flat renovation - wall sockets for home network? q's

Hi all, i'm going to be gutting and redoing my flat in the summer. I was thinking about making things neat and tidy and would be running three long network cables from the office area to the front room tv area, under the floors. One of those will go into a switch behind the tv which will feed all my media devices etc. (already using this system in my current place, no probs).

Any way, it suddenly occurred to me last night - am i able to run those long cables to the back of a neat wall socket and then plug shorter cables into those sockets as and when required? It would be nicer than simply having the cable 'pop out' through the floor at my desired location if you see what i mean.

I've seen something called a MHP® Quad Socket Cat 6 RJ45 Double Wall Face Plate / LAN Network 4 port Faceplate Four Modules and wondered if that would do it..

Yes but use solid core cable for the 3 long cables. Put a quad euro module faceplate at either end. You can use any brand of euro module faceplate and euro module as the euro modules are a standard size and just clip into the faceplate. Just decide what standard you want such as cat5e or cat6 and keep it consistent across the cable and modules.

This is a popular source of parts around here.

http://www.netstoredirect.com/33-cable

Thanks - didn't know anything about 'solid core' cables so that's good to know.

so is it a one cable per faceplate deal? Ie 1 input then 2 or 4 'outputs' (for what of a better expression?).

A double gang faceplate can accommodate upto 4 modules. Each module attaches to one ethernet cable. The faceplate is not a splitter.

thenewoc said:

Yes but use solid core cable for the 3 long cables. Put a quad euro module faceplate at either end. You can use any brand of euro module faceplate and euro module as the euro modules are a standard size and just clip into the faceplate. Just decide what standard you want such as cat5e or cat6 and keep it consistent across the cable and modules.

This is a popular source of parts around here.

http://www.netstoredirect.com/33-cable

Click to expand...

I bought pre-populated faceplates just to guarantee the colours matches - unlike in an office, most would want it to look as nice as possible. £6 for 4 Cat6 Euro modules and a faceplate, great value if you don't want the higher-end shielded modules.

DragonQ said:

I bought pre-populated faceplates just to guarantee the colours matches - unlike in an office, most would want it to look as nice as possible. £6 for 4 Cat6 Euro modules and a faceplate, great value if you don't want the higher-end shielded modules.

Click to expand...

Fair point if you're wanting everything in white.

Probably best to run 4 cables as well to make use of all 4 modules in the faceplate. Even if one of your router ports is occupied by the feed from a modem or dsl connection, having a spare run and making full use of the quad socket whilst you're pulling the cable through that route is what I would do.

So you need,

• 2 double gang euro faceplates and at least 35mm deep pattress boxes (either surface mounted or preferably the recessed type for a more professional look, for the latter it depends if they are outside walls or hollow partition walls as to the type of pattress box)
• Enough Ethernet cable (solid core) pure copper (not copper clad aluminium - CCA)
• 8 euro modules
• Krone tool to punch down the inner cores of the Ethernet to the rear of the euro modules (If you think you'll do similar jobs in the future get a genuine Krone tool and not a cheap fake, probably about £10 difference, the one on net store direct looks like an imitation one as the real ones are riveted rather than screwed together).
• Cyclops tool is handy for cutting the outer jacket off but if you're only doing the few you've mentioned then you can score through the outer jacket with a knife and use the inner pull cord to strip back the outer sheath to discard the area where you scored through the outer sheath.

Also, you should pull slightly more cable than you actually need, an extra meter or so and leave half the extra length under the floor at each end. This way if you encounter any issue punching down the Ethernet to the rear of the euro modules, then you still have some spare cable to pull a bit of it through and to strip a bit more of the outer jacket from the Ethernet. You should aim to have nice short lengths of the inner cores and only untwist the bare minimum of what has been exposed from removing the outer jacket. You only need to untwist enough from the end of each twisted pair so that each core can fit into their respective IDC termination slot on the rear of the euro modules. Therefore the side of the inner cores that doesn't get trimmed off as excess should still be twisted from where you exposed it from removing the outer sheath. You might take a couple of inches of the outer jacket off at each end but once you align the inner cores into the rear of the euro modules then the Krone tool will trim the excess off the inner cable.

Ensure you wire them all to the same standard too, 568B colour code which will usually be one of two colour codes shown on the back of the euro modules.

wow, great stuff, thanks

A cheap cable tester is useful to detect where you've got wires out of order (and you will...).

If you're buying ccs modules, you can use 19mm patress boxes. They're nice and small

Of course if you're renovating, then you don't need surface boxes.

You want dryline boxes or the metal type if it's a hardwall

http://www.netstoredirect.com/faceplates-backboxes/13356-dryline-flush-mount-back-boxes.html

i saw my electrician yesterday and he's apparently done this kind of thing loads of times before so he'll be taking care of it. He seemed to be talking the talk and saying the right things but is there anything i should be looking to request specifically?

