Slashdot Mirror
Wiring A New House?
jbp123 asks: "I'm building a new house. Once the electrician has run the phone lines I want to run cat5e ethernet cable. I figure two drops to each of the 6 rooms with phone lines. I've never done this but my plan is to run the ethenet cable through the same path that the phone lines follow. I'll use up the rest of the 1000 foot spool by running a third cable to a few of the rooms. Ethernet cable is cheap. I found solid cat5e 1000 foot spools for $60 delivered so the decision to run cat5e cable is a no brainer. The question is should I run fiber? I really don't know how much the cable costs since I don't know what cable to use. It is much easier to run cable before the drywall goes in so I want to make an informed decision now. Ten years from now will I need/want fiber?"
You might try running the cables on the outside of the walls. Easy to upgrade, easy to run. Buy some clamps, and paste the cable, then paint it. Just an idea.
Everything is mainstream now.
As long as you're using shielded cat5 cable and your phone lines are shielded, you shouldn't have a problem running them through the same conduit. Be aware, however, that if you run your cat5 cable within 6 inches (safe margin) of electrical sources, you will see interference and will experience performance problems. I'm not sure what your electrical people are doing, but it's common to place electrical outlets near phone outlets (fax machines, cordless phones, etc). Just FYI, be aware of this.
Fiber can be a pain in the ass to put in. Make sure you don't touch the actual glass... you'll never get those splinters out.
If you have the means to put in fiber, though, go right ahead... but don't get secondary support equipment for it, as that might change by the time you want to put it into use.
Im just guessing at numbers, but fiber is expensive now. It will get cheaper. Lets say the Cat5 isn't worth replacing for 10 years or so. In ten years fiber will be a _lot_ cheaper. Possibly cheap enogh to offset the cost and trouble of rewiring? Dunno, just thinking aloud.
In Soviet Russia you dant have to put up with these crappy jokes
By the sound of the post, you feel that this is an urgent matter before the drywall goes up. It doesn't have to be. What you should be concerning yourself with putting in is conduit, not the wiring, if this is a house you plan on living in for a good long time.
With good conduit, running wires is a fairly painless process. Install the conduit, let the contractors install the drywall, then run the cat5, fiber, whatever. After X many years, if you decide you need to upgrade to fiber or whatever is current enough for your needs, pulling the existing wire and replacing will be a cinch. By putting in the wiring now instead of conduit, you are speeding up the depreciation and obsolescense (sp?) of your house, not increasing it. Good conduit even helps with events you didn't plan, such as if you figure out you need to pull RCA cables for house-wide stereo, or additional coax, or whatever.
Toodles
Toodles D. Clown
In ten years everything will be 802.11. So does it really matter? Just run the cat5.
Right now, I wouldn't even consider using fiber.
You would need a lot of other hardware to make it work.
With Ethernet, hubs and switches are cheap... you can wire everything back to a patch box and from there have it connect to your ADSL or cable modem.
I'm not sure what the costs are on actual fiber cable, but it's certainly not as cheap as CAT5. What's more, you would either need a NIC in your computer capable of accepting fiber (over $US300 I think) or you would need a Fiber-->CAT5 converter box at each point where fiber comes out of the wall. Those boxes aren't cheap either.
Really, it just comes down to this. If you want super-fast communication between your computers in your house, and are willing to pay a hefty premium, them fiber it is. But it's not going to make your Internet connection much faster. Your Internet connection will only every be as fast as whatever the Cable or DSL modem has going out... and that's usually a 10Mbs connection running at 2Mbs download max.
Personally... if you want scalability, I would just make sure that the CAT5 you string is high quality and has *all eight conductors*... that way it is good for Gigabit Ethernet... which is slowly coming down in price and is already more affordable than Fiber for LANs.
enjoy
Good luck with the project!
df
I just bought a house and instead of wiring it up, I just use 802.11b for the bedroom computers. However, my 802.11b access point / firewall also has a switched hub, so my workstations are hooked up with CAT5. This is more than fast enough for any kind of internet connection you are likely to get in the near future.
