewhere I haven't looked?

Oh, if you have 60-70 feet of the aforementioned, let's make a deal

Second hit on Google I see 100' for $35.00.

Duh, why didn't I try a real number like 100?

This may fix my problem. At $35 I'll try it anyway. I got voice mail, but will try them in AM. Thanks!

Tried the local Home Depot/Lowes/whatever you have over there?

I actually bought some at HD like 2 years ago but it was grey and riser-rated. At the time I thought it was all they had. And the color printing seemed pretty weak/cheap. But I may hop in the van and swing by there.

(Yup, my new WRX is a '93 Econoline)

Our local H.D. has three different Cat5e/6 cables by the foot/metre. One of them is blue, but I don't recall if that one was also plenum rated.

Cheers

Deep Surplus @ $15.03. And they throw a free bag of Skittles into each order. I always buy my network stuff from them.

EDIT: doesn't say if it's plenum rated...

When I last looked at TP cable at HD, it wasn't plenum. And it was more expensive than buying terminated cables at Canada Computers. Much more expensive than buying a roll at an electronics place like Sayal of course (though they also didn't have any plenum rated at the time).

Yeah, but he said he checked all the local places, and if we're talking about a few yards, price probably isn't a huge deal.

I ordered from the previously-Googled place in Denver. Should have it next Tuesday/Wednesday. Definite Mom-and-Pop. When I rang I reached them on their cell phone and they were driving around with some local deliveries.

Oh do I dislike putting connectors on plenum rated cable. If I was even slightly aggressive at fanning out the wires, all the color coding would wear off. Maybe it was just that brand.

The last plenum rated cable I purchased was at a local CompUSA before they crashed and burned.

Besides HomeDepot try Orchard Supply Hardware for short run purchases.

Plenum rated is made with insulation that isn't vinal like the standard stuff. I believe it's teflon. The idea is it can be run inside air ducts, and in the event of a fire, won't create crippling noxious fumes, inside the air distribution system.

I don't think I've ever seen plenum rated cable that wasn't blue, but I have seen the other, like that shown in the link, which isn't plenum rated.

I'll second Deep Surplus. That's where we get our stuff from at work. They're always fast, always cheap, and the one time they screwed up, the simply shipped more cables and told us to keep the ones we didn't order.

I once had a half-spool of it here that was white; used a lot of it for the Home Docks project.

Deep Surplus does have the blue plenum rated bulk cable.

Yeah...I saw that...I was just looking for something closer to the length/price that he needed.

Remember that the stuff you buy in meters works best with european-sized packets. If you're going to be dealing with a lot of US packets, then you should buy the cable in feet.

Yeah, you can buy converters that stretch and squash packets appropriately, but that ends up leaving sharp edges that will wear down the insulation over time.

This won't be a problem. I talked with the nice lady in Denver and she assured me that her Cat5e supports tunneling. If you run everything through a tunnel it reduces fragmentation and keeps any sharp bits away from the insulation.

So we borrowed a ladder the other evening and our problem is solved. We are all set.

Wait... you borrowed a ladder, after being told you needed to do tunelling? Boy, were you ever snookered. You needed a shovel.

No, no no. You are not getting this. She said the "tunnel" is *inside* the cable so it doesn't matter where you put the cable. Cool, eh? Well, OK, she said we needed to be careful about how much we went up and down (the "Maximum Tunnel Undulation"?) but that's about it.

Problem solved.

I don't understand. How are you supposed to get the ladder inside the tunnel? You really need to cut the ladder into smaller packets, so maybe you can do that with your router, but it may never quite come back together again properly.

I still think she's thinking about bridging, not tunneling.