Cable Wiring

You can buy a cat5 cable with the ends installed. You just need a 7/8 inch wood bit to make a hole through the floor. It cost more, but you don't have to worry about it not being pinned correctly. It cost less than the crimp tool. If you run two cables I would use a 1 inch wood bit. Some plastic wire mold could help hide the cables if you have to run the cable up a wall.

I need better internet in my basement because work forces me to work from home half time. I have spotty wifi at one end but really need to work at the other.

So, the quick and dirty way is to buy a premade "patch cord" from the big box, go out a window on the ground floor where my cable router is, and drill a hole in the concrete block wall to get it in the basement. The local stores have half inch masonry bits - can I get the connector through a half inch hole? And why does a premade CAT 6 patch cable cost less than bulk cable in 5e or 6, even without connectors? I'll do that if I have to.

But I'd rather do it right, which is to go up into the attic and back down in the basement. How in the heck do I fish a wire into the basement? This is not obvious. But I know some of you do it routinely.

Before all that, how about one of the wifi range extender/repeater widgets that you might be able to put somewhere in between? Could save a lot of work.

Don't know if the OP's work requires maximum broadband speed to get his work done. At least in my experience, both my wifi extender and my powerline extender each provide about 40% of the throughput speed to the same location (about 40' from my modem/router) compared to the connection I can get by using a 50' ethernet cable.

If the OP needs an ethernet connection, but can get by at a lower bandwidth than he would have by running an ethernet cable, he may want to try a powerline extender instead of a wifi extender. However, it should be returnable because powerline extenders are fussy about both members of the pair often needing to be on the same side of the 240V ->

A standard 8 pin "RJ-45" Ethernet connector is slightly smaller than

Technically 11.68 mm which = 0.459 inch

Yup, first thing I tried. It seems to work, it increased signal strength from none to a little bit, but not enough to connect. And work is on a VPN, unless the signal is strong it keeps dropping me.

The extender I bought can be an access point if I can hard wire it. My house is 30 x 60 feet, so a 100 foot patch cord is more than enough to go across a room, out a window, and in through a basement wall and to the other end. If that's the best way I can do it, just have to buy a masonry bit. Seems like there should be some way to fish into the basement though.

Is there a way to have two wired points from one cable, or do I run two if I want wired access at both ends of the basement?

Yeah, I measured one of my own at that, but the one in the patch cable at Home Depot looks bigger.

Then it may not be a standard 8p8c 10Base-T male plug. Can you post a link to the H-D cable you looked at ?

Seems like there should be some way to fish into the basement though.

Would it be easier to drill into the siding into a joist space ?

Either 2 cables; or one feeding a hub/switch with 2 outputs.

Something like this:

I actually bought a 100' patch cable from Hdepot about 2 months ago. If you give me a bit of time, I'll go measure it.

I dind't need 100' and I sort of planned to cut off what I needed and put my own end on. I was going to do that not to have extra cable, but it would also make the diameter less -- though I would just go with . , but I'll admit I've had a hard time doing as good a job as they do at the factory. They still work but the cheap F-connectors could be ripped off if one pulled, and not even very hard.

The better F-connectors haven't worked much better for me.

First I bought the crimpers that look like a simple pair of pliers with

Later, iirc, I found in the trash** a professional pair of crimpers, that have more leverage. But maybe I haven't had use for them.

Try a different location to be sure it is receiving a good signal. It should probably be halfway or so.

Yes, from flat side to flat side it's about 7/16" and from corner to corner it's a little more** but it's still under 1/2".

I think it will fit to begin with but can't one general run a masonry drill in and out and get the hole a little bigger?

I think this is what I got:

I think it looks bigger because the hex nut is longer than they used to be. I think the hex nut is the same size for just about all cables.

Oops, we're talking about Ethernet. Never mind.

Temporarily you can just run it down the steps to wherever it goes.

As to later, since you suggest the attic, that's what I did for most wires. There is a "stack" that has the heating ducts for the second floor. How many floors is your house? Mine is 2 stories plus basement and unfinishable attic. The floor of the 2nd floor covered the stack, and to run burglar alarm and 110V AC wires to the attic, I had to lie on the floor with a 6' drill bit and a 12" extension and drill hole(s?) in that piece of plywood. Then I pulled things back and forth until everything was in.

But I didn't think of leaving an unused line to pull later things with. Big mistake. Would have been easy. Now everything I pulled is connected at both ends and it would be a pain to use those lines.

The real way this is done in a commercial environment is you run the CAT 5/6 cable and terminate it in keystone connectors in a shallow handy box with a plate on it. No special crimpers and the hole can be

If your router is on the ground floor and you're headed for the basement, why not drill a hole in the floor above the right spot in the basement.

If there's carpet, it will close in around the wire and you don't need any kind of plate. Even if there is no carpet.

I've done that a couple** times and it works well. Though it's easy to miss a closet or a thick wall, or a setback or lots of things and misjudge where the hole will come out. I spend time checking and recheckeing and measureing and rechecking so I didn't make a blunder.

You can drill up from the basement too, if you figure out where to drill.

Or you can just go across the floor and down the steps.

When putting a cable through a wall, I'd rather drill a smaller hole and get the cable through, then install a connector.

Just buy a "hub" or "switch" (which is NOT a manual selector) or run a wire upstairs to just above where you need the wifi downstairs and plug in a simple wifi router and set it up as a "hotspot" to provide a strong wifi signal to the basement. Involves plugging the cable into one of the LAN plugs not the WAN plug. An old router can also be used as the previously mentioned "hub" or "switch"

Just cut the "boot" off

Might be Cat6? (sheilded plug)?