House refurbishment - Cat 6 routing and termination

[viennese]

Hello,

I am having a house refurbishment including installing Cat 6 cabling in all the rooms (dual module faceplates). I have also ordered BT FTTP (max 900Mb), for January 2021, meaning that the internal works will already have been completed prior to the engineer's arrival.

I can get my builder to route a length of flexible conduit through the walls and under the flooring (with a piece of string or old cable inside) ready for the BT engineer to pull the new fibre cable through to wherever the ONT needs to be.

The issue is that I cannot decide where to terminate all the cables. My office is in the front, small bedroom upstairs. I have three options:

1) Have everything terminate into the bedroom - ONT, router, patch panel and switch.

2) ONT and router in the bedroom. Patch panel and switch in the cupboard under the stairs so all the cables terminate there too. A longer Cat 6 cable will be required to hook up the router to the PP and switch (allow 6m).

3) Only the router in the bedroom. ONT, patch panel and switch under the stairs. Not sure if this is advisable given that the router will not be next to the ONT. Will the ~6m cable needed make a huge difference? Do they both have to be together?

With option 3 I guess the router could, in theory, be anywhere in the house as long as it's next to an RJ45 socket, correct?

Originally I wanted a simple solution (without the need for a patch panel) but thinking more into it, maybe I should do this 'properly' as I only get one chance.

Thanks for any advice in advanced.

 

[viennese]

What is driving the router to be in the bedroom?

If it just wifi signal, then why not have all the network gear under the stairs tucked away, then just have one Cat-6 cable to the bedroom and put a WIFI access point in there (Ubiquiti ).

No particular reason only that is there the office is and the room is kind of in a central location. Plus I can use the extra ports at the back. But you're right as the ONT is going to be in the office bedroom, the router can be located anywhere in the house as all cables will run to the under stairs cupboard.

TBH I haven't researched into WAP. I may need one or two if I find black spots. Are Ubiquiti the ones to go for? I'll probably get a 24 port PoE switch.

 

[viennese]

Yeah maybe a switch with a 50/50 split You're correct though, any PoE devices will be for APs and CCTVs. And for the latter, I will probably feed one cable up to the loft and hook it up to another small 4-port PoE switch for the cameras. That should work?

This is my first network build. I'm only just discovering the power and possibilities of a networked home! I mean getting everything to talk to each other and having access to everything is mind blowing! I am a simple folk after all

 

[viennese]

That's a good point. If I assign the SSIDs to be the same on router (BT) and AP, will my devices connect seamlessly between the two? So place the AP on the landing ceiling rather than the hall ceiling? I guess higher up is better.

Just discovered that there's a mass shortage of 6U 300mm racks and no date of when more will arrive

 

[viennese]

I am the novice now This is the exact set up I was thinking of initially as my office room is small and didn't want to put a rack in there.

I just had the electrician round and my other idea of putting everything in the cupboard under the stairs won't work now as the routing of all the cables out hit a few obstacles. So now I'm having my rack and network stuff up in the loft. At least there will be no size issues and all cables can go anywhere easily.

 

[viennese]

The unifi Disks project their signal in a mushroom shape. The signal behind them is poor.

You want to go in the landing ceiling so it’s projects down to fill the house. If there are any gaps you can then use other APs to fill them where needed.

I think for best results you need to use devices from one manufacturer for the handoff to work seamlessly, so disabling the WiFi on the ISP router is your best bet and just rely on APs for WiFi.

You're right! I did a bit of research on Ubiquiti and I'm close to being sold on joining the UniFi family All the gear looks awesome! So I take it I can replace my BT Smart Hub 2 router with the....Ubiquiti USG? I don't actually know what I to get yet lol. I've been watching all these YT videos of the ultimate UniFi setups and I think most of the things I don't think I need because I'm a noob

I definitely need a patch panel, switch, router and an AP. Oh wait there's something called a Dream Machine. Is that the router equivalent?

Sorry, I'll research more into this!!!

 

[viennese]

With the loft, consider summer temperatures and the maximum operating temperatures of the equipment.

Thanks for that . Hopefully I won't have too many devices that will cook. It's not going to have many devices right now.

 

[viennese]

Thanks for your input, much appreciated! Noted. I have calmed down now

Is the controller just for monitoring, like with cloud hosting? Maybe something I don't need right now.

Like you suggest, I'll just stick to the BT router and get things up and running first. I can always upgrade over time! But you're right about switches, I just need a simple one to serve all the outlets.

 

[viennese]

That's awesome! Networking a home is not a scary as it seems but I appreciate that it's easier when there is no furniture in the way and the flooring can come up!

It's interesting that BT did not remove your master socket. Is that still being used? I'm tempted to rip out my existing socket in my room just so the engineer will install everything new when he comes.

 

[viennese]

Thanks for confirming. I'm an existing customer but as everything in the house has been stripped down, the old BT socket has also made it to the skip.

So as an update summary, the Cat 6 cables will be installed on Monday. The patch panel and basic switch will reside in the loft and cables run down to all the rooms (2 per room). I will use the supplied BT Smart Hub 2 for now. ONT will also be in the office.

After reading back on this thread, I will use UniFi AP (with the UniFi Cloud Key Controller) mounted on the landing ceiling. Now speaking to several people they say go with a couple of the UAP-AC-LITE, one on each floor (I live in a standard 2 storey house with a rear extended kitchen).

Do I need one for the hall ceiling too? I don't know whether something like one UAP-AC-LR or PRO will suffice in the landing but I'm told that the more expensive APs cater for more connections to the AP rather than strength.

I'm more inclined to just add one to the hall anyway as once the carpets are down in the landing, I don't want to lift them up again to feed an ethernet cable! Am I going overkill here? Shame I can't test the strength of one AP just in the landing!

 

[viennese]

That's a good idea to prepare the cable in the hall and pull it through if I need it

I just hope that I get a good BT engineer on installation day and that he is willing to pull the fibre through the conduit that I have prepared from the loft to the first floor bedroom. AFAIK they're not allowed to enter loft spaces.

 

[viennese]

You don’t necessary need to have the controller up and running all the time unless you want real-time monitoring. You also don’t need to use Ubiquiti hardware to run the controller, I run mine off a NAS and others run theirs on a Pi. I’ve not actually looked at it since I set it up though. You can just set up the APs using the phone app and call it done.

This is what confused me watching all the YT videos saying that if you want it on 24/7 you'll need the Cloud Key Controller or Pi or similar. Initially I thought that the controller had to be on for the AP to operate! I didn't quite understand what the controller did back then.

If you don't have the controller running, will all the monitoring be stored anywhere or will it just stop monitoring altogether and the next time it is turned on, all stats will be reset?