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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?"
Not like this hasn't popped up on slash a few times before, but why only phone, cat5 and fiber?
What about running Svideo and RCA to everyroom or an extra drop of cat5 to run sound on?
And as far as running the cat5 parallel to the phone, if your building the house why not set your cables into conduits, that way you can upgrade to whatever cabling you need in ten years.
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.
Just use the Cat5 for everything. An RJ-11 will fit in an RJ-45 jack just fine. Tie it all back to a patch pannel in the basement and then you can patch phones/ethernet/whatever to your hearts content.
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
but why don't you set it up so that in future years you can put in what ever cable you want?
I always imagined having a duct built into the floor of my house, running along the walls, with a grate over top. I would run whatever in there, be it fibre or cat-5, etc.
And if I ever went wireless, I could just fill it up with beer and use a really long straw.
If you run conduit, no matter what happens, you can run new cable later.
If it was me I would run the cat5e now and include a string with the pull. Later you can attach whatever cable you want and pull it through. It will be difficult if you don't have conduit.
My future plans include 802.11a, so I am not worried about fiber. I just need one run to the middle of the house for my AP. I am using 802.11b now and I am happy with the speed/wire trade off.
Good luck!
http://packetnexus.com
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
How about this stuff
A lot more expensive than plain cat5 though.
http://www.thehungersite.com
You may not be aware of this but you can use your Cat-5E cable to run your telephones over.
I don't think you'll need Fibre - doesn't Cat-5E support gigabit speeds?
During the summers between college semesters I helped wire a factory. It involved pulling a lot of wires through pipes. We always pulled a few extra wires for spares and to act as pullwires.
Put in ducts and modular faceplates, so you can replace the cables when something better comes along. Have all the ducts go straight down to the basement, and a duct around the ceiling of the basement with access at each joint with a vertical duct, then put your router in some inobtrusve corner of the basement.
Have fun.
__
Do ya feel happy-go-lucky, punk?
Fiber is highly unlikely to be necessary or desirable in the next 10 to 20 years in residential housing. Install Cat5E cable, it'll handle gigabit which should be fast enough for just about everything.
Instead of spending money on fiber, spend money to install conduit. Conduit conduit conduit! Conduit is nice since you can later on pull fiber or additional wires more easily.
In ten years everything will be 802.11. So does it really matter? Just run the cat5.
Fiber breaks fairly easily - its a big problem. You might put it in there, and have it work fine for a long time, and then something breaks SOMEWHERE and you don't know where, but you do know that you've lost your connection. Copper is far more durable. If you put in the fiber and the CAT5, you could use the cable as a backup.
Having said that, 100Mb per second is pretty fast for games, X-clients/servers and harddrive reads and writes, unless you really want all the computers to act like one computer. Maybe that's what you want. I don't really care myself. If I want to work on another computer, I walk over to the other one and sit down. So even in the future, I'll probably always be happy with CAT5.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
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 point. Certainly a better approach than trying to predict what kind of networking technology will be "in" ten years from now!
Why not forgo the whole cabling experience and go wireless instead? You can connect every room in the house with a single hub. It's cheaper than buying the cable and hub/switch, and a whole lot more convenient.
You should run two drops of Cat5 and two drops of RG6 Coax to every "main" room you may have people. Run it to a central cross-connect in the basement or garage.
:-)
The reason you want to run two coax drops is that if you get a dual-tuner sattelite decoder (like a DirectTV TiVo) you will need to lines going out to your dish or to your multiswitch (which splits the signal between >2 lines, so you can put receivers in multiple rooms).
You could also run a Left/Right RCA audio system to each room, but audio will travel decently over Cat5, so you shouldn't have to worry about that.
Fiber would be useful, but frankly you don't need it now because nothing we are doing iwll need fiber probably for 10 years. If you want to prep for it, you can run conduit (probably 1.5" would be sufficient) to each room, to make pulling new cables in (or pulling old cables out) easier in 5 or 10 years. Run it to a modular mounting jack so you can change stuff out if need be.
Having just recently gotten my DirectTV TiVo (and hacked it to 146 hours of storage), I know my next house is gonna need twin coax to every main room.
...do you really want to have to standardize on fiber adapters for all your devices?
Besides, GigE over copper is here now. I've just purchased an old house that needs a lot of electrical work -- while the walls are open, I plan on running Cat 6 STP cabling to my drops.
GigE might be the last gasp for copper. Then again, some were saying that about Fast Ethernet when that debuted.
Trying to build in anticipation of what the standard will be in 2012 is an expensive crapshoot. Go with what works now (i.e. Cat 5e/6) and count on the size of the installed base to ensure continued support for it.
Shielded conduits would be more useful. More expensive now, but makes it dead simple to upgrade ten years from now.
Rather then running seperate conduite for cableing, use the cold air returns. talk to the HVAC (heating/vent/Air cond) and makesure that you have a main return running straight from the basement to the atic, and floor and celling returns in each room (good practice for ventilation anyway.) And you should have no problem running plenum rated cable (fibre, cat5e whatever) through them.
as an asside, if you plan on having 1 room in the house with most of your equipment, add extra registers to get more Cooling in summer and dont forget about fans in the ducts to improve air circulation)
Good luck with the project!
df
...as running through the street naked singing "I'm a little teapot, short and stout" is to modesty and sanity.
No offense, but even the best wireless security solution can't compare to having an actual cat5 cable you can control access to.
I'm the stranger...posting to
don't secure the wire to the studs in the wall. That way whenever fiber is more prevalent, you can use the Cat5 to pull the fiber down into the wall from the attic.
:/
Pull the Cat 5 to a central place down inside your house - locate your router/hub there - maybe even your home server.
Think about providing excellent grounding and maybe even heatsink capability to your server closet. Run a separate breakered power to the server closet.
Run coaxial cable for TV - double shielded - to each room and have it go either to the attic for split or better yet have them terminate at the power mast outside the house - leave plenty of extra cable.
Wire your house for security prior to putting in the insulation - insulation and sheetrock guys just love to cut wires that are in their way.
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
If you're gonna put it in ducts--even in a single dwelling residential--check your local codes. They may require you to use plenum. Most business codes (and either the NEC or the TIA/EIA-568-A can't remember which one) requires that for offices cable installed in ducts must be plenum rated and installed in conduit inside the ducts.
The danger is non-plenum cable gives off a lot of smoke while burning, if the cable is in the ducts this can quickly spread the smoke to areas that aren't on fire and hinder peoples escape from the building.
Fire codes are basically designed to do two things, 1) slow down the spread of a fire 2) make it easy for people to escape. And if you can't see, you can't get out (so the theory goes), that's why plenum is sometimes required. (plus non-plenum burning vapours tend to create a strong acid when mixed with water, iirc).
Long and short, always check your codes.
Bryan
It's hard to predict what you'll want to run between your walls in the future. Technology changes every few years - but house ownership can last for decades.
The key is to install conduit between key locations in your house. It usually isn't that hard to run cables between the basement and the first floor, or from the attic to the second floor. But it can be a big effort to run a wire from the basement to the 2nd floor. Or to get a cable to a location where it isn't accessible from the attic or the basement.
When I had my house built, I installed a conduit from the wiring panel in the basement all the way up to the attic, with access points on the first and second floors. I also installed a conduit behind two bedroom walls on the second floor - walls which are diffcult to get behind without a lot of demolition.
Now if I want to bring in a new fiber or CATV or doorbell, it's very easy to draw the cable from the basement to the attic, and it's easy to cleanly distribute the cable to any room in the house.
My only mistake was a lack of a conduit between my house and detached garage.
Oh, I just thought of something.
It will be a little more expensive, but you might want to think about stringing "STP" CAT5, instead of UTP... that's Shielded Twisted Pair instead of Unshielded.
STP is what is plenum graded, so that it doesn't catch fire as easily. Also, it's better shielded against interference from other electrical sources that might be in the wall.
It's not a requirement or anything... but it might be worth considering simply for safety reasons.