... ahem ... "experts" telling you to install fiber. In my day job, I work in research on fiber optics technology (mostly for 40 Gb/s+ DWDM long haul and metro networks). Fiber equipment that I am familar with is not made for the consumer market.
...) Or what kind of connectors you would need? Or do you have the access to the equipment necessary to splice fibers (it's not cheap to do it right)? Do you know what kinds of equipment to attach to the end of the fiber (modulators, switches, splitters, NICs ...)? And exactly what are you going to hook up that requires fiber's speed?
Don't listen to the
Would you even know what types of fiber to buy? (multi-mode / single-mode, C-band / L-band / Extended-L band,
If you are worried about an upgrade path, the smart thing to do is install conduits. When fiber goes to the consumer market, you will be ready.
Kevin
Secondly, make sure you're using the right kind of cat-5 for the job. PVC type is cheaper, but is less resistant to heat and can cause noxious fumes if burned. Plenum type insulation is more resistant to heat, and is certified for use in air ducts because it doesn't produce the fumes that PVC will. Unfortunately, Plenum is more expensive. In any case, keep track of heat sources when you're wiring. The fireplace and oven, for instance, may cause you problems if you run cable right behind them.
You may want to run 2 different colors of cat-5, one for voice and one for data. Cat-5 can handle up to 4 voice lines through one cable. In any case, make sure you label everything.
Finally, don't forget to run coax (as well as any other cables you may need for ANYTHING, such as speaker cable, RCA, etc.), as you may need to add a TV or cable modem connection. No one likes having their cable modem sitting on the TV. e
One other point is that conduit pipes should be run vertically. Running a 2" pipe through all of your wall studs is a Bad Idea, but running such a pipe vertically is another matter entirely. It also makes it easier to install the insulation. (You want insulation on interior walls for the sound proofing. A little money now will save a lot of headaches when your kids are teenagers.)
You also want a large pipe that's a straight shot from attic to basement/crawlspace.
The idea is that you have good access in attic and basement/crawlspace, so they don't need special treatments. But walls are a real pain once they're sealed, so you want to keep it as simple as possible. And nothing is simplier than a large vertical pipe with no bends in it. Even if the pipe is completely empty (e.g., you sealed in a few extra pipes "just in case"), you can pull a line with nothing but a string and a lead weight.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Wires are so 20th century. If you're going to shell out the money, look into getting a good wireless network.
Here's the straight-up truth. You don't know what you need 10 years from now! Neither does anybody else in this forum. 5 or 10 years down the pipe, you're going to want to drop in some new cabling/communications wiring, right? Maybe you will want to run audio/video cables through the walls like one poster suggested. But the point is not to NOW lay every single possible cable you'd want. What you want to do is to future-proof your house.
In my opinion, the best way to do that is to use conduit. Conduit will let you easily drop in new cables to your house's framework. That way, just drop in your cat 5e and telephone wiring now, and then, as you need it, drop in other transport media.
I might caution you as to using long-haul analog cabling media, like stereo RCA - long, straight wires make excellent antennas and the audio quality by the time it actually got to your speakers would be undoubtedly subpar. If you have the money, running something like optical S/PDIF would make more sense, as it's digital and won't lose signal quality over the kind of runs you're likely to have in your house.
Good luck, and kudos on putting together a fabulous new home!
David E. Weekly
Code / Think / Teach / Learn
h4x0r for
of Course it is a no brainer to wire your house with cat5e (in fact when my dad redid our house 8 years ago he made sure they installed cat5)
But from another perspective AFTER you wire the house (and before the drywall is up) run through your house with a CAMCORDER and record where all the wires are placed this will become an invaluable resource when you have to do expansion!
My expiriance with wiring from the ground up is that you cannot plan for everything. You'll always think of something else that you wanna do with your existing scheme, and need to pull more wire. So conduits are the only option.
