equipment & estimated costs for basic home network

orange_smurf

orange_smurf

orange_smurf

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Hi!

I’m in the process of purchasing a house, and I'm designing a home network. I'm completely out of my comfort zone, so I would like some advice on the best approach, the necessary equipment, and rough cost estimates. I am comfortable cutting into the plaster walls etc.

Here’s what I plan to do (floor plan below):

I plan to fill the wall between the lounge and the study, so,
- Ethernet in the study/home office with a PC and a simple NAS (the Virgin Media Hub is installed here).
- Ethernet in the lounge for a TV.
- Run HDMI and USB from the HTPC to the TV through the wall for gaming, movies??

Also,
- Ethernet in all the bedrooms.
- Ensure Wi-Fi coverage for the rest of the house.
- Wi-Fi coverage in the garage, located at the rear of the house, which has power sockets.
- Security cameras on the outside (possibly five in total)

I would appreciate any advice! I've read some threads here and had to look up a few terms, so please keep it simple :)


Floor Plan:

 
Think about where you want your equipment first. Where will you store switches, routers, etc. Then plan how to span out from there to the various locations you need to reach and with what cabling.

If you want ethernet, get some cat6 reels and run them in pairs. Terminate the cables into some RJ45 wall sockets and you'll be golden on that front. Ethernet is especially good for security systems and POE cameras. You just need one cable and don't need to concern yourself with power reqs. Again, run cables in pairs, terminate into a wall socket, then use a patch lead out to the camera (space for the wall socket pertaining). Really good for loft wiring and then mounting the cameras on the roof soffit.

You can get DAC or fibre if you want to future proof for beyond 10Gb speeds, but cat6 will do 10Gb just fine.

I'm sure others will be along with some fine suggestions, too.
 
Thanks for starting my journey into the dark and twisted world of networking, @aaronyuri :)

Q: By running in pairs, do you mean using one cable terminating into two RJ45 wall sockets? The advantage of this setup would be connecting two devices in a room without needing a switch or hub.

Q: I came across an alternate "Through Coupler Faceplate" solution. Is there any downside to using this, or am I being lazy not terminating to cables myself?


Regarding placement and locations, I am considering keeping the VM Hub in the study and connecting the 10 Gbps port to an Asus ZenWiFi Mesh Router.

From the router, I plan to:
a) Run a cable outside to an ASUS ZenWiFi BD4 Outdoor Router that supports PoE for garden coverage.
b) Connect to an Asus Node on the opposite side of the house for Wi-Fi coverage on the ground floor.
c) Run another cable into a switch in the loft. This switch will connect to each bedroom via Ethernet, along with the PoE cameras and another Asus Node for upstairs coverage.

Does this sound plausible, or am I spewing out gobbledegook?

Ta.
 
You're welcome.

Pairs meaning two separate cables terminating into two separate RJ45 ports. This means that, if you ever have any issues with one cable, you always have another cable on the same run.

Ethernet is very much point-to-point when it comes to cabling. You don't want to be in a situation where a cable fails and then you need to feed another cable through to restore service (conduit does at least make the cable replacement easier though).

There are a multitude of methods available to terminate RJ45. Choose whatever you think would be best for you. Personally, I like wall sockets because they go into single pattress boxes nicely. Easy to fish out of loft insulation, for example.

You don't need a router specifically for garden coverage - you could run some shielded cat6 by itself. It depends on distance and your garden aspirations, mostly. If you're just after WiFi coverage in the garden, there are outdoor suitable WAPs available for this purpose.

If you do plan on putting a switch in the loft, either make sure the switch is easily accessible or that you can access the power for the switch. If you ever need to reboot it, you don't want to be crawling through insulation to do so. You could kill your RCB/MCB instead but that's a choice you can now at least make consciously in advance.

Generally speaking, try to bear these specific thoughts in mind when you're planning these things:

Have an overall goal and stick to it. You can always upgrade and change things if you do it right in the first instance.
Always have your future plans in mind. For example, you don't think you need power today, but you might in a few years. Few years later you will thank yourself for running it.
Maintenance a few years down the line, not just meeting the needs of today and tomorrow. Unless you really like chasing and filling cable runs, of course!
 
Thanks for the additional information, @aaronyuri. You've given me a lot to think about. I've been looking at the Ubiquiti ecosystem and the UniFi Design Centre to give me an idea of the scope and costs.

@radderfire, Funnily enough, I was talking to someone about Reolink cameras. I'll take a look at the other thread.
 
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