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Running ethernet in new home
We're excited to be closing on our first house in several week! It's a newer build but doesn't have ethernet run so in the nearish term future I'd like to run cat5 cat6 to some key locations:
- main level for TV and a mesh wifi node
- second floor offices (PCs) and entertainment area for consoles/second TV
Any really good guides that others have followed? So far the guides I've found focus on switches and crimping cables rather than how to get a cable from Point A to Point B effectively without knocking more hole that necessary in the wall.
Edit: meant cat6, thanks for the note.
First point of order: Run cat6. The future proofing is worth the extra money. Conduit is even better but is harder to do correctly.
The way that has always worked for me was to replace the coax from the old cable runs with Ethernet. Find some guides on fishing wires, and you'll find all sorts of great tricks.
If you have wide baseboards, taking those off and running wires that low can work much better.
If you have access to attic or basement, going up/down into those spaces directly is often much easier than trying to route directly.
Avoid drilling new holes through floors if you can. Drilling in the wrong places can make fires spread more quickly.
Avoid doing anything with exterior walls. Insulation makes everything harder.
If you have coax in your home you can actually use those wires! Last time I checked there were actually two high speed coax networking standards, MoCA and… another that I cannot remember at the moment. A quick search on Amazon shows a pair of MoCA 2.5 Ethernet bridges go for about $100.
That being said I have not actually set up a MoCA network myself so one should do their due diligence to understand what is necessary for such a setup.
In my cases, the wires were in horrible condition that couldn't carry an HDTV signal consistently, let alone network traffic.
Half the problems people have with cable ISPs boil down to ancient wires and the splitters that accompany them.
I have set up a MoCa network and it is highly variable on if it is any good based on the existing wiring quality and the setup of the coax in the home (splitters and signal configuration). The best case scenario for MoCa is if you have a fairly new, quality coax wiring job in the home or apartment, but have fiber internet so the coax is unused. I have never seen MoCa reach the speeds of cat 5e or cat6, but I have seen it get up to 400MBps if you are only going a few rooms over which isn't bad.
400 megabytes (MB) is actually 3.2 gigabits (Gb) if you meant to capitalize the B. It’s frustrating sometimes that network traffic and data storage are measured differently, but alas.
I 100% did not mean to capitalize the B, it was 400 megabits.
I had my previous home run with ethernet. I have plenty of experience with crimping and running my own cables, but the design of my house made it tough and I ended up hiring a company. They came in and quickly came to the conclusion that it wasn't going to happen the way I was trying unless I wanted to pay double because of the work involved. They up running PVC conduit externally around the house to get to where my main switch needed to be. It worked out fine in the end, but if you run into any show stoppers, it might be worth getting an estimate before you start tearing things up too much.
Thirding this. Having worked in IT for most of my life, I have run my fair share of phone, coax, ethernet, and ISDN (anyone else remember those?) cables around offices to/from cubicles, conference rooms, workstations, network printers, servers, etc. Offices usually have drop ceilings making that much much easier to do, but even then it's never a fun or fast process. And despite having a fair amount of experience running cables, I would never wire up a full house myself. I've done short runs between adjacent rooms, or to hide speaker and TV cables inside walls and such. But doing a full house is just way too much work, way too much of a PITA, and there are way too many roadblocks you can run into that will likely require a professional electrician anyways.
E.g. At our last house we paid an electrician to run cables from our modem in the basement to a half-dozen rooms around the house. And I'm glad we did since they ended up having to drill through two brick walls to get the cables into the basement suite and middle-floor office, since they were both located in extensions added by the previous owners.
And at our new condo we had the condo builder's electrician do it all, and I'm especially glad we did since the wall between where our fiber line comes into the unit and where I wanted one of the ethernet ports turned out to be a concrete fire wall... so the electrician apparently had a hell of time getting the cable past it while still keeping the fire wall up to code. It required using a special fireproof sleeved cable, and installing a firestop conduit in the hole he drilled between the rooms, amongst other things.
So yeah... IMO it's really not worth doing it yourself unless it's a short and straightforward run, @Notcoffeetable.
That's the sense I'm getting! Thanks for sharing your experience. I'm feeling more likely to try and get a quote to see what it would take before we move in.
