A relative has purchased a house that is under construction so she and her husband have the opportunity to specify the communications wiring. This being the U.S., the builder wants to run 6 coaxial TV connections and let everything else be wireless (what else does one need after a government-funded OxyContin supply, an Obamaphone, and cable TV in every room?).
I’m skeptical of the wireless idea due to the fact that spectrum seems to be scarce already and the U.S. population is growing. The U.S. population could reach 1 billion before this house reaches the end of its design life. What happens where there are 1 billion people all trying to use same spectrum for WiFi?
My first idea is two “CAT 5” runs to every room, starting from a central closet in which the cable modem lives. (Of course, CAT 5 is now up to CAT 7 or CAT 8, though Monoprice seems to be stuck at CAT 6A for bulk cable.) If a legacy phone connection is desired it can be done by putting the RJ11 plug into the center of the RJ45 jack. Then add one additional CAT 5/6A to the forecast location of any TV. HDMI can run over Ethernet, right? So if the future is just to drive the video from the closet to the TV then the single CAT 5 wire will suffice.
Is there any long-term value in coax cables? Is it already possible to use a CAT 6 connection for the in-home wiring to a cable TV box?
My second idea would be wiring up ceiling speakers for background music (see my article on whole-house music). Since most people aren’t audiophiles, just run all the wires back to the same central closet where it will be possible to use Sonos AMPs or a conventional multi-channel amplifier.
Readers: thoughts? Also, how to specify this precisely to a builder?
The decision arguably depends on the wifi population density at a given location. If the house location is a typical suburban 0.5-1 acre lot, I’d probably not bother with anything but wifi. I’ve never experienced much/any interference from my neighbors, streaming Netflix/Amazon over wifi is pretty reliable, too.
On the other hand, if they are into Home Theater things, or want 99.99..% reliable connectivity, running Cat 5 into every room may make sense. A friend of mine ran fiber all over his house, so why not ?
Just put conduit in the walls, then it’s easy to run whatever you need later on. Preferably separated from the power by a couple of inches to prevent interference.
+1 conduit.
Not a huge up-front expense, and it makes running everything else simple.
I’d run conduit to each room, and leave pull strings in each. Then pull whatever is needed, as needed, since technology will change over time (you already noticed this when you said Cat5/6/etc). At the same time, for resale value, I’d run coax to each room as well.
People still get analog phones? We ditched our POTS line over ten years ago. For a while I had a VoIP server at home, using IP phones (Cisco, of course) but eventually those went too, since we all got mobile phones.
I practice what I preach by having exactly that in my house.
My B.I.L. had his new construction house done up with CAT 5 maybe 20 years ago. Later they called me because they were interested in using the wiring. I found out that: 1. the wiring all ended in a big bundle downstairs but they had not tagged the wires so I had no idea where they lead. 2. They apparently had left the other ends somewhere inside the walls because I could not see any terminations in the individual rooms. As far as I know, the wiring is still all there and has never been used and never will be used.
I think if you are going to go to the trouble of putting in all that CAT 5(6, 7) you might as well install the terminations in each room and a switch in the basement. Also each cable should be clearly tagged so you know where it goes. The infrastructure could get rededicated in the future but unless you make it into something useful now it will probably never get used and over the years will get cut, drilled into, etc. and no one will notice so when it comes time to use it, it will be worthless anyway.
Aside from connecting to desktops, a lot of audio and video equipment is RJ-45 equipped for streaming and you can also scatter a few wireless routers thru the house that are also connected to the RJ-45s. Rather than distributing over HDMI I think it makes more sense to stream data and do the video/audio conversion at the end point with a Roku, Alexa, etc.
Personally, I’m done with wired internet in the house but those conduits might still be a good idea for future insurance in case I’m wrong.
Getting fiber to the home is probably good too. However, I’ve used 4G broadband at 10 Mbps or so without any major issues (as long as your provider is generous with the monthly bits). 5G will be even better and will roll out in a couple of years if my industry sources are correct. Also, I expect the allocated wifi spectrum will be extended further if there is demand. There will not be a wifi crunch.
+1 for conduits + pull strings to make it easy to run more cabling in the future.
Personally am a fan of SFP+ (10GbE) or faster 40GbE/100GbE cabling via fiber (longer distances) or copper (shorter fixed length runs), instead of CATx. CATx cabling and equipment is certainly much cheaper though. Some good examples of pre-cut/pre-terminated cabling costs http://www.colfaxdirect.com/store/pc/viewCategories.asp?idCategory=2
Most media streamer boxes are still 1 GbE CAT so anything faster would be more for future proofing. Having conduits in place would anyway allow putting in faster cabling infrastructure later.
When I wired my house I ran conduit into every room, often two per room. Wired with two cat 5s and one coax, everything running to a closet with an exterior wall. Label everything carefully!
Just go read one of the zillion threads in r/home automation asking exactly this on Reddit. Then make an arbitrary choice.
Cat6 in the walls can be nice. The only places where it is actually “required” is for security cameras which get power from PoE.
I built my house 2 years ago and ran coax (for TV) in every place I thought I would ever want a TV. Because my house is somewhat large I ran cat5 to a couple corners of the house so I could have multiple WIFI base stations (house is too large to get decent reception with just one). Also one thing to remember is run power to everywhere you may want a nest camera (or other brand of camera). Hope it helps!
I work for a company that designs Ethernet PHYs. 2.5G and 5GBASE-T switch products are available now link, and will definitely work with CAT5e and CAT6 (most CAT5e sold today is actually CAT6, but labeled as CAT5e). Even 10GBASE-T will work over 55m of CAT6. Are the cable runs in the house going to be over 150 feet?
If it were my house I would run CAT6. Why?