My father was building his new house and wanted it "wired for the future". My brother and I were to develop his idea and install it (after the electrician and before the drywall).
We decided that is wasn't practical to run fiber. How much speed to really think you will need? How much faster can a home user get? Even if the broadband ISPs upgrade their system to allow anything faster than a maximum of 10mbps...are you _REALLY_ going to need that?
If you are concerned about the speed in your home area network, then just make sure your network equipment is 100meg...that should be more than plenty for every person in those six rooms to be swapping high-quality multimedia back and forth.
The point is, fiber really isn't for the home user...it's more for other intensive bandwidth situations. What I can definately recommend is that if you can afford it and it won't break your budget...then by all means go for it!
However, if it _will_ break your budget, or you want to spend that money on a bunch of X-10 equipment for a semi-Jetson-type house, then run conduit and pull strings. So if you ever get the cash or get the itch to install fiber, all you gotta do is attach it to a pull string and go...it will slide nicely through conduit.
As for the phone and other stuff...just run Cat-5 all the way through. You can use it for phone and sound (maybe other things). If you want video, just run a coax to each room and get a fancy distribution panel to manage all this neat stuff. I wouldn't recommend running S-Video throughout. Have you ever bought a 6-foot s-video cable? They are expensive. Coax does its job just fine. Make sure you run the high quality stuff.
Of course, if you run fiber you can pipe it all through the same wire, but each room will need an EXPENSIVE thingy to split all signals to the designated device.
A more expensive alternative is to put PVC piping in the walls and run the cables through it. It wouldn't be as ugly as having the cables on the outside, and you can easily upgrade. I am considering to do this when I build my house in the next 1-2 years.
Of course the major drawback is the expense of the PVC piping.
I wired my own house a few years ago.
Here is some advice based on what I did. Note that I was at the time a licensed communications wiring contractor, so the house is wired a litte more than perhaps is usefull, but here goes.
1. Put muliple locations in each room. I put to faceplates in each bedroom, typically near a corner and opposite each other ( diagaonally opposite corners ) a cable from the outlet can be run along either adjacent wall for convienience in locating phones or computers. In each outlet are two cat 5 data cables and 1 4pair telephone cable. In one of the two outlets is an RG6 CATV cable.
2. Home run telephone wires - I ran all the telephone cables directly from the outlet to a telephone junction box in the garage which was mounted directly above the one from the phone company. The phone company box faces outside, mine faces inside and there are some holes in the 2X4 seperating them for cables to run through. I mounte 4 type 66 punchblocks in the inside box and terminated all 32 cables there. All multiple jumpering etc. is done in that box.
I ran all the data wiring ( 48 cables ) to 4 dual gang boxes inside the master bedroom closet. Using ortronics IMO2 dual gang faceplates with 6 double port modules, I got 48 ports in the 4 outlets and its is not cludgy like a patchpanel on a swingout door would be- it has a finished look. I also got the electrician to put a utility outlet inside the closet close to the ports to power the switch and localtalk bridge.
3. Put a telephone outlet near your CATV outlets - if you want to use satellite tv or some other service which requires a telephone connection it will be very good to have.
4. Put data outlets in common rooms - the livingroom, dining room den etc. These areas could end up as common homework computer areas for the kids. I have a table in the living room and one in the dining room ( we eat in the kitchen ) with some older computers on them that the kids use for homework.
Note that the contractors installers may be very helpful if you offer a 6 pack or two of beer to help grease the skids. I got all kinds of built-in bookshelves, nooks and other cool customizations this way.
Another suggestion !! Put in the return line for a circulating hot-water system during construction. If you can not afford the pump now, you can add it later, but it is a pain to put the return line in.
Also consider insulating hot water lines and putting insulation inside the inner walls to give some soundproofing.
Good Luck
Zoot
enough is too much
not really...if you're happy w/cat 5e run that...if everything is through the walls and you ever want to change the type of wire, just pull out the cat 5e and hook the new fiber to the one end of the cat 5e when you pull it out. everything is already strung then.
I always found it easier to just find the cable lines. Because they are pretty much in every room, you can just tie the cat5 wire to the cable line along with some string. Go up to your attic and just pull the whole thing up, then untie the cat5 wire and pull the cable back down with the string. They even sell face plates with both an ethernet port and place for the tv cable. That way you dont have to put more holes in the wall. Just a lot easier in my opinion.
I don't see anyone that's mentioned it yet, but you should probably run CAT-7 for gigabit ethernet speeds. I agree that most gigabit ethernet equipment is expensive at the moment, but prices will no doubt fall soon (New G4 macs come with gigabit ethernet, including the G4 Powerbook (!) ). Gigabit ethernet is the future as far as home use. Fiber is a pain, CAT-7 is a copper wire so you should be able to make your own connectors. I'm not sure what the price point currently is on CAT-7.
And wireless only gives you 11 megabits, as opposed to 100 megabits for wired ethernet. And that assumes there are no neighbors emiting local packets for you to collide with.
It's curious that everybody assumes that, except for the cost of the transceivers, that wireless bandwith is free and unlimited. There's only so much radio spectrum to go around, and we're already running short, even without 3G cells and ubiquitous community nets.
I wired the house with cable and two CAT5e cables to each telephone housing, plus security and some audio cabling to a few select areas. I also set up the internal vacuum system.
Do Not, I repeat, DO NOT wire anything before the electrician has wired for power. Plan with the electrician so that you can make sure your wire is at least 1 foot, preferably 2 feet away from his wire when running in parallel, and otherwise crosses at oblique (near to 90 degrees) angles. Master electricians are smart, but the workers they employ are morons. We had to yank out a lot of wiring because the electricians laid power cable in all sorts of unfortunate places right next to ours. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
Do nail in wire protector plates onto wood just like your electrician does for the power cables. They're to keep the drywallers from wrecking your wiring with their drywall nails.
Do consider running a little conduit, but only a little. Don't conduit the whole thing: what we wound up doing was running conduit from the basement up to the attic. The house is two-story. That way if we absolutely had to, we could wire things in the future without massive rebuilding.
Do run everything (phone, cable, network, fiber) in a star configuration to a central hub.
Do do both the telephone and networking and cable yourself. It's simple. Don't pay the electrician to wire for telephone if you're going to wire for networking; you're just wasting money.
Do Not use plenum, braided, or shielded CAT5e cable. Plenum cable has basically one use: to be run through air ducts in old office buildings as a fire precaution. Shielded CAT5e will turn your network into an antenna if not properly grounded. In general, you don't need it unless you're running along with lots of electrical lines in close conduit areas. Braided cable is only for patch-cord use.
Do consider the new combination cable available, which has fiber, cable, CAT5e, low-power DC, and audio all in one bundle. But it's a pain to wire because it has to be bent at very gradual angles. Might be a good way to go though, and cheaper.
Do not expect that security is wired in a similar fashion. In particular, 4-wire smoke detectors cannot be wired in a star configuration at all: they must be wired in a specific, unusual serial topology.
Do remember that your hub must be in a locked area.
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
Everyone is telling you to put conduit in ... this reminds me:
The Cambridge University Computing Service, several years back, wanted to run a network round the city to connect to various University departments, colleges etc. To pay fo this they had to persuade all these bodies to cough up a significant amount of money as their share of the capital costs.
Trouble was that people thought they were being asked to pay for high-tech stuff which would go out of date in a few years, so the marketing job was to persuade them that they were actually being asked to pay for an extremely low tech hole in the ground, through which any appropriate type of cable could easily and cheaply be drawn in years to come.
This worked. The hole got built.
If you spend $100,000 on a house, whats wrong with adding another $500 for wiring (and $1500 for a 52" tv ;) - doesnt make much of a difference in the long run.
That kind of signal loss is going to be insignificant. The real problem with bending fiber around corners, is that the strands are somewhat fragile. I've seen runs of fiber that had to be doubled because some of fibers the first one had broken when the cable was bent too sharply. The best thing with fiber is conduit, because it gives smooth rounded corners.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
And besides, toxic fumes are toxic fumes, even if they're legal!