Seconding this.
We live in an old house that still had a knob-and-tube fuse box on the second floor until a few months ago. Obviously, our house wasn't originally built with Ethernet drops. Anyway, we hired an electrician to upgrade the main panel and replace the fuse box on the second floor with a proper subpanel.
After seeing the rather ridiculous amount of work that it took to get power to the new subpanel and how the work was done professionally, with no trace of a new line beyond the conduit on the basement ceiling and the new subpanel, I am preparing to get Ethernet Cable run to the other floors of the house next time we get electrical service done with the same electrician.
I am comfortable terminanting my own ethernet cables and even installing boxes etc. but for running the cables behind plaster and lathe walls, I will happily leave it to bonded and insured professionals. So, knowing nothing about your talents or capacities, I'll say, consider either hiring a professional electrician for running the cable or including it in a future scope of work for which you would hire a professional. Of course, hiring a professional in your situation might be out of the question for several reasons, but I would rule it out as an option before proceeding DIY.
Adding on a bit of additional advice, make sure you get someone who is familiar with low voltage, and the specific needs of Ethernet. Lots of electricians will happily run ethernet, then run it parallel to power, ignore radius minimums, staple the cable like they would with Romex...
Good points, thanks for that shout out.
I second the recommendation for Cat 6. The cost isn't much different and you'll thank yourself later. Run a pull string with every cable so that you can pull another later if you want. If you have two stories, your second story should hopefully be accessible from the attic. I usually find where I'm going to drop the line, drill a hole through the top of the wall, and use fiberglass fish rods to feed the wire(s) down. For first floor. same except for through the crawl space. However, it's a lot harder to locate where to drill from the crawlspace because you can't really see where the walls are through the floor.
We had our house wired while it was being built so we ran ethernet to pretty much every room, but some last-minute additions we made were also running to several ceiling locations. Indoor for wireless access points, and outdoor for PoE cameras. Very glad that we did that.
I ordered cat6 and the asshole who did the installation (a professional electrician, but this is far from the only mess he made) got cat5e instead and only told me after it was already installed. At this point everything was late and I was in a hurry to move, not to mention I couldn't get this guy to fix any of his other messes, so cat5e it is. I'm still mad about it.
I also run Cat5e (by myself) but I have studied before buying. It should be good for 10Gbit for (don't quote me) 45 meters I believe and 2.5Gbit for a bit longer.
I bought some cable that has wores thicker than Cat5e standard, yet not as thick as Cat6, it also has the middle plastic cross in between pairs and has fpil and stranded wire grounding. Simply put I bought one hell of a Cat5e cable. I still have to have 10Gbit devices to test it out... I would like them though, as 1Gbit is actually limiting when you have home folder on your NAS and want to transfer ie. from USB3 flash drive.
EDIT: That Cat5e cable I refer to is UBNT Tough Cable Carrier SFTP. When I got it and had a first look it seems like it's made to withstand apocalypse.
Like you're saying, 5e really is still good enough today and is (fairly) future proof. I've been reading recommendations for Cat6 for what feels like 15+ years now, but I still haven't seen a home network that actually takes advantage of it. Not that I have any problem with people going with Cat6, but if there's the slightest reason to go with 5e no one should even give it a second thought. I have a case of 5e lying around that I've had for 10 years, so I continue to pull that whenever I need additional networking.
Honestly, the use cases for a 10Gbit network are kind of crazy things for home use. Like you could install games and play them off a network share at that point; I believe your network would be faster than M.2 drive transfer rates. I'm sure there are some people using it in the homelab to great effect, but if you're asking for general recommendations on a forum like this one, you're not going to be a niche hobbyist who will make use anything Cat6 can do in the forseeable future.
Oh, I wasn't asking, I'm not OP :-) I was doing my Cat5e runs like a year or two ago. My choice would really be either this over-the-top Cat5e cable or standard UTP Cat6 as really didn't want to spend so much money on the same quality shielded Cat6. And when I found that in my lengths I could likely do 10Gbit over Cat5e, I went for it. Now I have 400m of ethernet wiring in the house and 24port 1Gbit switch/router with two SFP+ port (10Gbit capable). O wanted some fututre-proofing.
