Moving house, will need rewiring - what set up to have?

Mike_J_Smith

Mike_J_Smith

Mike_J_Smith

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25 Oct 2005
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476
Hi all,

I’m moving house in Jan (fingers crossed) and the new place will need some if not complete rewiring. I hate home networking but need something that:

- works flawlessly & easily, plug and play ideally
- provides strong WiFi across a large 4 bed and be able to extended into a separate garage
- work with sky q
- connects a lot of devices (tvs, consoles, pc, iPad, phone etc)
- I want one network across the whole house / extensions etc

is there a general consensus of what would be best? I have some tplink mesh components but I’m also happy replacing the lot with something that will work well.

Thanks!
 
Craigius said:
Are you looking at having Cat6 installed throughout the house?
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Yes it’s a possibility if that’s the way forward. I’d like most things to connect wirelessly, but if that means running cat6 and then having wireless access points in some/most/all? rooms, then that’s what I’d like to know.
 
That’s what I would do I have hard wired all my access points back to my router, however it’s best to chose a central location in the house for all the wires to come back to and install a new work cabinet with a patch panel and switch.
It all depends on how big and advanced you want to go with the network.
 
Craigius said:
That’s what I would do I have hard wired all my access points back to my router, however it’s best to chose a central location in the house for all the wires to come back to and install a new work cabinet with a patch panel and switch.
It all depends on how big and advanced you want to go with the network.
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Ok,
I can probably do that. We haven’t moved in yet so I’m not 100% sure on the layout, but I can probably put something in the loft. Are the components relatively easy to buy / standard? Can you recommend some or is it something I’m good to need to read up on? If possible, I’d just buy something that is the standard recommendation. I don’t need anything fancy, just good, strong, stable connections.
 
If your going with the route of access points, I'd recommend a mesh network. That way your WiFi SSID will remain the same throughout the house. I use Asus routers to achieve this.
 
The1nonly1 said:
If your going with the route of access points, I'd recommend a mesh network. That way your WiFi SSID will remain the same throughout the house. I use Asus routers to achieve this.
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Mesh isn’t as good as a wired back haul, if the OP is willing to put in the cables for that then it’s a much better option. Mesh has a huge downside, it cuts your wireless speed in half when not connected to the main AP. While that’s fine on FTTC that tops out at 80mb, it’s not on FTTP which tops out at 900 and vast majority in the country will be about to get it in the next 5-6 years.

Quartz said:
You want both a wired network and a wireless one. Two wired network points (at least) to each room. You'll probably want a switch for your TV and its accessories.
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Seems overkill given the OPs requirements.


I’d suggest Ubiquiti wifi 6 access points mounted on the ceiling. You may only need 1 mounted to the first floor ceiling, that’s all I need in my 4 bed house. You could put a second in the garage, or on the eves of the house to cover any outside areas.

If you need more coverage, just add more access points, you certainly don’t need one in every room though. You want to wire them all up for the best results. The disks are designed to be ceiling mounted but there are others in the range which are not.
 
b0rn2sk8 said:
Mesh isn’t as good as a wired back haul, if the OP is willing to put in the cables for that then it’s a much better option. Mesh has a huge downside, it cuts your wireless speed in half when not connected to the main AP. While that’s fine on FTTC that tops out at 80mb, it’s not on FTTP which tops out at 900 and vast majority in the country will be about to get it in the next 5-6 years.
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Sorry, I should have been more specific. My Asus mesh WiFi uses ethernet cable to connect the router and access point giving me the same speed regardless of which I'm connected to. This is with a 1Gb FTTP connection. I don't get the full 1Gb speed over WiFi but it's the same speed on both access points.
 
The1nonly1 said:
Sorry, I should have been more specific. My Asus mesh WiFi uses ethernet cable to connect the router and access point giving me the same speed regardless of which I'm connected to. This is with a 1Gb FTTP connection. I don't get the full 1Gb speed over WiFi but it's the same speed on both access points.
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No worries, you’d normally describe a mesh as something using the WiFi for the communication between the different nodes rather than eithernet.

Wiring them all up as you’ve done is the best solution.
 
Thanks for all the feedback. So if I was going to get either mesh WiFi units or the ubiquiti things, what else would I need?

I’ve seen a sticky on this thread that talks about network cabinets, patch panels, switches etc - do I need all of that too? I’ve got a sky router and a tplink one, but none of the other bits.
 
If you want to connect everything using wireless, you just 'need' a the access points in appropriate locations, some network cables to connect them all to a switch or your router. That's it. Suitable switches are not particularly expensive if you need one.

Installing a network cabinet, patch panels are great and all that but they are not really needed unless you have a lot of networking points installed. It's totally overkill for hooking up a few access points. It's very much applying a commercial methodology to a home setting but if you put multiple ports in every room then yes, you'd probably want that.
 
Have a think about where future fibre networks might enter your house and ensure you've provided routes from those locations to wherever you want your network equipment to be located. You don't want to do a back-to-brick refurbishment and then three months later have a fibre cable clipped around your skirting to get to a cupboard. This could be as simple as a backbox sunk into an external wall, some flexible conduit running under the floor or up to the ceiling and coming out in a location where you'd want your router to go, with some string left in place for future use.

Use this opportunity to go a bit over the top - anything that doesn't move should be wired. I probably wouldn't go as far as ensuring that Sonos speakers or whatever on a kitchen counter need a wired connection, but everything in your TV cabinet should, as well as any location you designate as your home office.
 
Thanks everyone for the advice; very helpful. I’m thinking of going for the slightly ott option as I’d like to hardwire in at least the sky q boxes plus my pc, office plus the access points covering the house, garage possibly garden too, so probably looking at least 10-12 connections.

is there any reason I couldn’t just get a network switch of around 16-24 ports and just hook that up to the router?

Or would that many ports need a switch and a patch panel?

how does PoE work with a patch panel? Will components like the ubiquiti WiFi access points just work? How does a patch panel provide enough power to those devices, as you could potentially hook up 24 PoE devices to it?
 
Usually you'd use a PoE switch to provide the power. These are more expensive than a regular switch but neater and useful for stuff like adding CCTV cameras down the line. For only a couple of devices, you can get PoE injectors, which pass data through and "inject" the power and possibly save a few quid. I'd go with an 8 port PoE switch to begin with tbh
 
A patch panel is just a hard termination point for the network cables, it doesn't do anything more than that and you then link down from there to your switch etc. It's recommended for a larger install mainly for integrity, ease of use and logistic reasons rather than it being an absolute requirement.

You could just put plugs on the end and go straight into the switch itself if you wanted but it can get messy and if you damage the end of a cable you could be in trouble.
 
d_brennen said:
I'd go with an 8 port PoE switch to begin with tbh
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Thanks, sounds sensible

b0rn2sk8 said:
You could just put plugs on the end and go straight into the switch itself if you wanted but it can get messy and if you damage the end of a cable you could be in trouble.
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can you explain this for me? I’d be plugging the same things into the patch panel as I would the switch, so why would using a panel be less messy and what is the risk of damage that it would help with? I’ve seen it mentioned before but I don’t get it!
 
If you're going to have every port live and will rarely if ever need to be swapping cables around then a patch panel isn't going to offer you much.

Terminating at a patch panel will be quicker and easier than crimping plugs on, and also save you from having to buy a crimp tool. You do however obviously need something to mount the patch panel to.

It's your own network in your own home so do what you want. If you can't see any benefit in using a patch panel then don't use one (but leave enough cable length spare so you can change your mind later).
 
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