Setting up Wired Network

Amp34

Amp34

Amp34

Caporegime
Joined
25 Jul 2005
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Canada
I'm going to wire up my rented house as powerlines just aren't cutting it. As I can't drill holes in walls the easiest way is to go outside through a window and up the outside of the house, into another window. We have a number of wireless devices and three wired devices.

One will be in the room with the router - simple connection.

The other two will be at the far side of the house in separate rooms. My plan is to trail the cable from the router round the outside of the house into one of the rooms and then have a gigabit switch connecting the device (a Synology NAS) and another cable going outside the house into the other room as seen below.

Screen_Shot_2014_10_26_at_18_35_15.png


I basically want the fastest possible speeds as the NAS contains 30MB RAW photos and we transfer them around a lot. The router is a Homehub 3 that I may upgrade to an Asus AC router, but both have plenty of Gigabit plugs. This is essentially a temporary solution as we will either be leaving this house in 6 or 18 months. I

assume Cat 5e will be fine, no benefits for Cat 6 in a setup like this? I also like the idea of using flat Cat 5e cable rather than the standard round cable (so it goes through the windows better), again I assume there will be no benefit. Quality of cable? I assume Cat 5e at those lengths is just Cat 5e, no need for hyper expensive cables, just the cheapest is fine? Lastly I assume any cheap gigabit switch will do, or will quality make a high difference?
 
assume Cat 5e will be fine, no benefits for Cat 6 in a setup like this? I also like the idea of using flat Cat 5e cable rather than the standard round cable (so it goes through the windows better), again I assume there will be no benefit. Quality of cable?

If you've got a very active network that can saturate multiple 1gb/s links then the extra bandwidth frequency can actually help in various ways with cat6, also the price difference is not enough to warrant buying a less future proof cable IMHO


I assume Cat 5e at those lengths is just Cat 5e, no need for hyper expensive cables, just the cheapest is fine?

The distances are fine for either cat5e or cat6, but I wouldn't run the cable outside of the window just for the sake of it, pinning along the skirting will do you until you move, plus you won't have a possibly damaged/worn cable that you can use in your next house


I assume any cheap gigabit switch will do, or will quality make a high difference?

Pretty much, unless you require something specific then it's literally just all about the number of ports, this for instance http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=NW-011-TP&groupid=46&catid=2316 is what I use, plain and simple but does the job
 
cat5e and cat 6 are twisted pair cables which means what it says,the cables are twisted around each other in pairs to help avoid crosstalk and maintain the integrity of the signal over distance so I personally would not advise using the flat cable for anything other than a run of a few feet at either end of the main run or not at all if it can be helped.

In the flat cables the pairs are not twisted to the same degree as the round cables.

Have you got wooden or pvc windows?

Either way,http://www.amazon.co.uk/16mm-400mm-...cp_5_D640?ie=UTF8&refRID=0NPJP78YE7K4ZQ2062YN

you probably only need a 10mm.

Push the cable through both windows (in and out) then fix the rj45's after the cable has gone through that way you can get away with a much smaller hole than if you want to get a pre made cable in.

http://techgage.com/article/how_to_make_your_own_cat5e_network_cable/

quite easy to make cat5e though cat6 takes a fine degree of crimping skills to get right and try not to make the right angles on any corners too tight if you can help it.

I would guess that if you leave the cables in place when you leave that the landlord shouldn't be too upset about the job being done.
 
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Are you sure Homeplugs wont cut it, what did you try? Mine transfer HD videos a lot of web traffic and backup data which they dont seem to struggle with?
 
I think the problem with flats,old houses or anywhere that any kind of conversions have been done is that you can never tell how many circuits make up an addresses power supply,I know there are 3 circuits in play where I live and that makes setting up Homeplugs a bit hit and miss when it comes to upstairs/downstairs configs.
 
matthab said:
Are you sure Homeplugs wont cut it, what did you try? Mine transfer HD videos a lot of web traffic and backup data which they dont seem to struggle with?
Click to expand...

At what speeds?

Don't think I've seen them transfer over 15MB/s. Which is way too slow for backups.
 
I too recommend pinning to the skirting boards. Each segment can have a maximum length of 100 metres so you've got plenty of length for going around doors etc.
 
Can you not run the cables around the edge of the rooms, over door frames etc?

I wired my house with the cables cunningly hidden, and I didn't drill a single hole.
 
Thanks for the replies guys.

First off I'm not drilling through walls or windows. I don't want the hassle from the landlord about it. I may be able to steal one hole that is currently used by a redundant "telewest" cable connection, if I can find a screwdriver to undo the "funny" screws...

Running cables in the house is pretty much out as it would involve going through and past about eight doors, much easier to just stick it out a window and round.

With homeplugs I'm getting 5MB/s throughput (real world file transfer) with the gigabit ones. Im pretty sure there are two separate rings. Even then 15MB/s is still deathly slow when you're transferring tens of GB of flea around at a time. I'm likely to get much better throughput with wireless AC!

I'll go with round cat 6 then, looking into it a bit more there is negligible difference price wise. Is it a stiffer cable? I don't intend to use it in the next house, which we plan on buying, as I will be wiring it properly... I've actually had a standard indoor cat5e cable running through windows at my parents house for about 10 years... Still works as advertised! Ill also grab that switch, thanks Gel.
 
Better quality cable will be stiffer as it should have single strand copper cores as opposed to multi stranded copper clad aluminum etc but for your run I'd be happy to use cat5e,you should get 1Gbps out of that or enough to stream a few 4k HD vids by my calcs.

Can you not make do with wireless until you move or get some wireless repeater/extender kit?
 
APM said:
Better quality cable will be stiffer as it should have single strand copper cores as opposed to multi stranded copper clad aluminum etc but for your run I'd be happy to use cat5e,you should get 1Gbps out of that or enough to stream a few 4k HD vids by my calcs.

Can you not make do with wireless until you move or get some wireless repeater/extender kit?
Click to expand...

I'm looking to get as fast as possible. That means with AC wireless I'll have to be spending about £300-400 for the necessary router and a couple of dongles. There's also the issue of the Synology NAS being picky with wireless dongles anyway. All that and it probably won't be as fast as just sticking a cable round the outside of the house and spending £30. I will probably get an Asus AC router shortly however for the wireless devices (one of which is a surface 3 and the other a MacBook air, both also used for editing). I want to get at least 50-60MB/s real world throughout from the NAS to the router and the computers, which is on the edge even for the trip/quad channel AC routers, before factoring in walls.
 
I have an external run of cat6 here going through a router and a switch then down/up two floors and I can remember seeing 85MB's,it depends on the files themselves and what disks you are writing to of course.
 
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