Best practices before running ethernet through your house

dulcificum

dulcificum

dulcificum

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What do you wish you'd thought of?
What would you do differently?
Easy ways to avoid pulling floorboards or chasing walls?
Socket location in retrospect?
CAT7 good enough?
How long cables to buy (not sure exactly how long the runs will end up but don't want to go too long on 10GBase-T)?

Give me your wisdom please :)
 
dulcificum said:
How long cables to buy
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If you're cabling a house you'll be buying bulk cable (solid core) on a reel or in a box. You won't be buying cables of a specific length.

If you're just tacking a few cables around the skirting boards then buying premade cables could make sense.

You really don't need (or really want) anything 'better' than Cat6. There's a reason that Cat5e is still so common.
 
Cat6 is a lot easier to terminate than Cat6a, if you're going to buy shielded cable and then just ignore the shielding you could possibly end up with poorer performance than Cat6.

If you're doing overkill for the future then pull in 20mm flexible conduit so you can just replace the cables in the future if something else comes along.

In order of things I'd rather do to get cables in (ignoring surface runs or just kicking things under carpets):
  • Not do it at all
  • Fish down existing capping from loft into an existing box (maybe pulling out a useless telephone cable at the same time), this is very dependent on how your house was constructed as some cables will be clipped and then just plastered in. Obviously this only works if the capping has low voltage cabling in already - e.g. you can convert a TV outlet into a TV and network, but you can't have mains power in the same box
  • Drill into the top of a stud wall and drop a cable down from a loft, cutting a section of plasterboard out to get past a noggin (if the wall is timber, if it's a really new build it might be metal framing)
  • Lift carpet to get into a floor to come up or down into a stud wall
  • Drill through an external wall to route cables between floors on the outside of a building, hiding conduits behind downpipes where possible
  • Cut a plasterboard ceiling open to run cables up into a stud wall
  • Chase cables into solid walls and redecorate
  • Lift up a tile, lino or wood floor to run cables up or down into a stud wall
 
bremen1874 said:
If you're cabling a house you'll be buying bulk cable (solid core) on a reel or in a box. You won't be buying cables of a specific length.

If you're just tacking a few cables around the skirting boards then buying premade cables could make sense.

You really don't need (or really want) anything 'better' than Cat6. There's a reason that Cat5e is still so common.
Click to expand...
I need to have cable chucked across the staircase and along skirting board for the next few months until I can get the tools needed to do it properly so I will be reusing my existing cables which I need to buy at roughly the right length. I can always reterminate them later.
 
dulcificum said:
What do you wish you'd thought of?
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I wish I’d REALLY thought about how I wanted my network to be part of my home. How many network cameras I NEEDED, and to allow for external access points because the Tesla needs one to phone home to Google HQ every night.

dulcificum said:
What would you do differently?
Click to expand...

I would put a power socket near every network socket. Mount additional network sockets in places that I might want Sonos speakers, get Openreach in to move the incoming internet connection to where the network Cabinet is and build a soundproof enclosure round it so I can’t hear the hard drives clicking away. And everywhere I put a socket I’d double up what I had planned.


dulcificum said:
Easy ways to avoid pulling floorboards or chasing walls
Click to expand...

Unfortunately that’s just how it is if you don’t want to run everything externally.

dulcificum said:
Socket location in retrospect?
Click to expand...

I would definitely add at least one socket and power outlet in a ceiling/wall corner to get a wired Sonos speaker in every room. And the CCS vertical entry RJ45 boxes mean you won’t keep banging the cables as you walk past them. Get a modular patch panel so it’s easy to add additional points without having to access the patch panel itself to punch down. The CCS tool-free keystones are fabulous in my experience.

dulcificum said:
CAT7 good enough?
Click to expand...

As the cable standards go up the cables get thicker and harder to work with. I cannot imagine any scenario in a home (even a home business) where CAT6 wouldn’t be good enough. If you want to go better, just bite the bullet and put in optical fibres.

dulcificum said:
How long cables to buy (not sure exactly how long the runs will end up but don't want to go too long on 10GBase-T)?
Click to expand...

Buy a 305m box of external grade CAT6 and then another one if you run out.
 
Caged said:
Cat6 is a lot easier to terminate than Cat6a, if you're going to buy shielded cable and then just ignore the shielding you could possibly end up with poorer performance than Cat6.

If you're doing overkill for the future then pull in 20mm flexible conduit so you can just replace the cables in the future if something else comes along.

