Two buildings, one network
The Happy Camper store sits beside Fastlane Autocare. Rather than order it a line of its own, we ran Cat6a in duct under the ground between the two buildings and fed it from the network we had just built next door. Same system, same support, one connection.
The situation
The Happy Camper store is its own shop in its own building, next door to the garage. The default answer when a business has a second unit is to order it a second connection: a new line, a new install date, a new monthly bill and a new contract term, all to serve a handful of PCs and phones a few metres from a network that already exists.
That is often money and waiting for nothing. We had just put a fibre connection and a properly built comms cabinet into the building next door. The sensible thing was to use it.
What we did
The work next door was designed with this in mind, which is why it was straightforward rather than a retrofit.
The outcome
The store got connectivity and phones without waiting for an install, without a second contract and without a second bill. The two businesses behave as one site on the network while staying separate where they need to be.
Running Cat6a in duct rather than putting a wireless link between the buildings is the reason it is boring in the best sense. There is no antenna to come out of alignment, nothing to lose in bad weather and no shared airtime to argue with. Cat6a carries ten gigabit Ethernet, which is far more headroom than a shop full of PCs and phones will ever need, so the link between the buildings is never the thing holding anything up.
The duct matters as much as the cable. It means the link can be upgraded, added to or replaced later by pulling through, including to fibre if the site ever outgrows copper, rather than by digging the ground up a second time.
The wider point is about sequencing. This was easy because the infrastructure next door was built properly in the first place, with a real cabinet and structured cabling rather than whatever reached. Build the first site well and the second one is a short job.
Questions
Often not. If the buildings are close enough and you have the right to run between them, one properly sized connection can serve both, with the second unit taking its network and phones from the first. It saves a second install, a second contract and a second bill. Whether it is the right answer depends on the distance, the route between the buildings and how much the second unit actually needs, so we look before we promise.
Not in any way people notice, provided the connection is sized for both. The Cat6a run between the buildings carries ten gigabit Ethernet, so it is nowhere near being a bottleneck, and a shop with a few PCs and phones uses a small fraction of a business fibre circuit anyway. We size the line for the combined load rather than for one building and hope.
Yes. Sharing a connection does not mean sharing everything. Separate networks keep each side's devices and traffic apart while still running over the same circuit, which is the same approach we use for guest Wi-Fi and for multi tenant buildings.
They become extensions of the same hosted system, so calls between the buildings are internal and free, calls can be picked up by either side, and there is one set of numbers and one system to administer rather than two.
Distance is the deciding factor. Ethernet over copper is good for about a hundred metres, so two adjacent units with a route you are allowed to dig is close to the ideal case, which is what this was. Beyond that you are into fibre between the buildings, a dedicated link, or a connection each with the phone system shared across both. We measure the route before promising anything, because the answer changes entirely either side of that limit.
Tell us where they are and what is in them. We will tell you whether one connection can cover both, and say so if it cannot.