I ended up running 2 runs of Cat5e and 2 runs of quad-shielded RG-6 to 6 drops.
You will want the coax... trust me. While I'd like to run everythng over UTP or fiber, the costs of locating things like VCRs, and satellite receivers at a head end, and streaming video digitally are prohibitive compared to the costs of running the coax. You may want to plan for the day when everything is streamed over IP and carried on an ethernet or fiber physical layer, but I think it is far better to have dead cable in the wall than to use horribly expensive equipment today as opposed to your neighbor who just hooks up the new TV to the cable outlet and is done.
Fiber. I didn't run any, but mostly because of the cost -- it's still too expensive. Also, don't forget headend terminations for all those fiber lines -- they are expensive. If you can afford it, by all means. In my case, I figure I'll sell the house and build a new one before I have a real pressing need for fiber: am I really going to want to stream full-resolution uncompressed video room to room? I doubt it.
Do put in as many drops as you think you'll need, and then some. You have an advantage over me: your walls aren't up yet. Plan for a minimum of one per room, more if there are multiple entrances. For example, many central family rooms open up to formal dining/living rooms and kitchen -- place the outlet on the "wrong" wall and you'll have to snake a cable across an entryway... not cool.
If you can afford the cabling, make EACH 110VAC outlet have a co-located (but not sharing the box-- that violates code) coax/data drop. That's excessive, and you immediately have to separate the AC and other cables to avoid interference, but you'll have a drop whereever you need one. Personally, I'd probably stick with one outlet per continuous wall segment, more for bigger rooms.
I ran 2xCat5e and 2xRG-6 (quad-shielded). You can get combo cable (speedwrap) that contains this (with or without fiber) in a single jacket that makes for easy pulling, but expect to pay double over individual cables. If you're paying for installation, the reduced labour might pay for the more expensive cable. Note: the reason for two runs of coax is in case you want to run a video stream back to the headend, like, perhaps a baby monitor camera. However, with recent PVR having TWO tuners, you'll find you need to use both coax cables, espescially with satellite systems (the receiver sends a signal selecting satellite and polarization to the multiswitch over the coax -- you don't have all channels on the cable at once). If you want to do this and send video back to the headend you may need three coax cables.. though a cheap PC and webcam might do the trick over the Cat5-e instead (and I can think of creative uses of satellite diplexers to use two coaxes for two satellite signals, one cable/off air signal, and a backfeed, but I haven't tried it).
As for plugging phones into RJ-45s... why bother? Just terminate one of the Cat5e cables in an RJ-14 jack, leaving one pair not connected... you can have up to three lines on that RJ-14. Alternately, split it out in the box to two RJ-14s. You can always require for ethernet later, if you have to (or use a PBX that requires 8 wires). This also ensures that you don't accidently plug the phone in the wrong outlet (confusing the coax ports is bad enough).
I'd post more, but have to go.
You could've hired me.
I did this to my house last year.
If you go the Cat5e route, be absolutely certain to pay the extra few bucks to get Plenum rated cable instead of PVC. Plenum rated cable won't put off toxic fumes if it catches fire. Also, your local fire marshall will love you.
I recommend running wire, the night that only one side of the drywall is placed, this way you have something to anchor it to and get a reference of where your plugs are and need to be.
Phone cables now are typically Cat5 or Cat5e. Don't use them unless you must, crosstalk can be bad.
Lastly run 2 cables everywhere a computer can fit. Do you want an automated house in the future? Plan now! Maybe you don't but when you sell the house do you want that as a selling point? HTH
Or find a wrecking site for some old store or school, and see if you can nip the old conduit. Cheap as anything. Probably EM proof, too!
Don't forget to also wire for sound and cable. You should have shielded speaker/audio/video cable running all over the place, and the old cable company television cable, too.
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Oh, and now's the time to get the electrician to drop a loop down to a box every fourth stud or so. You *can* *not* have too many electrical boxes ready to be used.
Make sure you have an accurate map of their placement. Then let the sheetrock guys cover 'em up: most of the boxes will go unused. But the day you desperately need an outlet *right there,* you'll be eversothankful you had the foresight to have a hidden box ready to go...
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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
Arrrgh. Another thing!
Run some beefy nylon string through the studs. This will give you the opportunity to pull cable in the future. Use separate holes, and smooth off the edges so that the chances of snagging are reduced.
(This, if you don't do the conduiting.)
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I am preparing to build my own house as well and have been looking at this very issue.
What I have decided was to run 6+ normal CAT5e wires to each room. This may seem like a lot but... Comready.com has 1000' spools for 40+$ so price is not that great of an issue.
Now for the secret ingredients. First of all.. For network just use 1 or more standard CAT5e cables to do that in each room. You can then run up to 4 phone lines on another CAT5e cable. You then have 3 left.
Milestek.com has cat5 baluns that let you transmit everything from S-video to Broadband Video in case you ever want video in any room.
That also leaves a couple cables free for intercoms and such.
If you want to lessen the cable runs or hook more things up in each room in the future you get something like the NJ-100 that we saw the article on slashdot about a couple weeks ago.
Happy home hacking!
Telcos have alot of dark fibre in the States. Most people assume that's optical fibre...but it's actually moral fibre.
Ignore these ranting loonies...
Wire what you WANT, and then add an extra run to your office, your wife's office, and behind your televisions. Don't forget the kitchen.
My new house was completed last April, and I've got 5e drops (2 or more per room) with a 100M switch in the "wiring closet" - an extra room in our attic. We considered fiber, too, but realized that fiber connections are just the flakiest things in the world. They're expensive, unreliable, and a downright pain, plus, it seems unlikely that we're going to be seeing anything faster than Gig-E anytime soon, so we're all set.
If, by some weird occurrence, fiber becomes standard sometime in the future, I can pull the rooms by cutting and tying off my 5e from the attic. I will have removed the 5e and added the fiber at the same time. No sweat.
More important than the cabling, make certain to get your primary computer room plugs on a different circuit from the rest of the room's circuit. THAT will come in handy. I have my office computer outlets and my wiring closet outlets on their own, separate circuits, and I don't feel too uncomfortable running what I want, now. Make sure you get extra outlets, too!
What'dya mean there's no BLINK tag!?
Wires are so 20th century. If you're going to shell out the money, look into getting a good wireless network.
A big question to ask your self is are you running 10 or 100Mbit ? If your only running 10, your only using 5 wires out of the cat 5 cable. (Or is it 4) 100Mbit uses all of the cable. If your only running 10 (Which I couldn't understand, with 100Mbit cards so cheap these days) You can run the phone line inside of the same cable.
:)
:)
Personally, I would run 2 cables in each room. Unless you have 2 offices. Think about it, with 100Mbit you can have a smaller hub in each room if you *REALLY* need it. Chances are, you won't be using that much bandwidth all day long.
Plus, with the new 56Mbit wireless standard that was just released, I am not sure how many people will keep using cat5 cable across there house. I have my main machines running at 100Mbit (There in the same room), and everything else in the house is via wireless connection. Once I get IPSec working, it will be less of a hassle to worry about the security of the network
At any rate, 2 in each room seems plenty for most home LANs. Unless you have 400 computers. My old house at 40 machines running 24/7, and 100Mbit was more or less required. (Don't ask
until (succeed) try { again(); }
I guess fiber will always be faster but it seems like wireless will be the way to go. I'm sure they'll have good speeds by then.
Of course, I wonder if sunspots will affect wireless internet?
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
you can only go a few meters with Gigabit over Cat5e before attenuation takes effect. fiber doesnt have this limitation
That way you can change the cabling, and easily add more as the occasions arise.
I have Cat5E running through-out the house. The only rooms I didn't wire were the bathrooms, and I already regret it.
Give a hand, not a hand-out.
Plenum graded, iirc, actually means that were it to catch fire, its shielding and outer casing is made of a material that won't release toxic fumes into the airway (which often runs along the plenum--the space between the real ceiling and the drop ceilings found in many offices).
