Domestic Cat 5 cabling and management

[Adrian C]

Stick huge alluminium ducts and trays at ceiling level thoughout the house and install false ceilings.

Ready for anything. :-)

[D.M. Procida]

Indeed. And if I'm wearing only my vest and Alan Rickman turns up with his gang to take everyone hostage, I can crawl around through the ducting to defeat him.

Daniele

[TheOldFellow]

Plus, if you are renovating you may be adding internal foil-backed insulation panels. I did, and so now, as expected, wifi doesn't work. I'm adding cat5e to every room at the same time.

In many cases I've added spare wall boxes with a length of conduit (I use solvent weld round plastic overflow pipe) to a convenient place and left a cord in it. This is so I can pull whatever technology wire is required sometime...

R.

[D.M. Procida]

Indeed. It looks like someone's building a faraday cage with foam backing.

Daniele

[D.M. Procida]

Gigabit ethernet runs happily over Cat 5e.

Daniele

[TheScullster]

"D.M. Procida" wrote

I suspect that once you have done all this work, you will accept the location you choose now as acceptable from here on in. If you want to "spread" the structure more, then consider a Gigabit switch in one location with Cat 6 cable to more localised 100Mbit switches. Then make the wiring from the 100Mbit switches to the wall sockets accessible Cat5E. You can upgrade the 100Mbit switches and local Cat5E in future if necessary. Also worth considering running telephone and co-ax from central location (if you still use land line). I followed suggestions on this group and took A+B pair up to a face plate splitter in the loft and then ran land lines to each room from there. This avoids the need for local phone filters and provides "cleaner" broadband. Install your modem/router here also and connect to your gigabit switch and you have wired network internet access.

HTH

Phil

[Dave Liquorice]

Cat5 will do analogue phone no problem and audio and baseband SD video (with suitable baluns). Not sure if you could squeeze HD down Cat5 but then there is no need you'd have a media PC at the display end connected over the network.

RF is the tricky one that does need coax and CT100 or better.

[Dave Liquorice]

They tend to blow things rather than suck. Donno why.

[Tim S]

TheScullster coughed up some electrons that declared:

Worth pointing out that Cat5e runs to 1 gig/sec quite happily - it's in the spec - but you will need all 4 pairs in use, so no using splitters to double the number of sockets on each end.

Cat 6a is spec'd to run to 10 gig/s - if using Cat 6, aim for 6a - basically the same stuff tested to a more exacting standard (rather like Cat 5 vs Cat

5e).

Cheers

Tim

[Rod]

Is the price difference between 100M and 1G for small switches significant? Yes - there is still a premium, but not that much.

Agreed about 5e working fine at gigabit - but I would always use 6/6a in a harsh environment (e.g. a server cabinet) or for longer distances.

[meow2222]

an even better option:

Daniele, that article would be a good starting point.

NT

[meow2222]

if Daniele is looking for a cheaper option, its possible to just buy a handful of plugs & couplers, and fit those to the cables you want to use now.

NT

[Mike]

"Category 6a (or Augmented Category 6) operates at frequencies up to

550 MHz?twice that of Cat 6"

By the time that cable hits the streets Cat 7 or 6b or some other random letter and number will be the order of the day. The only way to future proof house wiring is by lots of empty ducts and conduits (and stick everything that doesn't specifically require cable on a wireless network) You also need lots of fibre optic tails trailing round the floor as a trip hazard. It'll still be out of date next week though. :)

Land to grow food, a huge stock of seed, a nuclear reactor to provide heat, and an endless supply of water are far more important for 'future proofing' than any network cable ever will be.

[John Weston]

Install the draw string using rods during the duct installation, before you fix the ducts and leave it there. When you pull-through the cables, make sure you also pull a replacement draw string with each cable. Better, make the first draw string twice the length of the duct and use it so it is never pulled out completely.

Another alternative is to use screwed rods, e.g.,

pushed through the duct and pull them out with the new cable attached. I use these for Cat5 installation where there is no draw cord and they work well. They can be lengthened as you feed them into the duct or wall cavity - but make sure you screw them up well by hand otherwise you can break the male screwed part... Don't push them in with the end fitting installed either.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Crimping cat 5 structured solid core cable into plugs never really produces reliability.

[chris French]

True, but if installing fixed cables in such locations, it'd be worth considering Cat6, be setup for 10Gigbit as well :-)

[Tim S]

The Natural Philosopher coughed up some electrons that declared:

Yep. If you look at Farnell, there are two types of RJ45 - one for solid and one for stranded.

[tony sayer]

In article , chris French scribeth thus

Does anybody really -need- that?..

[tony sayer]

Right plugs and RIGHT grade of crimp tool and no problems!..

We've done hundreds of these and I think we've only had one play up!.

And that wasn't assembled too well....

[Dave Liquorice]

Maybe not now but what does the future hold? Bear in mind that most streaming audio and video feeds are compressed to hell and back and it shows.

IIRC the Serial Digital Interface (SDI) feed in broadcast circles is 270 Mbps. The same for Hi-Def is 1.485 Gbps or 2.970 Gbps. There are variations in the standards SD could be down at "only" 143 Mbps...