In order of things I'd rather do to get cables in (ignoring surface runs or just kicking things under carpets):
  • Not do it at all
  • Fish down existing capping from loft into an existing box (maybe pulling out a useless telephone cable at the same time), this is very dependent on how your house was constructed as some cables will be clipped and then just plastered in. Obviously this only works if the capping has low voltage cabling in already - e.g. you can convert a TV outlet into a TV and network, but you can't have mains power in the same box
  • Drill into the top of a stud wall and drop a cable down from a loft, cutting a section of plasterboard out to get past a noggin (if the wall is timber, if it's a really new build it might be metal framing)
  • Lift carpet to get into a floor to come up or down into a stud wall
  • Drill through an external wall to route cables between floors on the outside of a building, hiding conduits behind downpipes where possible
  • Cut a plasterboard ceiling open to run cables up into a stud wall
  • Chase cables into solid walls and redecorate
  • Lift up a tile, lino or wood floor to run cables up or down into a stud wall
Click to expand...

Hang on is that ascending order or descending order?

I guess first thing is to find where stud walls are. I'm a complete noob at this.

Are there elegant solutions to running under carpet without creating a "bump"?

Is 20mm conduit enough for 2-3 runs?

And I always thought the issue with external runs was access and weatherproofing. What's best practice for this?
 
WJA96 said:
I wish I’d REALLY thought about how I wanted my network to be part of my home. How many network cameras I NEEDED, and to allow for external access points because the Tesla needs one to phone home to Google HQ every night.



I would put a power socket near every network socket. Mount additional network sockets in places that I might want Sonos speakers, get Openreach in to move the incoming internet connection to where the network Cabinet is and build a soundproof enclosure round it so I can’t hear the hard drives clicking away. And everywhere I put a socket I’d double up what I had planned.




Unfortunately that’s just how it is if you don’t want to run everything externally.



I would definitely add at least one socket and power outlet in a ceiling/wall corner to get a wired Sonos speaker in every room. And the CCS vertical entry RJ45 boxes mean you won’t keep banging the cables as you walk past them. Get a modular patch panel so it’s easy to add additional points without having to access the patch panel itself to punch down. The CCS tool-free keystones are fabulous in my experience.



As the cable standards go up the cables get thicker and harder to work with. I cannot imagine any scenario in a home (even a home business) where CAT6 wouldn’t be good enough. If you want to go better, just bite the bullet and put in optical fibres.



Buy a 305m box of external grade CAT6 and then another one if you run out.
Click to expand...

Thanks for this, very useful:)

No need to cameras in the next 50 years I can think of.

Instead of a power socket near every network socket why not just put the network sockets where the power already is?

I'm an audiophile so won't be going near Sonos but ceiling is a good idea. Doing corners of every room sounds like it will make the project 10x more complicated though!

Why the hate for CAT7? What do I lose using this instead of CAT6?
 
dulcificum said:
Why the hate for CAT7? What do I lose using this instead of CAT6?
Click to expand...

Try to terminate anything using CAT7. Now do that a few more times and you’ll hate CAT7 too.

You won’t lose anything. But you gain nothing but bleeding fingertips.
 
dulcificum said:
I'm an audiophile so won't be going near Sonos but ceiling is a good idea
Click to expand...

You can swap Sonos for any 21st century music system. They all run better on a wired interface than WLAN.

We did a house install using Linn kit recently. 85% was fibre-optic because the home-owner was convinced that copper cables diluted his sound quality. On a digital source!
 
Terminating double shielded structured cable into wall sockets is a real pain as the cable is very stiff. Unless you're running a MRI machine then its probably not necessary. I made this mistake and spent ages terminating. Also Keystones are great for patch panels but was probably unnecessary for my wall sockets. It meant I had cut really deep holes for back boxes.

I'd recommend doubling the amount of sockets you think you might need in rooms and think through where you might want cables in the future. Having sockets in all rooms gives you loads of flexibility.

I've got extra runs coiled under the floor for a future extension, aps and cameras.

Dropping cables and chasing walls is messy so ideally do it when you plan on doing other work.
 
Buy a cable rod set, this helped me massively when pulling/pushing cables up the walls.

Buy an endoscope camera, another thing that helps out when you get stuck and obviously can't see what's happened.

If you're making your own patch cables, then don't cheap out on the connectors - i bought a load of cheap ones thinking how hard could it actually be, but when crimping, there was always a few wires that didn't get spliced.

Network tester is a must, you really want to test after every run is made, this makes installation a lot longer (because of terminating at both ends) but does mean when you finish you know every cable run works.

If you do plan to run any cables externally and money is no issue, then buy all external grade cable. As cable runs always tend to be a lot longer than you think!
 
This is turning out to be rather a bigger job than I thought! So before I buy a 24 port switch for a three bed house and drop £2k on this, what's best practices for running cables under carpet and along skirting boards?
 
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