Wired house network (advice)

[burble]

Cat 5e will be fine for gigabit.

[killie99]

Great "how to" on wiring your home.

http://www.swhowto.com/

[peterb]

I wired my house using cat5. However to make life simpler I ran wires from all the upstairs room to a central point and terminated each cable in a double gang pattress box wich gave 4 ports per box. Effectively this was a cheap home made patch panel. I did the same downstairs and ran a single cable from the upstairs 'patch panel' to the downstairs one. Each panel connects to a switch. However you could run them all to a central point and use multiple double gang pattress (or recessed) boxes as required.

Using a patch panel gives maximum flexibility and minimal extra cost. Yopu may not need to use all connections all the time, but you can change the configuration as you require.

Under strict structured cabling you on y use 4 of the 8 cores in the cable for ethernet. You can use the other 4 cores for another ethernet connection if you wish, but it isn't really recommended - therefore whereever you run one one cable - run 2! It is much easier at the installation stage than to retrofit! Even if ypou don't terminate the extra cable at this stage - it is there if you need it - and most faceplates have space for two RJ45 sockets. You can fit a blank in one position for now, and replace it with a module later.

[GAteKeeper]

Becareful with running 2 ethernets down one cable because while 100base-T only used 2 pairs other modulation schemes (think gigabit) and PoE use the other pairs as well, cable is cheep putting 2 runs in costs pence more than just one.

For all those people who say dont bother with cabling up a house I can only laugh, history has shown that we are capable of generating more and more bandwidth hungry applications and it is set to continue. Dont be so short sighted, for a simple cost while renovating it will definately be worth it in the long run. Case in point, back in the mid 80s BT asked government to pay for new fibre network renovation scheme to increase available bandwidth outside of the exchanges. M. Thatcher laughed at them and said no, just think where we could be if we had that kind of bandwidth availble at the end of the road. link

GK

[peterb]

Becareful with running 2 ethernets down one cable because while 100base-T only used 2 pairs other modulation schemes (think gigabit) and PoE use the other pairs as well, cable is cheep putting 2 runs in costs pence more than just one.


GK

Exactly!

[PoDd]

I just had my house rewired, and had some cat 5e run myself, same idea, saw the opportunity. I just used solid core off a 300m reel from work, some cool chrome faceplates that i patched with a cheap as chips punch tool, plastic plates at the pop. I have my adsl modem/router feeding between the switch and the phone jack, and the switch feeds the patch panel - i say patch panel, a load of double patch sockets.. All works a treat and took no time at all really. Just pick one cabling standard throughout, i used B. Let us know how it went.

PoDd

[manwithnoname]

Thanks for everyones hints/tips and suggestions.

The house is finally wired up, still need to patch a few holes in walls - managed to string it out time wise I've been side tracked by other stuff.

peterb and GAteKeeper - I did the double cable run for most of the ports except where I'd put phone sockets next to network ports.

peterb - I put 3 double gang pattress in one room where all the cables lead to, wish I'd put a switch downstairs so I could do one cable run upstairs.

To do:
I still need to get a router, I think I can get a Gbit switch later as currently I need to connect up 3 pcs.

Can anyone recommended a router without wireless may be with Gbit ports?

This is kind of pissing on my own parade but I wonder how long the network will be viable. If I'd been wiring up the house 10-15 years it would have been that Coaxial Cable at 10mbits, a few years later cat5 UTP 100mbits, hopefully I'll get 1Gbit from my cat5e UTP. But what next, will that be the realistic limit of cat5e - may be I shouldn't worry, I may move house next year...

[aidanjt]

1gbps is the limit for cat5e, but it'll be at least a decade before you tax that kind of network connectivity.

[peterb]

This is kind of pissing on my own parade but I wonder how long the network will be viable. If I'd been wiring up the house 10-15 years it would have been that Coaxial Cable at 10mbits, a few years later cat5 UTP 100mbits, hopefully I'll get 1Gbit from my cat5e UTP. But what next, will that be the realistic limit of cat5e - may be I shouldn't worry, I may move house next year...

Sounds good with plenty of redundancy/expansion and flexibility! When I first wired the house (10 years ago) I used coax, then used the coax as a pull through for Cat5 about 5 years ago!