Need some advice and guidance on home network install

MrM

MrM

MrM

Associate
Joined
19 Dec 2002
Posts
849
Location
London
Hi Guys,

My wife and I are purchasing a new (old) house and will be having some work done to it. We hope it will be a 15 year + home and so I want to take the opportunity to wire it for now and the future whilst some works are done and it is "open". The advice I am after is what I should be thinking about with regard to logistics and what I need to run to each room and what hardware will I need.

There is no decent broadband available so I'm planning to use a 4G data contract to power web content; 4G speeds are very good. I am looking to have a 2 WAPs around the house to ensure decent wifi coverage, would like to run Sky round the house to a number of different rooms (via cat 5/6 to HDMI converters), have wired Sonos solution and a few IP cameras for security. I plan to have a cupboard as a "central hub" to house the hardware needed.

4G data is relatively cheap, Vodafone offer a 50GB/m bundle for £30. We do stream content from time to time and I'm worried we might eat through the 50Gb, so can anyone advise on the viability of running 2 4G routers, one for wireless devices (phones, tablets etc) and another for hard wired devices (Sky, Amazon Fire TV, Sonos) for on demand services? Is it easy to mesh it all together and make a coherent setup?

Thanks in advance
 
Things I have learned (in some cases the hard way):
  • Always pull more feeds to each room than you think you'll need.
  • Always use conventional copper, Copper Clad Aluminium (CCA) is evil.
  • Consider if you'll want/need PoE (voip phones, CCTV etc.)
  • Remember Baluns need direct connected un-broken feeds, a patch panel won't work, neither will terminating them with a faceplate. You need to spend silly money to get round this last time I looked.
  • Always buy Balun kits that support IR pass through - it saves another cable pull.
  • Consider/plan DTV/SAT distribution now, it's better to have it in place at this stage than have to try and handle it later.
  • Consider that within a given room you may want to have multiple feeds to different locations, for example you may have everything set-up one way now, but in 10 years you may need a camera system in the corner and a feed to the other side of the room, or the room's usage may change (i've just taken over the dining room as an office rather than the room I have previously used as an office) and it was totally un-cabled for my needs.
  • Buy a cable tester/crimp tool, not the cheap/nasty stuff, spend an extra few quid, same with boots and plugs/faceplates.
  • Label everything, everywhere you can see it. Cheap way is buy different electrical tapes and colour code, 4 tapes gives you a lot of different combinations.
I'm sure others will come up with other suggestions.

When you say no decent broadband, what are we talking about? A basic 4-6mbit ADSL line profile will likely handle streaming and the majority of your downloading and be preferable to a metered 4G connection . You can get load balancing routers and it's possible to config quota's for each WAN interface so it'll use for example 49GB on one and then switch to the other and send you an email. To use a recent example i'm told Tekken 7 for PC comes in at 50+GB download, i've not fact checked that, but it's £30 in your example to download a single game, i'd personally prefer to shove that on a slower un-metered connection and not have to worry about it. The other option is satellite broadband, but again un-metered isn't 'cheap', but is available at a fair price.
 
ADSL is <0.5mb but Openreach claim they are laying fibre soon, but will believe it when I see it. We won't be downloading any games, it would purely be TV/music on demand.
 
Streaming video can use a lot of data if you aren't careful.

My broadband was down for one evening and I used 8GB of mobile data streaming a few shows on Netflix to my iPad. If you wanted to do this even on a semi-regular basis you'd need to force the streaming quality right down.
 
I'm going to ignore your WAN decisions etc, what's your budget for everything? I'd say, Cat6 or Cat6a to each room, 2 at each TV + 2-4 data in each room. If you're going to be there for 15 years, technology is going to move on, and fast. I'd look at a HDMI Matrix for all your TVs, at work we install HDAnywhere kit and it's epic, it carries a premium price tag, I can advise if you need but due to forum rules and location I can't talk any sort of pricing.

In your 'plant room', I'd recommend a comms cabinet, how much space do you have? I'd recommend you at least terminate the networking yourself. Modules at the outlet end in a data faceplate, you can get standard euro fit modules and faceplates, so they can match your switches and sockets. Patch panel at the 'plant room' end.

In regards to what cable to use, I tend to recommend Excel and still prefer it, but pricing wise Connectix comes out very well and they've actually hired a handful of staff from Excel/Mayflex now.
 
I was budgeting £5-8k to do it properly, I should add it's a listed building which adds its own complications which I will need to manage. Will check out HDAnywhere. Kramer had come previously recommended to me.

I'm reasonably tech savvy, but I need someone to explain to me, or list the kit I will need and more importantly why. I'm the kind of person that needs to understand what the kit is for, what it does and (with regard to the future) what the limitations are.

Regarding the internet connection, of course the 4G is not a long term solution and hope fibre will come soon which will be a revolution. In the interim 20mb down and 8 up is what I received on my phone which is a lot better than the ADSL offering to the area.
 
I'd suggest you may be better looking at some of the projects on an AV specific FORUMS, they have some very detailed and informative write up's from people doing the same sort of thing that you are suggesting.
 
MrM said:
I was budgeting £5-8k to do it properly, I should add it's a listed building which adds its own complications which I will need to manage. Will check out HDAnywhere. Kramer had come previously recommended to me.