As for fiber, I've never had to pay for it, but I've had to work with it. Its not worth the effort to use it, go high quality cat-5, and if ya want, then ya can go GigE. I'm told fiber is cheap to buy, expensive, and hard to run, and the hardware to talk over it is murderously expensive. But maybe even the cable itself is expensive, I dunno, used it, don't like it, don't wanna think about paying for it.
Conduits, and loads of them, will make your life easier, and will greatly improve the value of your home, wish my house had conduits, but mine predates WW2..... and has power consumtion issues. *cries*
As for what to put in the cables, its whatever ya wanna do with it. Me, right now, I;d run s-video, cat5, and coax, and maybe whatever the current "buzz" cable type is, and at least 4 outlets in each small room, 6 to 8 in big rooms. Else, your wife/significant other will go mad when she can't move the TV. And put em fairly close to your electrical outlets, so ya can just take all your cables that are close together, and tie em together with zip ties, and make the mess behind your euipment a little more pleassent.
--Nuintari
slashdot : where an opinion can be wrong.
I would run cat-5 cable if I were you. It will be useful for the forseeable future... and who knows what you will want to have run in 10 years? Redo it when the time comes. In the mean time, for a house network, it's hard to imagine 100Mb/s not being sufficient for several years.
I've run cat-5 cable in two houses. After a few months, you forget how painful it was and are just grateful to have it. In my old house, which was very small, I only wired a couple of rooms, but it was nice once it was there. In the new house, I only wired a single room. I intended to wire several more... but instead got myself a couple of wireless cards. The desktop has a card, and I have a second for the laptop. I run them in Ad-Hoc mode. It's much more convenient this way. I had intended to have lots of drops wired in, so that I could run my laptop in whatever room, but now I can do that with a very minimum of pain. More expensive, yes, but more flexible and much easier to install in the first place.
(The one wire runs between the room with my desktop and the cable modem, and the room with my Wife's desktop. Since both computers stay in one place all the time, it makes sense to have wires for them. Since my Linux desktop is also the house router, it has three network cards: one for the cable modem, one for the house net, and one wireless card. I have two different private 192.168.x.x subnets in just my one house....)
-Rob
Here's a little advice for you. Since you obviously hate Slashdot, don't use it. It's really easy. (See .sig)
As for the cable... Plenum rated cable is rarely required in the walls, it's usually only required in plenums, hence the name.
The safety benefits, in the wall, are very debatable. The whole point of it is to avoid filling the airways of a large building with potentially toxic smoke from a distant fire. In a home, by the time smoke escapes from the cabling in the walls you've got much worse problems.
If you have the money to burn, go ahead and install it, it's not going to cause any problems.
But, if you're really looking for safety, spend the difference on better (or more) smoke detectors, or CO detectors, or Radon detectors, etc, etc.
And as for the AC... Personally I'd rather trust an AC who said something sensible enough to get modded up rather than trusting you, a blantant troll and karma whore. Especially considering as how the AC was right and you were very wrong.
The importance of this cannot be understated. All's fair in love and war, and typically there are multiple competing suitors. When attempting to seduce a fire marshall, you should exploit any edge that you can get.
1....You want to be careful about running parallel data/phone, audio,video and power close to each other. Even with high quality cable, you can have problems.
2.....Do not strand boxes with wire inside them. Sealing over live boxes is a huge no-no. Why? Because what if you drive a nail into an active box. Many municipalistes will force you to correct this if you want to move.
3.....You cannot route wires through heating /ac ducts. Probably ovious, but I thought I'd note it.
4.....Always run more cat-5 than you need. If you are pulling two lines for net and phone, pull another. It's no real extrta cash and coudl save you later. Also, it's nice if you want to pull an extra line that is outside the firewall to your office for guests.
5.....Think about where you want your wireless for home coverage. I have a smaller house, so I don't have any problem, but if my house were more spread out, I'd probably hav eto move the antenna out of the basement, necessitating a run of cat-5 to wherever, with nearby power. It's either that or run a very long antenna line.
