It’s a fixation in the Networking forum! While it very much depends on the type of house you live in (solid stone walls vs plasterboard constructs) I’ve never felt the need to run networking cable around my house. My server is cabled to the router but everything else including my main PC is wirelessly networked. I’ve never had any issues.
Pulling my hair out with home networking...
- Thread starter FBi7
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It’s a fixation in the Networking forum! While it very much depends on the type of house you live in (solid stone walls vs plasterboard constructs) I’ve never felt the need to run networking cable around my house. My server is cabled to the router but everything else including my main PC is wirelessly networked. I’ve never had any issues.
Once you are off the primary node, you’ll be lucky to get >300mbps in the real world.
When you are sat on the meshed node, the speed you get is halved.
Long gone are the days of WiFi outpacing your internet connection. FTTP goes up to 900mb these days…
Soldato
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Depends on your handy skills, and if your performance needs. Years ago I lived in a terrace and to circumvent similar issue to OP I drilled one hole from external wall about 8ft up higher than the original sky/cable installers one that was below the ground floor front window area. The network cable went up the wall and handful of anchors made a neat job. I ran the cable under the bedroom floorboards by taking up two boards. Pulled wire asking a friend took 5 minutes.
Some people make out jobs are 'big' but in reality when you are prepared and have correct equipment do not take that long.
Some people make out jobs are 'big' but in reality when you are prepared and have correct equipment do not take that long.
Because it’s the right way to do it. If someone isn’t getting good wireless coverage with their ISP supplied router it’s really unlikely any superior WiFi mesh solution will resolve the issue. The property is usually too big or made of materials that don’t propagate signal well.
Anything wireless is a compromise. A cable ALWAYS gets you full line speed. In both directions, simultaneously. It’s just the best option in every single scenario. A cable will run a multitude of speeds up to 10Gb/s. The very best WiFi solutions run a little over 1.2Gb/s.
Anything wireless will always be slower. The best WiFi6E chipsets are only just starting to deliver the same speeds as a cable and that’s in the same room as the access point. Through a wall or floor is slower than a cable. Typical real world WiFi speeds are 150-600Mbps. A cable ALWAYS does 1Gb/s.
Anything wireless will ultimately be more expensive. Even if you have to do some redecoration, a good cable install to a centrally mounted access point is unlikely to be more than £300. Most cable runs are £100-ish. And that’s assuming you get a local TV installer in to run the cables. WiFi solutions start at £60 for a couple of Huawei AX3 routers in mesh mode but soon you’ll find fault with them in some way shape or form and eventually you will bite the bullet and put a cable in anyway. First loss, least loss.
I install cables, so you could say I would say all of this. But when you see the difference a single centrally mounted WiFi access point makes to the user experience, you can really see the value in two holes and £10 worth of CAT6 cable. If you can do the work yourself a cable is a REALLY cheap solution. My company does free cable runs and access points for OAPs and when we first mooted it, we thought it would cost us a fortune. But the cost is 95% labour so it’s really just time we’re contributing.
Don't get me wrong if it was easy I'd have cable but I take issue with a couple of bits of what you've said...
Firstly that a supplied router will be better than a mesh.. you've clearly not tried a sky router lol! I had to move to a mesh to get any sort of reliable connection. I can't comment on the outright speed of the network but I know it's spread a reliable connection as fast as my broadband around the house.
Secondly the fact it's minimal mess or fuss. I'm only in a 3 bed semi but being 100 years old all the channels would need to go in channels dug into the walls so the cost, mess and disruption would be huge unless I was happy to run cable over skirting which I most certainly would not be.. spent a lot of time, effort and money to make the house nice!
Looking at some WiFi 6 mesh options as I'm having 900mb installed this week (long story, I don't need 900mb but at the same price as 400mb I might as well try it) and it's certainly not cheap but I'd guess much the same, maybe less than redecorating every room in the house and given the way the walls seem to block signals I'd still need some sort of mesh to get a decent signal to the wireless only clients such as laptops and phones.
Firstly that a supplied router will be better than a mesh.. you've clearly not tried a sky router lol! I had to move to a mesh to get any sort of reliable connection. I can't comment on the outright speed of the network but I know it's spread a reliable connection as fast as my broadband around the house.
