Home basic wired network, wifi and home adapters not cutting it.

Andrew G

Andrew G

Andrew G

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Joined
28 May 2007
Posts
410
Location
Lakeside, Essex
Hi Guys N Gals

I've had enough of wifi drop outs and home adapters needing resetting every other day because they magically drop their pairing.

I have been doing some reading on this site, watching some YouTube videos notably Cameron Gray's channel, however i've got questions I couldn't find decent answers to from searches.

Cable: There does seem to be a whole Cat6 V Cat5e (Price, Bandwidth saturation etc) "debate" with a great many saying the price it so close just go cat6. On a side note I was speaking to a security camera guy at work he seemed to be of the opinion to run external cable inside so that you have more leeway when pulling it through joists etc?

I live in a fairly typical mid terrace house with 3 bedrooms (master, bed 2 almost same size on one side of the house, front to back) with box room (home office), stair case and bathroom at the top of the stairs (on other side of the house)

The internet comes into the house at the box room 1st floor with the router (Standard 4 port and wifi) housed in that room.

The master has the airing cupboard which gives access to allow pulls into loft so I can drop to bed 2 at back of house and a void that runs downstairs into living room for pulls to smart tv, blu ray, now tv box.

Hope that explains the layout well enough, so to the questions

I intend to lift floor boards on landing and master bed to allow two pulls (1 in use and 1 redundancy) from box room into airing cupboard and place a 8 but more likely 16 port switch. In the box room all I intended to do was lift the carpet and drill a hole in the floor board behind the door and then run cable along the skirting into a surface mount box and terminate, then patch cable into ISP supplied router.

Once I have the link from box room to airing cupboard with switch in it I'll have access to loft for 2 pulls to bed 2 for smart tv and now tv box, should I pull more though?

Access from airing cupboard through void downstairs into living room to smart tv, blu ray, on demand box, should I again pull more though?

And finally my biggest worry, question do I really need a patch panel? The reason to have one is of fatigue in the cable? As the pulls are solid core and patch cables are stranded? Could I get away with surface mount boxes and keystones then patch into switch from there? Its more a question of room to get a patch panel into the top of the airing cupboard and still have access to physically wire it. If I had shielded cat6 cable I should still be thinking of keeping the cat6 away from the house T&E power cables where ever possible? Or NEVER allow overlap/contact?

Many thanks if you got this far much appreciated
 
You don't need shielded cable. You also don't need to use external grade cable internally, just take reasonable care.

You shouldn't run network and mains cabling together for any significant distance. You want a couple of inches between them, they can cross.

Cat5e or Cat6 are both okay for most things. Cat5e will be a bit cheaper and is also thinner and easier to route and terminate. If you can't decide then use Cat6.

You don't need a patch panel. It's just one way of terminating the cables. Do whatever suits your situation.

Pull as many cables as you think you might sensibly need. How difficult would it be to add cables later? Leaving a pull cord in place could be good enough.

Ethernet networking is very robust. You can break most of the rules and still have a network that works perfectly well, especially at the short distances you usually see domestically.
 
I would go with cat5e internal cable.

I install a lot of both, in my own home I've used cat5e. If it's a new build, plenty of room etc, then cat6.
 
Unless you have a large mansion (most 3 bed terrace houses are not *that* big) or are running 5x round the house before you terminate the feed, 5e should do 10Gb at the sort of distance you will need, don’t buy CCA whatever you do, consider if you will want/need balun feed(s) and hard wire a decent Unifi AP centrally - this will likely transform your Wi-fi reliability and coverage.
 
Thanks for replying Bledd and Avalon,

I think I have made my mind up what to go for.

If anyone would be up for checking over this incase I have made a noob/rookie mistake I would really appreciate your wisdom as I am putting this together with basic "I watched a youtube video" so yeah lets do this... :)

I've not got the room for a rack so am going to use keystones, face plates and surface boxes in the airing cupboard as a sudo rack and some surface trunking (2 gang 4 module X2qty)
From box room (where ISP enters house) to airing cupboard I'll run 2 cables but only use one, I am assuming there would be zero need for a link aggregation here? (usage, Smart tv, YouTube on tv, On demand tv boxes)
I'll place the 16 port switch in the top of the airing cupboard (I hope in the summer it wont over heat!), I've gone to a 16 over an 8 since I already have 7 connections and 1 spare seems a bad idea
There will be 4 drops from the airing cupboard to lounge since again I can only think of 3 links needed at the minute but may as well put a 2 gang 4 module in now and if I need more then a switch? (switch on a switch bad idea? i'm currently not into console gaming but you never know)
Then lastly 2 links minimum from airing cupboard over into bed 2 through the loft (I have a coax in 20mm oval conduit in the wall going behind the tv so I may just see if I can stuff 4 down that and call it safe, forgot to ask if coax would cause interference like hdmi can with cat?)
Then finally I can get 0.5 metre patch leads to go from keystone to switch and call it good?

NB
I will get an extra lead put into loft with a few metres extra on it for wifi AP, but it will have to be an AP that comes with a PoE injector like Unifi? i've heard, watched YouTube videos as it seems to be the current go to thing but is there anything more consumer than prosumer? Or is it just a case of a consumer grade item sucks and the unifi works at stated on the tin so to speak?

Thanks for input
 
Looks okay.

There isn't a problem with daisy-chaining switches if they're somewhere where the potential bottleneck isn't going matter. From what you describe it wouldn't be a problem.

You aren't going to need to worry about link aggregation. You'd need managed switches for that anyway.

As long as the form factor suits your requirements there's no reason not to use UniFi APs. They're reasonably cheap and they work well enough.
 
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