Here is my suggestion: Get 4 boxes of Cat5e wiring, and tell your electrician to run all 4 bundles at once. NO phone, no fiber, no nothing else. You can (easily) use the Cat5e as phone wiring, and if you're going to pull cable, why not pull a bundle of 4, as opposed to a "bundle" of one.
From there, you'll want to have someone (I don't know whether you feel comfortable doing it) set up a termination site at the home run, probably somewhere in the basement. That is where all your phone lines will converge, and any rack/patch panel system will go up.
Now, if I were you, I'd have all 4 data drops wired with ports that can accept phone or data lines (RJ45 or RJ11 lines). You can get that kind of equipment from Home Depot.
For ease of use, I would also suggest using 2 colors, when running your wire. Maybe, for example, red for the phone (which, remember, has the CAPABILITY to double as data, if you want), and white for all the data. That will make it easier to keep track of what is what later on.
BTW, I would invest in a good cable crimper set, and a line-testing set as well. You can probably pick up both @ Home Depot, but I would suggest going to a local GrayBar if I were you.
Now, with regard to cost, from our experience, doing the cabling before the dry wall goes up is about 1/3 to 1/4 as expensive as snaking wiring later on. Not only that, but it's also a MUCH, MUCH easier thing to do.
I have seen a few comments regarding the running of other types of media.. that's really up to you. You might want to, at a minimum, run cable/audio, and speaker wiring. Again, if you're electrician is going to be running wire, it's just as simple to run a bundle of 4 wires as it is to run a bundle of 6 (4 data, 1 audio/video, 1 speaker.)
If he trys to charge you more, tell him to get lost and just run the wiring yourself. If you take that route, then really, all you're looking at is an incremental cost of.. less than a few hundred bucks (relatvie to the cost of a new home, several hundred THOUSAND dollars), which is nothing, and a few hours of your time. The end result is a home with (theoretically) a higher value, since it's "wired and smart home ready".
Now, regarding fiber... several home owners have asked us whether we would do fiber for them. The truth of the matter is that it's just too expensive for residential use. Not only that, but as a residential user, you likely won't need the power that fiber gives you. Your broadband connection will be the limiting factor, and I doubt that you'll be transferring files too large for standard Cat5e wiring to handle quickly. Not only that, but installing fiber requires more time, and is definitely not something the "do it yourselfer" should try.. not unless you've got a LOT of patience!
On a side note.. as ironic as it would sound, the vast number of clients that our company takes on end up wiring the house... then installing a wireless network. Go figure.
Either way, though, I would highly recommend running a bundle of data lines through the house. It's a solid investment.
Please note that I have made it a point to leave my company's name out of this discussion. I wanted to make sure I came off as helpful, and not opportunistic. If you have any further questions, or want to know more, email me (jyamisha@hotmail.com) and I'll be more than happy to write more.
i want to live life, not just go through the motions
Perhaps going a bit off topic, but, one other thing to think about, before you sheetrock, is deployment of sensors for eventual energy management (smart-house) systems, and fire/burglar alarms and intrusion-avoidance systems. Typically, these systems require shielded 1 or 2 pair leads to analog boards which then convert to digital and feed the controller. Having these planned and at least the wire in place can save unsightly wires on the wall later.
I think fiber at this point would be a poor idea because by the time you need it the standard will have changed. I know thats a problem in our current communications industry (the many miles of forever dark fiber).
I do recommend running sound cables and cable tv cables all over, also maybe other sort of video cables.
Also instead of duplicating runs, look into the possibility of switching wall plates. I saw them on some review site not long ago and they look like a great way to fake 4 connections into 1 wire run, though you are limited to always having those puppies on the same segment I guess.
"You can now flame me, I am full of love,"
ST, SC etc. are not cable types, they are the connectors. Also, Belden Multi-Mode zipcord (2 fibers, one RX one TX) can be had for $.23 a foot, not exactly expensive.
The page you were looking at had patch cables, which ARE expensive, not bulk cable, which you would be running in this case. The connectors are expensive $3-8 each, but who said that he needs to terminate the fiber right now? You can check out bulk fiber here (Multimode) and the connectors here (ST) and here (SC), for later on. He's probably going to want to put in MultiMode fiber instead of SingleMode, because its more common, the equipment and fiber is less expensive, and because he probably doesn't need to make runs that are longer than a KM.
If he (or you) want(s) to read up on the subject he can check out the Fiber University Lesson Plan.
At least in the UK, you dont have to be an electrition to wire anything you'll find in the home.
I'd wait until you get the keys before putting in wiring though - perhaps ask the builders to put in a nice big cable duct system.
http://www.homedirector.com/
Use ALL CAT5 (no "standard" POTS lines) for phone and data, and RG-6 quadshield for satellite/cable TV connections. Have it all terminate at the Home Director box... Congradulations, you can now rewire any jack in the house to do whatever you want from one single location.
This is how most of the new homes built in central FL are now wired.
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Siggy, siggy, siggy, can't you see? Sometimes your puns just irritate me.
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!
look, ive doen this to two differnet houses. Its going to cost you a LOT less to do wireless. Just take the plunge...that wired shit is going to be antiquated as hell in a few years.
________________________________________________
Consider using a modular connector system like this one. I saved a lot of time and hassle using them and the result looks great. You can also intermix CATV, voice, data etc. however you like.
Use a star from a cable closet (could be a cabinet in your garage or next to the water heater, doesn't matter). Consider running everything to a patch panel. If you don't want to spring for the connectors etc. of a patch panel, at least create a 'virtual patch panel' where every circuit is tagged and accessible. Leave good documentation in the cabinet 'cause you'll forget what goes where.
Follow the Cat5 specs: minimal bends, minimal tension when pulling cable, loose cable ties, no regular tie intervals, cross AC power perpendicularly and rarely. Pick the cabling spec you'll use and stick to it. Avoid doing what I had to do: running voice on the unused two pairs of my 100Mbs data circuits (even though I've had zero problems).
Be sure you have power near your drops and plenty of power and some shelf space in your closet. You'll be terminating your outside internet connectivity here as well (DSL, cable modem, etc.) so be sure to plan space accordingly for routers, console connections, hubs, UPS, etc.
See the remarks elsewhere here about using plenum cable if you're not installing conduit. But conduit would let you use fiber or other more advanced media in the future.
Invest in some cheap test equipment so you can verify continuity, correct pinouts, etc. in all your cables.
HTH -- Spiny
-- We all have enough strength to endure the misfortunes of other people. La Rochefoucauld
Of course, the only proper entryway for something like this would be a button that makes a bookshelf swing open...
Why hasn't someone come out with a wall system like in the movie Brazil, where 2 ft square panels are removable? It would not only be good for wiring, but also for inserting surround speakers and hallway data-screen terminals.
Since this is new construction, go the extra mile and feed each data outlet with some sort of conduit (PVC, EMT, or flexible). That way, when you want to upgrade or expand, it's a no-brainer and you don't have to rip things apart. EMT conduit has the added bonus of providing RF shielding to your copper cabling, provided it's properly grounded (which it should be). This also gives you the advantage of only needing to put in the plumbing before you put up the sheetrock, and then running the actual wire later.
Also, Leviton makes a very nice modular structured media system that allows you to do neat things like audio and video distribution in addition to phone and data - they have modular patch panels that make it very easy to do.
Lastly, whatever you do, TAKE PICTURES of everything you do before you put the sheetrock up - you'll want them for reference when you make changes later.
I can't imagine what a single AV channel running through the walls could be used for. Obviously you're going to want to have Coax for broadcast/cable channels (to be selected individualy in the diffrent rooms). But really, what good would it do to have one global broadcast to the whole house?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Don't you read slashdot everyday? Shame on you if you don't!
Just a few weeks ago there was this article about 3com faceplates. You can consolidate all your phone and data into 1 jack while running just 1 cable run to your rooms. Now if you got money to burn, you might consider one of these babies from Cisco. This is their media convergence server which will combine voice/data/video into something that can run over cat5. A MCS will cut out your need to run separate phone and video lines. Hey want to hire me to set this stuff up? I'm totally jobless right now and could really use the money :)
Good luck on your house!