Secondly the fact it's minimal mess or fuss. I'm only in a 3 bed semi but being 100 years old all the channels would need to go in channels dug into the walls so the cost, mess and disruption would be huge unless I was happy to run cable over skirting which I most certainly would not be.. spent a lot of time, effort and money to make the house nice!
Looking at some WiFi 6 mesh options as I'm having 900mb installed this week (long story, I don't need 900mb but at the same price as 400mb I might as well try it) and it's certainly not cheap but I'd guess much the same, maybe less than redecorating every room in the house and given the way the walls seem to block signals I'd still need some sort of mesh to get a decent signal to the wireless only clients such as laptops and phones.
Soldato
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Lol ok
What @WJA96 said and meshing access points cuts your WiFi speed in half, two of the four antenna are used to communicate between the two access points (assuming they even have four, many don’t) leaving only two to deal with connected devices.
Your real world 150-600mbps drops to 75-300mbps.
You don’t need to run 6 cables to every room but a few strategically placed runs to get cables to access point locations does the job for 99% of people.
I have 3 runs which cover my house:
Living room to attic, external behind a gutter down pipe.
Attic to spare room office
Attic to landing access point
That’s it, the vast majority of my devices are wireless. The only things which are not are a desktop pc, a NAS and the wireless access point.
A 100 year old semi is all the more reason to run the cables, the thick walls will destroy wireless signals and the mesh node will be very slow. You’ll have loads of opportunities to hide cables behind soil pipes, gutter down pipes as all of that is external on an older house. You may also have proper floor boards or even a ground floor crawl space which can easily be taken up and cables ran underneath.
You’ll only need one or two of runs to connect up the wireless access points, that’s it. You just have to think outside the box.
For example, the previous owners had a Sky dish installed and it’s on the opposite side of the house to the living room. The original installers pinned the cable around the outside between the first and ground floor. It looks ****. Instead I’ll be punching through into the attic, running the cable around the attic and down behind a gutter pipe to the corner of the lounge and 99% of the cable is hidden.
Your real world 150-600mbps drops to 75-300mbps.
You don’t need to run 6 cables to every room but a few strategically placed runs to get cables to access point locations does the job for 99% of people.
I have 3 runs which cover my house:
Living room to attic, external behind a gutter down pipe.
Attic to spare room office
Attic to landing access point
That’s it, the vast majority of my devices are wireless. The only things which are not are a desktop pc, a NAS and the wireless access point.
A 100 year old semi is all the more reason to run the cables, the thick walls will destroy wireless signals and the mesh node will be very slow. You’ll have loads of opportunities to hide cables behind soil pipes, gutter down pipes as all of that is external on an older house. You may also have proper floor boards or even a ground floor crawl space which can easily be taken up and cables ran underneath.
You’ll only need one or two of runs to connect up the wireless access points, that’s it. You just have to think outside the box.
For example, the previous owners had a Sky dish installed and it’s on the opposite side of the house to the living room. The original installers pinned the cable around the outside between the first and ground floor. It looks ****. Instead I’ll be punching through into the attic, running the cable around the attic and down behind a gutter pipe to the corner of the lounge and 99% of the cable is hidden.
If I was unclear then I apologise. I did not mean that an ISP supplied router would be better than a mesh, I meant that once you need more than the ISP supplied router (it actually suits most UK households perfectly) then you generally need to cable it.
And I understand that you have a nice house. All my customers have nice houses and we cut and we drill and we make good and we paint (and even wallpaper) afterwards. We tend not to run cables along skirting boards, but we do run behind skirting boards. And a single white CAT5e cable along the skirting boards and around a couple of door frames is hardly an eyesore. You are putting up all these reasons why you can't cable and what you'll end up with is a partial solution that you wont really be happy with that requires you to have loads of obtrusive boxes scattered all over the house.
Fair enough, your house, your money, your decision.
I'm not arguing I'm curious.. I'd honestly rather not faff about with a mesh and in previous newer houses I have run cables behind plasterboard or in the gap between carpet and skirting etc.
I totally understand the attraction of knowing you've plugged something in/getting full speed and error checking is generally easier (like... is it plugged in) although I don't agree on the obtrusive boxes.. I mean right now I've got 5 BT whole home dishes, you can't see any of them so the ugly box thing isn't a thing. They're all hidden in cupboards etc.