I'm reasonably tech savvy, but I need someone to explain to me, or list the kit I will need and more importantly why. I'm the kind of person that needs to understand what the kit is for, what it does and (with regard to the future) what the limitations are.

Regarding the internet connection, of course the 4G is not a long term solution and hope fibre will come soon which will be a revolution. In the interim 20mb down and 8 up is what I received on my phone which is a lot better than the ADSL offering to the area.
Click to expand...

HDMI Matrix wise, I did a load of research before pursuing the HDAnywhere. It truly is the best on the market in my opinion.

Wi-Fi wise go 2x UAP-AC-LR from Ubiquiti. A fairly sizeable business had one of their depots running 2x 4G Routers in load balancing mode and it worked for them until they could get a leased line installed, latency wasn't great though. I think they had them in a modem only mode and used a separate router.
 
Thanks. I've had a quick look at the HDAnywhere kit, looks interesting. I presume I would also then run a separate run of cables to each room I wished to handle data for any hardwired ethernet connection (Sky, Amazon Fire, wired computer, PoE camera etc) via a central switch?
 
MrM said:
Thanks. I've had a quick look at the HDAnywhere kit, looks interesting. I presume I would also then run a separate run of cables to each room I wished to handle data for any hardwired ethernet connection (Sky, Amazon Fire, wired computer, PoE camera etc) via a central switch?
Click to expand...
Yep, exactly that hence my recommendation of 2 at each tv plus extras. Their pro range does passthrough ethernet for the TVs but better to have 2.
 
So I have a lousy fibre (4Mbit/s) and a 4G connection with a 30Gb monthly allowance. I use a pfSense home built router appliance to configure the two WAN connections and you can definitely do what you want in terms of directing certain devices to certain WANs and all sorts of other fancy load balancing and failover stuff. Basically it can do that 'meshing' you talk about. One WAN is presented to the pfSense router from a 4G mini router and the other from a VDSL modem.

The one thing I would say is that even 50Gb per month is paltry if you want to use it for any significance at home and certainly not enough for regular streaming. I have my router configured to exclusively route my work laptop via 4G and no other device except in the event of my fibre failing and I burn through that 30Gb a month working from home three days a week and doing nothing more demanding than regular web browsing and VOIP.

Having a modern home connected to a data capped plan is tough to live with. All those windows updates, phone app updates, tablet updates, streaming etc. etc. take up so much of your data allowance.

Re wifi - since you're cabling up then ordinary access points, like the Ubiquiti Unifi APs make sense and more cost effective than mesh networking which is great but more expensive and solves big problems if you can't run cables; you are so leverage them.
 
Yep fair point, to be honest I neglected to account for "updates" which would be a big killer. If I were to house the Amazon Fire TV and Sky box in a cabinet with a bit of kit like an HDAnywhere matrix, can anyone comment what the IR feedback is like? Is it pretty quick and seamless?

Thanks again
 
I don't use HDAnywhere, but I do use balun's and IR feeds, it's near instant for the Sky box, i've never needed to run the FTV4K over balun's, but it can't be any worse than using the remote app via wifi which is painless.
 
MrM said:
If I were to house the Amazon Fire TV and Sky box in a cabinet with a bit of kit like an HDAnywhere matrix, can anyone comment what the IR feedback is like?
Click to expand...

There's not much sense in having a centralised Fire TV.
  • The remotes aren't IR so you've got to be within radio range.
  • If you want to have multiple remotes they're relatively expensive to buy on their own.
  • Fire TV sticks are cheap enough to just plug one into every TV.
 
Slightly off topic, but can anyone recommend a server cabinet to house the kit I would have (switch, HD Anywhere etc)? Thanks
 
You need to know where you're mounting it before you can decide on a cabinet. You also need to know exactly what you want to house, how much space those items with need, and how much spare space you want to end up with. It's difficult to know how much space an 'etc' will require.

That HDanywhere kit is expensive (no idea how it compares to direct competitors). What are you planning on running over it? It seems to me that Sky-Multiscreen and a FireTV for every TV would be cheaper and more flexible.
 
I'm not planning on housing too much more in here to be honest. Technically, due to the house being listed and in a conservation area, Sky via satellite dish is not permitted, but I understand people have found ways around it, which is why I'd rather have a centrally houses discreet box which is then broadcast around the house. Sky via broadband would be an option if a fibre connection arrives in the near future. Similarly I would probably seek to do the same with one centralised Blu Ray Player. As I mentioned previously, broadband connectivity is an issue, and it's slow, so I might opt to run a 4G router alongside a (slow) fixed broadband line and allow wireless devices to use the 4G connection and then anything likely to stream content to a big screen connect to the fixed line, if it's fast enough, hence why I'm toying with the idea of having the fire tv centralised as well... I wouldn't look to house the sky box, blue ray or fire TV in the cabinet as I guess I might need more convenient access than the cabinet would afford me.
 
MrM said:
Technically, due to the house being listed and in a conservation area, Sky via satellite dish is not permitted, but I understand people have found ways around it..
Click to expand...

Really? I live in a Grade II listed house in an AONB and a satellite dish is no problem, you just have to apply for listed building consent. Maximum of two devices on the house - an aerial and a satellite dish. We've got cables running discretely to multiple entry points in the house from the LNB.

Grade I would be a different story.
 
It's grade II listed and in a conservation area with article 4 restrictions on it and I think it's the latter that causes he bigger issue to be honest.
 
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