Is it the case that I simply plug a network switch in at each socket or can the sockets themselves be switches? (i'e i could have 6-8 ports in the front room and the office area?

Electricians can be blamed for some really nasty network installs. They obviously aren't all going to be bad, but it's a slightly different skill set to mains, or even alarm system, wiring.

Each socket needs its own cable. The cable connects back to another socket somewhere else in the property. You usually run them all back to a central location. At the central location you connect each socket to a network switch using patch cables (standard network cables with a plug on each end).

If you want eight ports in a room that's eight cables back to the central location. You expand a port in a room by connecting a local network switch if you need to.

The best approach depends on your situation. I for example decided to run the network connection to be behind my TV externally, so it made sense to run a single cable and use a network switch to connect the TV, Sky+ Box, Blu-ray player, etc.

Any checkatrade profile, references from recent similar jobs?
Any certification / guarantee of satisfactory performance of the finished job?
Will each socket be tested for throughput speed when finished?

I'd definitely be specifying what standard you want eg Cat 6 and a decent brand of cable and sockets. Also that you want some spare slack left in the cable runs.

You can put switches at any of the network sockets but it's usually done like that further down the line as a result of not having foreseen the right number of cable runs to begin with. Usually the best approach is to figure out a worst case scenario of how many sockets you want in each room and where. I say 'where' because there might be cases where you want sockets in more than one location in a room to give yourself other possibilities for furniture layout. Doing it this planned way means you put your switch in the same place that all the cable runs start out from and where the patch panel would be.

I put 8 ports into most of our rooms but that's because I have wall mounted TV's in the main bedrooms, desk spot and 4 behind the bed. This is also because I added the telephone service to the patch panel so I can make any network port a telephone socket and might want a PBX at some point to have internal telephone extensions. The lounge I put 6 ports behind the TV and another 2 the opposite side of the room in case it's needed for a study point. I put 4 in the kitchen, split between 2 on the breakfast bar and another 2 behind the fridge just in case we end up with connected kitchen appliances. I put 4 next to our router so I have a fall back if my switch breaks. Oddly perhaps, I only put 4 in the study but it may not ever be used as a study and may only end up as a kids room. At some point I shall put some stranded made up cables in for some power over Ethernet ceiling mounted wireless access points too.

Consider putting network sockets next to where you have electric sockets as in most cases you'll need both.

many thanks - I wasn't too bothered about just having 1 or 2 ports in each room and then using a switch. There is obviously a cost implication in having 4-8 ports in each room, although i realise this will be a far cleaner option if done properly.

I'm going to get in touch with my electrician (at the moment i don't have his details i met him through my builder) and ask him the questions you've listed above.

Get him to use CCS branded cable, modules and patch panel.

I'd put 4 in each room. and one central switch.

It takes about 2 minutes to terminate a cat6 module, same for the patch panel end.

If the walls are being re-plastered maybe it's worth thinking of putting some HDMI in where it could be needed and also some speaker cable for your surround sound system?

APM said:

If the walls are being re-plastered maybe it's worth thinking of putting some HDMI in where it could be needed and also some speaker cable for your surround sound system?

Click to expand...

yup, I'm getting hdmi cables in the wall near the tv with a conduit system (not outer trunking though). I'm not having a surround system...i know it's a bit shocking but the room doesn't quite suit it. Once it's all done I'll be posting lots of pics - I envisage it looking rather nice - fingers crossed!!

BoatyMcBoatface said:

Get him to use CCS branded cable, modules and patch panel.

I'd put 4 in each room. and one central switch.

It takes about 2 minutes to terminate a cat6 module, same for the patch panel end.

Click to expand...

Thanks - I'll mention it. What's a good recommendation for a switch? Thinking about devices i currently have with ethernet:

ps4
tv
wiiU
xbox
media pc
iMac
NAS drive

...possibly more to come though so would want to future proof.

For a non-managed gigabit switch (this is what you want), they're all exactly the same essentially.

I'd go for a 16 or 24 port rackmount switch.



On the same side, use a patch panel and not network cable ends.

Then patch leads from the patch panel, into the switch. This greatly reducdes the stress on the ends of the cables and ensures they won't fail over time.

BoatyMcBoatface said:

For a non-managed gigabit switch (this is what you want), they're all exactly the same essentially.

I'd go for a 16 or 24 port rackmount switch.



On the same side, use a patch panel and not network cable ends.

Then patch leads from the patch panel, into the switch. This greatly reducdes the stress on the ends of the cables and ensures they won't fail over time.

Click to expand...

Yep, this is what I'm going for. A 24-port rack-mount GigE switch is about £75. One thing to be aware of is that most of them concentrate the ports in a small area of the front panel. Patch panels, on the other hand, spread them out evenly. So you'll need varying lengths of patch cable (unless you don't mind winding up longer ones).