Currently my NAS is RAID5 woth three 7200rpm drives, but even with these it can atill do 250MB/s reads and over 100MB/s writes, so I am actually limited by network :-) Not in standard usage though.
I'll go one further and recommend Cat6A. The price difference is more than it once was, but even still, the option for 10G in the wall is decent futureproofing.
As a result of their capacity for 10G, they'll also perform better than standard Cat6 if there's significant interference or longer runs.
What kind of studs do you have in your walls, metal or wood? Which way do your joists run? Do you have an accessible attic or crawlspace to run the cables through? The solution will be very specific to your situation.
There's just a few tools involved, basically
Maybe part of the reason you're having trouble finding instructions is because you're looking for the Ethernet-specific instructions, while these tools apply to any kind of house wiring.
(My experience comes from semi-professional installs, a few residentials, and my own 1977 Canadian home)
Another for Cat6 - I actually ran Cat6A plenum rated because I wasn't sure of the building codes here (new country and all for me). Overkill but honestly, price difference wasn't too much.
Basement/crawlspace is gold for getting access. It should be fairly obvious where the baseplates are (a lot of nails in a straight row). Barring that, attic access to the tops of walls is also pretty good. I have a few that I ran behind my baseboards because I didn't realize it was pretty much impossible to access the exterior walls from the basement.
For the upstairs, try to identify an existing cable drop for coax or telephone. Use those to help by either using them as fish lines or attach fish lines to them. There may be other utilities you can follow too, though if following power try not to run parallel if possible or at least keep it 6" away.
Finally, run everything twice! You never know when you'll need to expand capacity or one of them fails, future you will be grateful (if you plan to stay there for a long time).
Thanks for the advice, we do have attic and an unfinished basement. The more I read about this project the more inclined I am to take the advice elsewhere that a quote is worthwhile.
Here is a good post on stack exchange showing drilling a hole thru the floor inside of the wall using a long flex bit. This process can be repeated on the top of the wall as well to get a wire from the basement to the attic. Once you have this backhaul link from basement/crawlspace to attic you can just drill down from the attic into walls of your second floor rooms. As others have stated this may increase fire risk as there is now a path from the basement to the attic. I live in an old house so not really an issue (a single wire wont be the straw). You can use plentum rated wire as its less likely to act as a fuse for fire to travel along. Additionaly sealing around the hole after you run the wire if possible can also alleviate the risk. There is specifically formaulated fire block expanding foam for this use case.
As others have said, wire for cat6. If you're thinking of security cameras in the future, consider dropping wires in likely locations for them, including doorbell. WiFi cameras, though popular, are affected by signal jammers, and wired cameras (currently) are not.
Yeah I regret referencing a specific spec. Cat5 kind of comes out by habit, really meant cat6 but wasn't thinking too hard about it.
My partner likes her security cameras and I would prefer not to have our surveillance footage on servers we don't own. A long term project would definitely be to build out local storage for those.
I would use cat7 if I were doing my house, 8Gbps internet connections are now becoming more common in my area, and wifi7 potential throughput is 46Gbps. Regarding your question though it really depends on your house and how its built. If its wooden frame with noggins its best to come up under the floor into the wall. for wifi access points just run it through the attic and down into the ceiling like light wiring.
Unless OP lives in an absolutely monstrous mansion where runs are going to be longer than 100 meters (328 ft), Cat7 is total overkill. Standard Cat6 is capable of 10Gbit up to 50m, and Cat6a up to 100m.
Exactly we are talking about a house, I doubt he will use much more than 100m worth of cabling, and cat7a is about $400NZD for 100m(230USD). Do it once and never have to worry about it again. Its a lot easier upgrading switches/routers and access points than rewiring a house.
If future-proofing past 10Gbit is the goal, then OP would be significantly better off going with Cat8 which is an actual TIA/EIA approved IEEE standard, and properly rated for 25/40Gbit... unlike Cat7. Cat7 is a practically dead, proprietary standard that is more of a gimmick than anything else since it's incredibly incredibly rare to need a 10Gbit ethernet cable longer than 100m.
Yes you are correct.