I think you confused your products. The LinkSys switch with 8 ports all gigabit, the EG0008, as an MSRP of $1400 and is selling on the street for about $850. That's not $189.
David E. Weekly
Code / Think / Teach / Learn
h4x0r for
What amazed me is that nonterminated cable is just fine for that purpose! He literally just fished the glass (and cladding) through the wall and mounted it in brackets at each end.
Both half and full duplex ethernet in the 10mbit and 100mbit variety use 2 pairs, one for sending, one for receiving.
My parents live in a largish appartment, in a small complex with 30 similar appartments. There is some money around, so I was thinking about building a LAN there. A lot have to be digged down into the ground, and I have been thinking about persuading these people to dig down fiber. Around here, it isn't that infeasible getting fiber all the way.
When thinking about bandwidth, I've been thinking along these lines: If bandwidth is more expensive than CPU, then compression will be common, if CPU is more expensive than bandwidth, things will be transmitted with little or no compression. And this may change quite rapidly, so what is the application I can think of that I might realistically see that takes the most bandwidth? Uncompressed HDTV. And that is, AFAIK, 1.45 Gbits/s, right? I know of no copper that can do that. It stops at about 1.2 Gbits/s, right? So, if we take the expense of digging something down, it can't be copper.
Inside the house, I have planned go get a diskless old box with a Fibrechannel card and use as router and firewall. Then, making conduits inside the house so that other cables can be replaced with not too much effort. From the router in the basement, I'll have a standard copper cable, cat5 or whatever to the server, which is a box that will run whatever I need of e-mail, web, the lot. Then, there will be a similar cable to the main workstation. Finally, there will be a cable to the TV.
Other than that, I'll base it on wireless. People here have voiced concerns about security, and indeed, it must be made in such a way that the firewall isn't made pointless. But putting a lot of wire when you can use Bluetooth (which has been my primary choice, but I don't know), or 802.11 seems a complete waste. You can't wire all the gadgets I want anyway (I want the fridge online! And the washing machine, and the... :-) ) so most things must be on wireless anyway. However, with Bluetooth, I need at least two points in the house, so obviously I need cables from the router in the basement to the points where the senders and transmitters are.
OK, these weren't advices, just a few loose thoughts, but I figured I'd share them.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
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.
Running the fiber will increase the value of your house. That might make it worth doing even if you never use it.
While running conduit is a good alternative to fiber, do not use metal conduit. It hurts cable performance.
If you run shielded twisted pair, or STP, instead of the usual unshielded twisted pair, or UTP, you need to ground it properly. See for example this link .
Consult your fire codes and follow them. You might need to install plenum cable in certain spaces. When in doubt, install plenum.
Whatever cable you run, leave lots of slack on each end. This is cheap insurnace against a cable problem.
Try to adhere to a standard when you install the cable, such as EIA/TIA-568 for Ethernet.
If you are worried about Echelon type spying, you will need to run fiber and take other precautions.
I am not a lawyer. Do not take my words as legal advice. If you need legal advice, consult an attorney.
Also, don't forget to make sure that your data cables (cat5, rg6, whatever) are always at least 6" away from the power cables.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
The company where I was employed one year ago had shared plugs for ethernet and phone. They set up every plug in the wall according to their needs. This could be very good, since it gave all the things a good modularity, but they had lots of problems (mainly about performance on the ethernet side). I can't tell you whether this problem was related to the shared plugs or to the ethernet structure. I know nothing about how this could have been done (except that they didn't use Voice over IP). Just be warned about possible problems of this solution...
I'm fat, you're ugly. I can get slimmer, and you?
I wired every room with two runs of cat5: one for telephone, one for data. I ran conduit to a few rooms. The conduit has proven much more valuable than the cat5. And given the expense of terminating and testing every run, it would have been much cheaper to run conduit (NMT aka smurf tubing) to every room.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
I use Cat-5 for telephone lines, and it works very well.
Be SURE that each telephone line is on two wires that are a twisted pair. If you run telephone lines on wires that are in adjacent pairs, you will get terrible crosstalk.
Bush's education improvements were
Many comments suggests using fishing wire to pull the cables into conduits etc.
;-)
My advise is that this is a good idea, but once you've finished with pulling copper leave the fishing wire there and voila, you've got a cheap optical fiber ready to go!
I'd say use around 20 pounds tested wires to get a clean signal
delete free(system.gc);
Generally, not until after you close on the house, at which point it will be too late. If you really want to wire it yourself, you're going to have to sneak in. And if you have an OnQ system, like I do, then it really won't work, because the installer will be responsible for all the wiring, and he'll notice. Plus, who's going to install the jacks? Sooner or later, someone will catch you, and then you'll be in trouble.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
He's right. 10 and 100 Base-T use two pairs only for all modes of operation.
Bush's education improvements were
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
Hi definition uncompressed video is more than 100Mb/sec - but 1Gb/sec over copper is on the horizon.
Gigabit ethernet, at least, is fairly cheap right now. Check dlink's site for a fair idea of what pricing is like.
Gigabit will run over standard cat-5 cable (it actually just runs slower signals in parallel over multiple pairs), so you won't even have to rewire for it.
The problem is hubs. I have yet to see a good gigabit hub for under $2k or so. Most of the gigabit-compatible hubs offered use gigabit for uplink, and a handful of 100-base-T links for the rest of the ports.
Has this changed in the past 6 months or so?
Using a PC as a router in place of a hub isn't an option, as one gigabit ethernet card will come very close to saturating a 32-bit 33 MHz PCI bus. Start streaming large amounts of data through the house and the router will fail to handle the traffic.
cat5e is definitely gigabit, according to my handy Black Box catalog.
cat6 hasn't been ratified yet, but will allow gigabit and beyond.
-- Veni, vidi, dormivi
In my area, at least, burying boxes this way is a no-no and would surely draw the wrath of the electrical inspector. Your electrician will know if this is true in your area.
Making a map would seem to answer the obvious objection to burying boxes, but what guarantee is there that the next owner will get the map? Or that you'll not lose it? Or get hit by a truck without bothering to tell anyone where it is or what it is?
The idea is that another electrician should be able to come in and figure out the wiring including all splices without ripping out all your walls.
If you're going to do this, and do this right, might as well have fun.
Run an indistinct wire, (go for red or something equally ominous) along with everything else.
Ten years from now when you're pulling the old stuff with your buddies look terribly surprised or upset to see it. Claim that you have no idea to what it is, but always insist that THEY cut it any time one gets in your way...
Who moderates the meta-moderators?
The only thing that makes it cheap to install now is the ease of installation, and can be easily offset by that expensive fiber becoming useless by advancing technology; maybe the latest stereo equipment in 10 years needs a certain quality fiber and your stuff just doesn't match...doh!
;-)
Put in string/wire for pulling new runs into each room. Having the string to pull new cables will make installing the latest+greatest in 10 years a snap if you need it. Also think through how "hard" the house really will be to wire once it is built. Consider that very few rooms will actually NEED ethernet, and houses with a complete basement or underground space access and/or attic space access are pieces of cake to wire(I wired the downstairs of one house with a full basement with open ceiling(ie floor joists visible etc) in about 30 minutes; the longest part was triple-checking where to drill holes through the wood flooring and terminating the cables.) Attics make wiring upstairs just as easy. Drop a wire down into the wall, poke hole in wall, pull wire into room, cut hole for electrical box, install box, terminate, and put faceplate in. Done.
The trick/problem is when you need to go from the attic to the basement etc, or you need to get up to a room in the 1st floor and the area underneath it has a fully finished ceiling(like a plaster ceiling) and you can't just drill from below. Raised tile ceilings for basements are a great idea for exactly this reason, very easy access, and lower sound, too; some panels are very sound-absorbing, both reflective and transmitted(ie, sound in the room vs sound from upstairs etc) compared to a plastered ceiling. You can also sneak cabling up to there with a wire tube(some nice ones come with self-adhesive tape on the back, peel+stick after marking w/level etc) and just toss it across the tiles. Anyone who has worked at a startup company with a raised or open ceiling is very well aware of these advantages
Run the Cat5e now because it's not going to get much cheaper, it already -is- cheap, and its easy to install now(plus, its extremely common and unlikely to go flying out the door any time soon.)