6.....Power, power, power. A computer + Laser Printer + Ups + Monitor + other gee gaws will suck up at least a 20 amp circuit. You don't want to over load a circuit. That's bad. I'm running 3 seperate circuits for the home office. 1 for fridge and other stuff, 1 for computer geear and 1 for lighting.
7.....Check references for all contractors if you aren't plannign on pulling bits yourself.
8.....Get familiar with your local codes. They are there to protect you, generally. Finding out where you are required to do GFCI circuits alone can save you trouble later.
Good luck.
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
You only need as many hubs/ports as you have live connections. Leave the rest disconnected.
Or do other things with them:
- intercom
- security system
- bundle pairs (to get enough wire-gauge) and have whole-house audio
- data-collection (e.g. thermostat, weather-station etc.)
Cat-5 provides good, clean signal over a variety of wavelengths - the possibilities are endless.
No matter what you run eventually you will forget exactly how and where you ran it... before the drywall goes up go into each room and take pictures of every wall and the ceilings, these can be a major time saver when trying to find wiring, studs etc. later on.
I'm with the guys that are reccomending running coax... you can never have enough cable TV jacks..put on in every wall. (Honey, can't we put the couch over there and the TV over there???? No, there's no cable TV jack.)
If you live in an area where ceiling fans are commonly used have a box put in the ceiling of every room and the multi-gang switch boxes in the walls... major pain in the ass to try and put these in later.
i am doing some structured cabling for a campus environment and i would like to share to you some tips that i have learned.
1. use the highest grade of cable available. use cat6 (even though the standard has not yet been established.) we did a testing and the best cable came from nordx/cdt using their cat6 4800lx cables.
2. do not put any telephone wire (cat3) cables. cat 5 is backward compatible to cat 4,3,2,1 and of course cat 6 will be for 5,4,3,2,1. but the cat3 cable is not forward compatible to cat6. you can crimp the rj45 on a pair of cat3.
3. treat the outlet to each room as more of utility. therefore, you should place it as much as you can across the room just like electrical outlets. besides, this is what structured cabling is all about.
4. i do not suggest that you use stp, this is because you will need to ground each end of the cable or else it will absorb all the interference. stp is used for industrial applications where there are motors, and other interference causing devices. what you do is get a good grade of shielding in the conduit instead.
5. assign a small room or cabinet in your house that you can centrally terminate the cables with connections to your switches, telco company, cable company, etc.
6. with regard to safety, use a fire proof coating in the cables but not necessarily plenum. plenum emits toxic substances when burned although it will take extra effort to burn it.
7. use patch cables. buy the factory made patch cables to terminate to a device at both ends instead of crimping it. it provides the lowest in terms of signal loss.
8. remember get a certification (these are offered by good manufacturers.) at least you can avail of warranty of parts and labor if anything goes wrong.
below is just my thoughts in helping you decide in using fiber or copper.
with regards to fiber, imho, in 10 years time, copper will be obsolete. fiber to the desktop will be as common as cat 5 installations. copper is reaching its limits. the proposed cat7 cable requires shielding in each copper pair and a shielding for the entire cable. the head will no longer be rj45. it will definitely be more expensive than buying fiber optic cables.
when using fiber optic, since your installation is in a house, you can use the multimode fiber optic cable. you can get the 62.5/125 or 50/125 core. distance is more of the decision what type to get. it depends on the equipment you get (see the specs.) remember that fiber optic should come in pairs. for connection heads, the most common is sc. almost all gigabit uses that with exception to some who use mt-rj.
imho, i think that nowadays, it is actually cheaper to create fiber optic cables than copper cables because fiber optic is made up of glass and is then made up of sand whereas copper is made from copper and you can actually melt the wires and sell the copper from it than fiber optic. manufacturers are just selling fiber optic for a higher price since it is in high demand in commercial applications (more $$$$.)
i should say that you may not need all of those information since you are not doing any commercial installation but i believe that when you do something, you must do it good! (besides it should last for 25 years or more.)
Live your life each day as if it was your last.