Few thoughts
Running the whole show on a single temporary
cat5 should make you nervous, especially if it’s anywhere near feet, wheelchair paths, beverage carts, ambulance gurneys,
etc. I have left Cat5e cables in place (overhead rafters, above woodwork,
etc.) where they are out of harms way vs. deploying and rolling up each gig or rehearsal.
But if you are serious about your show staying alive and you need to run
cat5 / 6 in unprotected paths, get 2 managed
Ethernet switches, run TWO separate cables, and use trunk port groups on each
switch to bond the 2 runs together. Think of it as RAID for your digital
snake.
Also in 40 years of running
UTP cables permanently in buildings and temporary for AV / theater gigs, I’ve learned that solid cable does not like to be flexed and reflexes repeatedly. It’s designed to get pulled into a protected space (
conduit, walls,
etc.) once and left alone. If you rely on solid for touring or repeated deploy /
strike and store situations, you will have a moment of reckoning someday. If you need longer runs than native copper
Ethernet or the
console spec allows, look into copper to fiber converters and run tactical fiber between
stage box and
FOH. Or rethink where your
FOH needs to be.
Good luck!