Don't waste time having the contractor terminate the cables(it represents most of the labor) unless he/she can certify the runs(this means plugging in a VERY expensive piece of test gear, which runs dozens of different signal strength/crosstalk tests etc; the guy then gives you a sheet for EACH run that says its up to spec; Lucent, for example, requires this for use with their gear, as they do Lucent cable, which is some of the best I've used) otherwise, you're no better than they are and you'll save serious dough(server rooms where lots of runs are needed are a different matter; the pros can lay down cable, bunch it up and terminate it into patch boards into something that looks like fine art and works terrifically, plus they can certify each run, and you can have someone to scream at if the run doesn't work and the boss can't check his email; ALWAYS have a server room wired by the pros unless its less than a dozen runs and you don't need things to be critical.)
Consider a patch panel in your wiring closet, and make accomodations for proper power(one dedicated 15 or 20a circuit should be fine), lighting(I suggest a long flour. light, NEVER a bare bulb, you'll be able to see much better) and cooling(vents top and bottom in the door.) Put a weatherstrip on the bottom of the door, this will keep out dust bunnies.)
The patch panels are not -that- expensive, $100-200 for more wiring than you'll ever need. Same goes for 19 inch wallmount racks, they're very cheap and usually offer a swing-down design that affords VERY easy access to the backs of equipment. Spaced out, everything will keep cool, be easy to clean, and isn't going anywhere.
Oh...also consider plenum instead of PVC. PVC puts out some -really- nasty stuff when it burns, and it's very thin, so it does burn very quickly(unlike thick PVC plumbing which is also full of water usually.) Plenum doesn't put out nasties when it burns(which is why its allowed in more places in commercial buildings than PVC is.)
HTH!
Brett
I think he mean just the boxes themselves. No wires. I would think you could pass an electrical inspection with having just the boxes there. I can understand not passing if they all had wires running through them. I could be wrong though.
Don't forget the Pneumatic Tubes (http://www.ptubes.com/). I really want to build a house with a pneumatic tube network. Use it for sending things like sandwiches and martinis.
u ll.htm) while you're at it.
That and the network of toy train tracks running around the crown molding...
But seriously, dittos on the conduit; home wiring is traditionally held down with things like STAPLES - ewwww. And get yourself a good fish tape (http://www.wisecomponents.com/storecatalog/wirep
They have every right in the world. Its your house now, but it might not be 20 years from now. And if your house burns down 20 years from now while someone else's kids are sleeping, that is not good. Its all in the name of safety. Well, at least it use to be in the name of safety. Now it might also be in the name of "our city needs more money, and you need a permit for that nail to hang a picture."
But regardless, I wouldn't want to move into a house without some (even small) level of reassurance someone has said "yeah, as far as we know, this wiring is safe (even if barely)."
I've run buildings with miles of unshielded cat5.. so what do you mean? In fact.. isn't the spec for cat5 unshielded twisted-pair?
They most certainly ARE low voltage.
You don't get 200+ volt spikes on phone lines.
The only time you get AC with any voltage is during the ring-trip.
Something along these lines are probably the best idea. That way if in 10 years its not fiber, but a cable full of bubbles, you aren't screwed. If you do use PVC (or some kind of conduit), just make sure you put some rope in them so that you can pull the cables through later. Otherwise you aren't saving yourself much trouble. (Some, but not much).
Run conduit or at least plenty of pull-wires/strings. That way you don't have as much of an issue and you can run what you like when the time comes. If you use conduit and pullwires, then you can pull/add/remove what you like.
A simple loop shouldn't be against code. Wire runs down into the box, and right back out. It doesn't get cut at all. If having the wire fold back on itself is a no-no, then have it run through one knockout and out another.
Who needs a guarantee that I don't lose the map?! Not having the map isn't any worse than not having the boxes in the first place.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
I wired my older house with tons of CAT5E and coax (use RG6 for coax, BTW). I ran 1 to 2 lines from each room to a central closet where I also installed an AC outlet. In the closet I have a firewall router, cable modem, fast Ethernet switch, and a UPS ($5 at a swap).
This has worked out quite well. With this setup I can control the cable and network of each room from one central location.
This was an older home. It was fairly easy to do since I have a crawl space below the house and an attic above.
If there are places that will be difficult to reach later, put in some tough nylon string to feed wires or cable through later. You will be glad you did. Also, it never hurts to run extra cat5e, as you never know when you'll need it. Cat5e also makes excellent phone cable.
-Aaron
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
All
Instead of trying to figure out what to run and what not to run to particular rooms, it is better to run conduit to your specific rooms. This will give you the flexibility to pull CAT-5, Fiber, phone cable, etc. into a particular room without going behind the drywall.
Therefore, to give yourself the greatest flexibility, I would run conduit down each of the walls in your house. In addition, conduit will protect any cables that you run in the future. One of the problems I have seen with running "naked" cables - of any kind - is that nails or screws used to secure the drywall often end up breaking them. A conduit will protect your cables and "clothe" them.
In addition, if I was building out a new house, I would put in a few additional items that will make your life easier over the long-term. First, I would build a "wire closet" to which I would run all of my conduits. Second, I would create places in the roof to receive wireless points of presence, so that you can get full coverage over your whole house. Make sure that these wireless access points are appropriately wired for power and have a conduit with CAT-5 running to them. Depending on the size of your house you will need two to four. Position them by looking for a coverage zone of 75 feet (yes, I know that they claim they can hit 150 feet, but this will give you strong coverage). And third, I would look at running a home automation network that would allow you to control lighting, heating, etc. throughout your house.
Finally, if you haven't put up the roof yet, look at going with solar shingles with a grid tie power system. This will cost more than a standard roof, but with the buy-down that you can get in many states and the zero electric bill you will see, it will the same as a standard roof in the short-term and will cost less within 5 to 10 years.
What I would suggest if you
One thing you might want to consider when running your Ethernet cable along with your phone (which in normally not in a conduit), is that local fire codes often require that any vertically-running cable be in a conduit or be fire retardant. You really can't get a 1000' spool of good fire retardant 5e cable for $60. Keep in mind that when wiring your house, the cable is probably going to be the least expensive component, but if you screw up and buy crappy cable (that burns like tissue paper or shatters when you try to crimp it), it can quickly become a serious headache and a serious expense.
I wired my (already constructed) house a few years ago with cheap cat5 ($50 a spool) and was later informed by an inspector that, if I ever wanted to sell the house, I'd have to replace or remove the cable that I used.
My suggestion to you is, because your house hasn't been dry walled yet (I assume), run at least one length of conduit to each room (If you want to have two cables going to each room, run one of them along the base of the wall) and use medium-quality cable. If you would rather not pay for conduit, use high-quality fire retardant cable, and talk to an electrician about your local rules and regs.
--
-- sometimes AND gates turn me on.
Some people have glossed over this in passing, but you should pay attention:
In some states, you are legally required to be an electrician (low voltage license) to do this.
Florida is one example; it was passed this year.
If you live in a state with this requirement, you might fail your inspection if you do this, and not be able to move into your house.
Further, if you are building in a development and didn't hire the builder yourself, you must coordinate this with them, or they might very well rip your wires out. I've seen it happen, there is a house in my development sitting empty because the guy put Monster Cables for his stereo through the walls one night, and they cut them all into pieces and threw them away the next day. He backed out of the deal as a result, and now it's an inventory home. They didn't really have much of a choice, since if they fail the inspection they eat the house.
On that note, you may also want to have a circuit on each of those drops routed as UPS. Then just put as many UPS's as you want in the garage/basement, and not worry about losing power on things like computer servers, alarm clocks, vcr, etc. Beats putting 9V batteries in everything.
What I would do is build a patch panel or wiring closet in a basement or similar location, with all telephone/data/audio cabling to other parts of the house home-run to this location.
