Ideas for house build

Kev_19

Kev_19

Kev_19

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18 May 2009
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Location
Kildare, Ireland
I am currently getting my house designs drawn up. I would like to incorporate a network and central server into the design. It would be nice to future-proof my house.

Does anyone have any sites that could give me ideas or any experience in designing their own house with an eye to the future?
 
There is no point going Cat 6 (or more importantly Cat 6e) - it will shortly be superseded by CAT 7 which will guarantee 10Gb compliance - Given the negligible price difference, I'd definitely go for Cat 7 with 2 sockets in every room (4 in the lounge/gaming area)

I'd love to go 10Gb now - but anything more than 2 port is prohibitively expensive - worth perhaps considering between your main machine and the switch if you've got £700ish to spare and are planning on using SSDs
 
Aren't 10GB switches currently available aimed at SANs, and therefore almost completely inappropriate for general networking?

Not to mention a huge waste of cash. If you're sure you need more than Gigabit can provide just get a NIC and switch that supports teaming and run as many cables as you like.
 
Dry line all the walls with conduits going into the loft, that way you can easily replace any wiring within the house - just make sure it's one long conduit with no kinks or bends :D

Personally this is what I'd do for my next place - yes you loose some of the room but the benfits from dry lining are great.. being able to run conduit the length of your property to ease in any new cables, insulating, and having a fresh flat surface to work with.


Failing that, I would stick Cat 6a/Cat 7 at the very least maybe even looking at Cat 7a (no idea of relative costs of the 7a) but last time I checked the cost of 6a/7 per km wasn't a massive amount more than Cat 6 STP.

That's if it's not easy to replace anything in the near future 20 years time or so.

If your not that fussed on future proofing or are likely to renovate again then you could just throw some Cat 5e/Cat 6 and that'll keep you going for a few years - however re-chasing walls, replastering and making good soon becomes more expensive than sticking in slightly dearer cables now. It also depends on what you hope to achieve but it sounds like something you ideally only want todo once in the near future.

Just me 2p.

The one thing I forgot to say is, whatever you do do make sure you get a proper data/telecomms engineer that knows their stuff.. No offence to sparky's, but most work that involves sparky's doing the cabling results in major issues - bear in mind that is not always the case but one thing I will say is to not skimp on the labour.
I would also insist that the cabling gets ratified and ask for a printed copy of the report for each cable - I would do this no matter what you stick in there but again it comes down to budget. However sticking in Cat 6 competently installed and certified is better than winging it, and sticking in Cat 7 by some numpty which doesnt get properly tested and causes you headaches.

Now I'll go hide before I get a torrent of abuse :P
 
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psd99 said:
get a switch which is 10 gig that would future proof you :)

basically a 24 port 10 gig switch would do it. :) :)
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This would be the last thing I would do. By the time you "need" 10Gbps it'll be cheap like 1Gbps is now. Sure its 10 time faster, but unless you move big files arround a lot I see little point in it right now. Its an easy upgrade.

I think the best you can do is a run a fair few cables into each room. At least two to each bedroom and the most going from where you get your internet access and to the TV area (consoles / tv / etc...).

Also, have a think about phone systems as well though these will need slower speeds.

I think its going to be a long time before 1Gbps home network becomes a bottleneck when you consider internet connections barely touch fast ethernet.
 
Cat6 will do 10gig up to about 40 metres happily. Cat6a up to 100 metres.

Cat7 is massively overspecified for doing 10gig.

It's safe to assume that you will need 10gig in the future, the cost is negligable.

Be mindful that Cat6 is a lot more difficult to go around corners with than Cat5e, and be sure to get Zero Halogen non-toxic insulation on the cable. Wouldn't want you to wake up dead for the sake of a few quid :)
 
Plan on a home office? Wire at least 4 ports in! I have PC, Printer and now a Vonage VOIP line. But since there is only 2 cables (one is for broadband to switch/server and another for pc) I had to use a double adapter (4 wires per port) dongle witsit, and now I have a printer, a 10/100 hub!
 
Yamahahahahaha said:
Cat6 will do 10gig up to about 40 metres happily. Cat6a up to 100 metres.

Cat7 is massively overspecified for doing 10gig.

It's safe to assume that you will need 10gig in the future, the cost is negligable.

Be mindful that Cat6 is a lot more difficult to go around corners with than Cat5e, and be sure to get Zero Halogen non-toxic insulation on the cable. Wouldn't want you to wake up dead for the sake of a few quid :)
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Granted the pure speed may not be needed but don't forget Cat 7/7a can be used for TV feeds and can be wired up for long runs of HD signals without the need for baluns.

Also I agree 10G won't be needed for most homes in the near future, however I bet a lot of people said the same thing about 100meg when they were still throwing co-ax into their houses.. All I will say is that it's not much more for the actual cables compared to the comparative costs of chasing/replastering walls etc.

Even if you just run gig over it now you have the flexibility.. also as you mention Cat 6 can do 10gig upto 40 metres, possibly in lab conditions - in real world, with potential for poor termination/slightly tight turn it may not do anything like that.


Also LSZH is really only needed if it's going into an airspace, however does increase the fireload on a building - reaches a certain temp it nastily combusts.

And consiering the amount of other cables in the house - leccy, co-ax, telephony unless they are all LSZH having the data like it may not a big difference.. dunno certainly worth looking into getting costs for everythign LSZH and everything without.
 
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Thanks for all the replies, has given me a good base to start with. The brother-in-law is an electrical engineer so I should be in safe hands!
 
I'm amazed at the resistance to 10Gb on the forums. Granted it's far too expensive at the moment, but that doesn't mean we don't need it - I've just helped a friend out fixing his NAS and had to move 500Gb from the box to my server and back again. The box is in Raid 0 at the moment and the server can accept well over 100MB/s (It'll be Raid 5 with up to 8 disks when I'm done, and as you can imagine that will have some serious throughput!)

If 10Gb were prevalent now and the same price as 1Gb (bear in mind that there are routers out there still that are only 10/100 and they retail for about the same as the Gigabit ones) everyone here would be buying them as standard. I say we need them, we just can't afford / justify them at the current prices :p

In terms of the cables - 7/7a all the way depending on price as above.
 
I think what everyone is saying is that the best route to 10Gb is buying Gigabit routers / switches now, and then upgrade when 10G equipment is the same price as current equipment. Much cheaper than splashing out for 10G stuff right now.
As long as the cabling is in place, its a simple swap!
 
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