1) NAS to workstation PC
2) to provide hi-speed wifi at > 1 Gbps to multiple nodes in the house, so all cat videos and Ben and Holly can be shown in 8K+ as intended.
3) for security cameras (using PoE switch).
CAT7 and CAT8 are beyond overkill for most people’s houses.
make sure the GC hires a dedicated low voltage wiring contractor or hire one yourself. They should be able to terminate everything properly, label it properly, and they do this all day. Have them do Fluke meter tests on all connections and provide results as part of the signoff.
2x Cat5e or Cat6 per room plus conduit for potential future optical upgrades. You can run video over Cat5 using baluns, but resale value might be better with the legacy coax installed and it’s not that big a cost. They’ll need copper in any case for PoE (e.g. security cameras) so an all-optical future is not a viable option.
If they have a media room, pull speaker wire for main, roof and surround speakers (Dolby Atmos). HDMI can run over Cat5, but that nothing to do with Ethernet, so you can’t run it via an Ethernet switch to a patch panel.
They should also have patch panels and wall plates installed now, and tested with a certification meter at at least 1 gig speeds.The quality of the termination matters, and Cat6 cable with Cat5 plates or a Cat6 plates with a botched job will not deliver the full bandwidth due to crosstalk.
Conduit.
I worked one summer for the phone company, and a big part of the job was pulling new cable through conduit in business offices. You use a rotor-router type gizmo called a “cable puller” to do it.
You can have whatever the latest spec cable is pulled through the conduit at any time.
If they can pre-ID the possible office room(s), just have a single conduit to that room originating from where the fiber modem outlet is.
I don’t think you need fiber-speed wired internet everywhere, but from personal experience, having bought a pre-constructed home, I sure wish I had it to the desktop in my home office. I’m using some over-the-electrical-wires solution now, which is one-third my optical fiber speed, and I sometimes just string a 10-meter cable to my office to get the full speed.
CAT 6 seems like the best way to future proof the house. Coax can be used with a MoCA bridge to get networking over coax if necessary. Power line networking can be used in the absence of any other type of networking cables.
I would also recommend making sure the wiring closet has enough cooling for whatever equipment is anticipated. This could include switches, modems, servers, and audio gear.
+1 for conduit, specifically one or two large ones going from the basement to the attic to make it much easier to run anything anywhere: data, water, gas, power, etc.
I made this decision 10 years ago when we built. I ran 1″ solid conduit from every major room down into the crawlspace and wired the entire house.Absolutely the best decision. (ever had a cat5e go “bad” in a wall? or want to upgrade to cat6? or catN in Y years?)
Things I wish I had done:
– put a run of 12/3 to the center of every room regardless of whether it has a box in the ceiling, for a potential ceiling fan
– Added some documented method of accessing specific cavities from a central chase
– Run conduit to each side of big rooms
– Ended the conduit in a piece of trim, which is easy to replace, rather than in a wall that is somewhat harder to patch.
These are small things. If you run low voltage cable, really don’t just bury it.
I agree with previous commentary about the value of conduit in the home. My addition to the discussion would be to assert that high quality wireless coverage is a primary concern, just given the types of devices any home owner is likely to have. If we were renovating a house again (having been down that path a few times now), I would be thinking primarily about how to assure strong 5 ghz Wifi coverage throughout the home. Consumer grade Wifi appliances certainly have their place, if only for convenience, but for my money, I would be looking at placement of hardwired APs, at least one per floor of the home. For McMansion sized homes, likely multiple APs, perhaps with multi-channel radios in them. This sort of installation would typically use cat-6 wiring, with power over ethernet, to power the AP heads. My crystal ball was in the repair shop during the last major renovation I did, so I didn’t think to allow for the necessary wiring when we had all the walls opened up in our home (~3700 sq ft Victorian era home). Lesson learned.
Anyone who can borrow the $20 million for a small house can surely afford to build a private cell phone network between his house & job 50 miles away. Compared to the public ISM bands, the private LTE bands are wide open.
Conduit +1. You have the walls open f’gosh sakes, add conduit nao! Limited conduit, you don’t need to install ten runs of random cable throughout. Restraint is good.
Cat 5e or 6. You only run into performance issues when you’re pushing distance limits, which aren’t going to happen unless you have several buildings in your home compound. Any fancier Cat wiring will cost extra.
For networking stuff I recommend Ubiquiti, and I’m just a guy who occasionally sets up networks. I especially like this little guy: https://inwall.ubnt.com/
I personally wouldn’t install cable television coax, we just stream video at home.
I’d restrain the range of anything 802.11 to the house and the back yard by keeping the signal strength low enough to not penetrate the house perimeter and travel down the block.
I recently rewired part of our house. Ended up going with Cat 6A all the way. Fibre is overkill, too expensive and out of reach for most consumer applications (good luck finding a consumer router/switch with several fibre ports!). Cat 7 is also overkill and doesn’t offer a lot over Cat 6A, which is enough for 10 Gigabit Ethernet. Despite being available for several years now, 10 Gigabit Ethernet is still not very much used in the consumer space for good reason: very few applications demand it. This is unlikely to change in the coming decades. Even 8K UHD has typical data rates less than 100 Mbit/s, about 10% of the capacity of Cat 6A.
CAT 6 is the best option for today, but you could future-proof and run fiber through the walls too, you just need to buy a lot of converters/transceivers at the moment. I also ran speaker wire to ceiling speakers with a Sonos rack (8 connect:amps) in the basement. It works really well.
802.11 is causing me a lot of problems in a large house. My neighbors have an imported Huawei wireless system that is broadcasting on all 2.4GHz channels at an illegal signal strength that exceeds my own unless I am right next to the router. I had to get an access point for almost every room and run mostly on 5GHz, but some devices don’t support that. Most people I know can see upwards of 25 access points from their condo/apartments.