The issue here is I don't see how I would get cable around the house without literally cutting into every single wall that I need to go along so that would be 4 rooms and probably 8-10m of cutting, filling and painting to be done and even then I'd need to buy APs so it's not as if the cabling ends it?
Maybe I'm missing something but given the costs I've been quoted for pretty much anyone to do anything round here I'd guess that would be knocking on for £1k easily.
The other option would be going round the outside which is attractive, there's plenty of cable around the house anyway but again I'd take a stab at the cost being pretty significant, just the awkwardness of room placement and where you'd want the lines would mean ladders I don't possess and heights I wouldn't feel happy trying (eg into the loft conversation) and again I'd guess hundreds and then the APs I'd need to buy anyway?
Honestly if it were a new build I'd be in the loft now dropping cables.
Back to the OP, similar thing I was merely suggesting that when you've got something complicated and a bit sprawly maybe the sacrifice is a bit of speed for ease.
I totally understand the attraction of knowing you've plugged something in/getting full speed and error checking is generally easier (like... is it plugged in) although I don't agree on the obtrusive boxes.. I mean right now I've got 5 BT whole home dishes, you can't see any of them so the ugly box thing isn't a thing. They're all hidden in cupboards etc.
The issue here is I don't see how I would get cable around the house without literally cutting into every single wall that I need to go along so that would be 4 rooms and probably 8-10m of cutting, filling and painting to be done and even then I'd need to buy APs so it's not as if the cabling ends it?
Maybe I'm missing something but given the costs I've been quoted for pretty much anyone to do anything round here I'd guess that would be knocking on for £1k easily.
The other option would be going round the outside which is attractive, there's plenty of cable around the house anyway but again I'd take a stab at the cost being pretty significant, just the awkwardness of room placement and where you'd want the lines would mean ladders I don't possess and heights I wouldn't feel happy trying (eg into the loft conversation) and again I'd guess hundreds and then the APs I'd need to buy anyway?
Honestly if it were a new build I'd be in the loft now dropping cables.
Back to the OP, similar thing I was merely suggesting that when you've got something complicated and a bit sprawly maybe the sacrifice is a bit of speed for ease.
They've got a 75Mb connection. They can't afford to sacrifice a lot of speed though...
Most builders offer network points as an option. Like extra power sockets and garden taps. Usually £100-£200 per socket. Most new home buyers don't take the option up.
An outside tap was an optional extra the last new build I looked at let alone home networking…
@WJA96 beat me to it!
That's shocking, be so easy to pull in a few pairs to each room back to a central point, much like the power, £100-£200 per socket is a complete ripoff and understand why people don't bother.
I wouldn't buy a new build but if I was then networking throughout would be a requirement not a nice to have.
I wouldn't buy a new build but if I was then networking throughout would be a requirement not a nice to have.
Yup but most normal people couldn’t care less and would rather complain about poor WiFi, it could be £300 for sockets in every room in the entire house and they wouldn’t buy it.
They fit them to so few houses, those that want it will be those who are willing to pay, hence the cost.
They fit them to so few houses, those that want it will be those who are willing to pay, hence the cost.
I disagree that £100/socket is a rip-off. Say it's £10 in materials per point and you need to run the cables and terminate them and test them. Allow for a decent profit margin (£50) and £100 a socket isn't actually bad. At £200 I'd be starting to quibble but in a world where they charge £250 for a 13A socket and a spur off the kitchen sink drain for dishwasher plumbing and £350 for a an outside tap on the other side of the wall from the kitchen sink then it starts to look quite reasonable.
Agreed on retro fit to a single property, a developer with 100s of buildings that are going up from scratch, the costs of materials would be hugely discounted on volume and running the cables in an empty shell is a piece of cake.
While we're not a massive company we do use industrial quantities of things like CAT6 cable, RJ45 connectors and RJ45 faceplates and we still pay roughly 25p per meter for Excel CAT6 and about £3 for a CCS CAT6 faceplate and module. Most runs of cable are 15-20m when you allow for corners and a small amount if wastage. I don't see a national builder getting it much cheaper than we do. One cheeky thing I have noticed on new builds is that the builders very often leave the central points connections unterminated, so the home byer still has to buy a patch panel or shell out for RJ45 plugs to be fitted. I think that's a bit strong.