If you run 'smurf' (flexbible blue fire-rated plastic tubing) to each room, and two each to bedrooms, media room, then you should be ready for anything.
When you run the smurf, draw 2xCat5e to each room along with any necessary speaker cable. Most fire codes will permit you to leave in a 'pull line' of a code-accepted material, so you can easily draw more cables (fiber, etc) as needed.
When running the 'smurf' tubing, try to avoid running in parallel with power conduits, or if you must, maximize the separation. Where you pass power lines, try to intersect at right angles.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
Actually, whether or not the cable jacket is plenum-rated (usually with Teflon) is completely unrelated to whether or not they wrap an extra layer of foil around the wire (shielded vs unshielded). If you're running unbalanced signals down the wire, such as RS232 serial data (Like Cisco or Sun Netra consoles), shielding is good. But Ethernet and Telephone send electrically opposite signals down each wire, so the electromagnetic fields and the twisting of the wire helps fight interference.
o/~ Join us now and share the software
I just took a dump, and oh man, you really will regret it later if you don't put in fibre!
The non-licensed spectrum, especially the 2.4Ghz range where 802.11b lives, is open to all sorts of consumer devices. A couple of neighbors with wirelss X-Cams and your 802.11b network is drowned in noise, totally dead. (I have tested this).
Security is also a major risk- wireless can easily be sniffed and is not difficult to spoof.Do you really want some script kiddie rooting your fridge?
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
And if the contractor can't handle conduit (find a better contractor?!), you can do it yourself. Steel conduit is cheap (I know, 'cause I've done this), and conduit benders are not difficult to use. Of course, if you don't wanna use a conduit bender, you can buy prefab curved sections.
/. recently...
A few things to keep in mind:
0. Use METAL conduit rather than plastic - indefinite lifetime, RF shielding, and nailproof when hanging pictures. Also easily findable with stud-finder gadgets at need.
1. Use BENDS rather than square corners (and insist the contractor do so -- inspect before accepting...). Makes pulling cable more fun, and VITAL for fiber (if it ever comes to that)
2. If you do it yourself, make sure you debur the insides of all conduit ends with the little blade on the tubing cutter. It really sucks to have a short 'cause the conduit cut the insulation.
3. Check local codes and the building inspector on how to GROUND the conduit properly (one probably grounds this to the building safety ground at the electrical service entrance -- a definite building-inspector question). The building inspector can be made into a very handy resource if you social-engineer the interaction properly - you want him to take you seriously, and to understand that you want to, and are able to, do things right and with proper permits; at this point, he ceases to be an obstacle and becomes an ally. Also, be real clear to the building department that your conduit is LOW-VOLTAGE wiring and NOT power wiring; the code requirements are different.
Lastly, 3Com has a nifty mini-hub that fits into a wall box, seen on
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
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.
I am not an electrician, but I've done my own electrical work, so here's my opinion:
The way I understand it, according to the National Electric Code, any box with wires running into it (even if it is just a pass-through) needs to be accessable. The thing to do in this case would be to cut the holes in the plasterboard and cover the box with a blank plate.
The bonus with this method is that the placement of the boxes is obvious and the plasterboard doesn't need to be cut later. Therefore a map is unnecessary. Also, if the walls are concrete block and plaster, not plasterboard, this is the only practical way to go (unless you want to start cutting holes in the block for new boxes).
That's worth a Slashdot article all by itself!
I have mostly cat 5e everywhere. Into each wall three drops. Then a drop is normally phone and the other two can be whatever. All run as a star.
I *did* run fiber and a Topaz transformer ultra-isolated AC circuit (with separate ground) to the stuff that then goes on to my antenna tower. The goal was to use the fiber as a 20 meter lighting gap between the stuff over there (soon to be a long-haul 802.11 link) and the rest of my network. So now when (not if) lightning comes to wreck my day, the worst that will happen in terms of data is the tower end of the data service (fiber hub, 802.11 stuff, some ham stuff) will all go POOF, but the core network will be safe.
If I had a separate garage, I'd run fiber (via a conduit) to there too. Fiber is *perfect* for longer hauls where lightning can be a problem. I buy all my fiber links from ebay, BTW... way cheaper than 'for real' and also allows me to avoid having to terminate them myself.
-- Multics
Why not use wireless?
oh great -
moderators mod this one up 1 (but I don't get any credit as my karma is 50 already), then two come alone a and mod it down...
back to 48... lovely...
It seems I have been mistaken though - I've looked and it seems that all use 2 pairs except for T4 and Gigabit Ethernet over copper... the best I could find was this reference, it makes no mention of duplex, but does give some information.
I have no idea where I got the idea that full duplex required extra pairs - I must be such a dumbo.
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.
This is true.
I just did my own wiring in the house that I just bought a month ago. I ran Cat5e, because it much more inexpensive and I design and install LAN/WAN equipment, and deal with fiber everyday. I hate fiber. The Transceivers along will run you $900 per end, that's a minimum $1800 per drop. Plus you will need to by the switches.
Why do that when you can buy a four port Gigabit UTP switch for less than $300 and Gigabit nic's for $44.
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.
It will be a little more expensive, but you might want to think about stringing "STP" CAT5, instead of UTP... that's Shielded Twisted Pair instead of Unshielded.
I'm by no means an expert on the matter, but a few years ago I did a lot of reading about comparisons between different cabling methodologies (UTP, STP, coax, etc).
The interesting thing about STP is that you'd think that the shielding could only help. However, unless you ground it, the long stretches of shielding can actually make interference worse by acting like a giant antenna.
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
/type (10Gbps) probably named "Laser optimized multimode fiber" LOMMF or OM3 is still in the works.
before the drywall goes in so I want to make an informed decision now. Ten years from now will I need/want fiber?"
The only reason to run fiber is if the needed cable length, exceed recommended CAT5e length.
Fiber has several disadvantages (I am no cable expert); Connectors; There is a plethora of competing connectors. The most common; SC and ST connectors are rather bulky, and doesn't really work beyond 1Gbps. The new breed of small form connectors for >1Gbps hasn't been certified yet.
If you plan to run fiber "end-to-end", you will have a really limited supply of products to choose from, pay premium prices, and to some extent be tied up with
with whatever connector you choose to begin with.
Changing or making the end-termination on fiber, is much more expensive on fiber, than on copper. (the SMF connector "VF-45" from 3M claims to be the cheapest to use, when doing end-to-end fiber).
The price difference between even a managed 24p 100TX switch and a 24p 100 FX (fiber) switch is significant. The price on 1000 SX fiber equipment is also much higher than 1 GBIC copper equipment.
We just evaluated upgrading our fiber backbone from 10Mbit to either 100FX or 1000SX. (we run a non-profit ISP for 300 apartments), and the price difference between a using a fiber or a copper core switch is very high indeed. If it wasn't for the fact, that our cable length requirements exceed Cat 5e/6, it would probably be cheaper to abandon the fiber and re-wire with copper.
Using fiber-converters (transceivers) also sucks; they cost too much (one needed for every connected device), is yet another source for network problems, and requires yet another power plug.
Actually I believe, that the money saved from investing in fiber and fiber equipment now, could pay for a totally fiber re-wiring if the need for such really should arise into the future.
I really think you will be much better off using copper. People in the know claims, that even though Class D/Cat 6 (200MHz) isn't certified as a standard yet (?), the commercial "Cat 6" cabling systems availably now, should conform to the coming standard. So Cat 6 should be a much better long term investment than fiber. AFAIK Cat 6 should do 10Gbps. Again, people who knows much more than I do, claims that the present standard for multi mode fiber (50 and 62,5 Micron)
doesn't do more than 1,2 Gbps reliably, and is a "dead" standard like Cat 5, and 5e. The coming fiber standards
To summon up;
Cat 5e is the cheap and tried solution. If future needs doesn't go beyond 1Gbps, then why not.
Cat 6 is slightly more expensive, but is much more "future proof" (10Gbps). Perhaps one is still advised to buy a complete system, from the same vendor though.
It allready seems, that Cat 6 rapidly has become the choice when people wire new offices.
Present day fiber standards are not future proof (1,2Gbps), too expensive; not only the fiber cabling systems, but all devices that need to connect with it, and is probably something best left to a professional electrician to install.
Peoples advice about conduit and pull wires, are probably the real key to a long term investment.
A cheap ethernet tester will probably pay for it self too, if you are going to make a lot of cables.
I inquired about the same thing here in Ohio when building my house. The builder would not let me do anything but the stuff on the work equity list. I asked about Cat 5 and running some RG-58 (for Amateur Radio) myself and they said NO extra wiring period. If I did add it, I would not have gotten my FHA approval since I do have a FHA loan.
:)
Personally, even with the security issues with Wi-Fi, I would rather use it. Much more flexible and you can always setup as VPN gateway on the access point. It's much more flexible and if you decide you NEED your laptop when your on the crapper then you can do it (not that I would do it, but hey I know SOMEONE might someday!). Besides, when I get my laptop and Wi-Fi stuff, I can surf the web on a nice day out on my deck. That's just plain cool!
On a side note, all of my phone cabling IS Cat-5. I can steal a pair off of it since I am only using one for voice and it would work. When I decide to excise the phone and ONLY use a mobile phone, then I can just add a hub on the other side of the wall from where the demarc boax is.
Gorkman
What I did was pull eight drops of six cat-5 and one RG-6 to six rooms. (Actually only seven RG-6 drops because I ran out.) I used up most of two 1000 foot boxes.
Don't pull single wires, pull bundles. When I had the holes drilled and the weather was cool enough to stay in the attic all day, I pulled the wire from both boxes through the house, along with the RG-6, then folded the end over and did it again twice. I used cheap box tape to hold the wires together in the interim, then I used cable ties to tie it together into one evil looking snake. It just barely fits in a 1" hole. So far I haven't crimped the ends of the RG-6, but when I do start using it, I'll just stuff the extra cat-5 keystone jack back into the wall.
In two of the drops, I didn't have to drill because there was no drywall over the cabinets (nowadays the ceilings go in first, so I was lucky), and in another, there was already a hole where I wanted it. The last hole was the toughest because it was on an outside wall, the roof about three feet above me. I cut a hole for three-inch pipe in my closet, giving nine times the area of a 1" hole, just right for eight bundles and the outside wiring, then put a pipe and a right angle joint at the top. The hole was cut well enough that the whole thing fits snugly with no glue or plaster.
Assorted bits of advice: Forget about fiber, it's too much of a pain in the arse for home use. The only fiber you want is one strand going out of your house (dream on!). And besides, there are two diameters, and single vs multi-mode, but cat-5 is cat-5. Don't forget about the RG-6, because that means you can have cable/satellite in any and every room in the house. And if you buy wood bits, get 1" bits, and get them made in the USA with lifetime warranty. Wal-Mart sells these for under three bucks each. The crap from China won't last for more than one or two holes. Ultrasonic stud finders kick ass. Wig pins are good for pushing through drywall to find out the exact point of a stud, both on walls and ceilings. Not all horizontal studs in your attic are directly over the wall; if you're not careful, you'll drill out the top of a wall or even worse, paneling. (Yes, I did drill out some paneling. That's how I know.)
Switched 100mbit Ethernet in the kitchen kicks ass. And it means you get to use more AC circuits for those big LAN parties.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
I can't stress the importance of FFFish's comments enough. Make certain to take pictures (digital cameras are great) of *every* cable run in *every* wall before the rock goes up. It's so much easier to be able to have an "x-ray" view of your house when doing additions in the future. Additionally, it's a nice resale point for prospective future buyers ("and, should you ever want to upgrade, here is a look behind the walls").
As for the original question, skip the fiber -- go 2 RG6 and 2 CAT5 to each room, and run flexible conduit for future expansion (don't forget to run a length between the attic and the first floor/basement -- it'll save you)
-D
Four years ago I purchased a new home in Alameda (SF Bay Area). A friend of mine recommended that I go with home-run conduit to every room. I eventually did get my conduit, however, I had to fight the builders who did not want to do anything out of the ordinary. They tried to snow-job me by claiming conduit was against residential code, so I called the inspector and he told me it was fine for low voltage wiring. Eventually I wore them down and I got my conduit. I think it cost around $1500 for 8 home runs in a 2700 sq foot house. If you do manage to get conduit it is important that you
1) Get the largest diameter possible. I got 1.5".
2) Ensure that the turn radius is as large as possible i.e. the conduit should take sweeping turns rather than tight turns because the increase in friction will make it very hard to pull cable. Remember that cat5 cable is only certified up to a pulling force of around 15lbs.
After the house was completed my wife and I spent 2 weekends pulling Cat5e (lucent is the best) and RG6. We pulled 5 cat5 runs to each downstairs room and garage and 3 to the upstairs. In each case 1 cat5e supports up to 4 phone lines. Special conduit lubricant is a must, it's designed to make the pulling easier and keeps the wires lubricated after the fact. Of course a good quality fish-tape is a must, don't go cheap. The runs are terminated in my den, obvisouly you should pick a central location. In the den I have a server cabinet and a rackmount switch and a patch panel for the LAN and phone lines. The switch is connected to a firewall/router which is connected to a cable modem. You can plug a machine in anywhere in the house & DHCP will get you an IP and an internet gateway. I also have a couple of Audiotrons to stream music from my server.
I did all the cat5 wiring myself. The trickiest part is terminating the cables, a cat5 circuit tester will save you a lot of time, of course you will also need all the crimping tools, wire strippers etc. I used Pandiut components throughout for the connectors, faceplates etc, their stuff is modular and well designed. A good guide to all this stuff is "Mike's Basic Guide to Cabling Computers & Telephones in Homes & Apartments"
You want to keep such runs at leastr 12" apart, cross them at 90 degree angles when necessary, and only bring them close in a split multi-ganged box (if your code permits that).
You could've hired me.
Lots of mis-information about plenum cabling here.
;-). Why? Because if there's a fire in a wood house you have a lot more to worry about than some lame-ass cabling.
Plenum cabling doesn't necesarialy burn less all the time.
Plenum cabling is desgined to burn less in certain directions.
IIRC, plenum means it won't burn sideways as well as upwards. If you want the other cable, I think you need "riser" cable (or something like that). If you plan to do this in an office building, this is a good time to find out. Otherwise they may make another crappy OJ Simpson movie.
Where I live, if your house is made with wood, you can put in any comm. cable you like (as long as it doesn't give off toxic fumes without burning!
The only exception (again, for where I live) is that you have to use special cabling for running cable through air-ducts.
But, once you move into offices, you _really_ need to watch those laws. The fire inspector will bust your ass if you run the wrong FT-rating cable. (IIRC, FT-5 for plenum spaces, FT-4 for anywhere else in offices).
BTW: This may be incorrect for your area, and I refuse to claim responsibility if you use the wrong cable and cause harm to anything with your use of it.
Note: Plenum is availiable for almost any cable. UTP, STP, coax, power, you name it.
Careful grounding your STP -- over very long distances (like many floors in an office building) a ground differential can cause HUGE current loops through your ground. I've heard stories about ground jackets setting on fire in runs from the top floor to the basement in office buildings.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
USE PLENUM
Yes, it costs more, but it meets building code, and isn't nearly so flammable. Please don't be cheap and use the PVC stuff that will help housefires spread wonderfully just to save $100.
Fiber is probably a waste of time, but maybe not.
STP has nothing to do with whether or not the outer jacket is PVC or plenum. UTP plenum is widely available, and widely deployed. Shielded cable makes for a nightmare of floating grounds that most people don't deal with properly.
Don't forget to consider your power and air conditioning needs. My office is pushing the limits of both.
I have all of machines networked wirelessly, with a WinXP/Linux machine serving as a gateway to my cable connection. Simple, no fuss, and no matter where you go inside (and outside) the house, you can always have a connection.
Glad you mentioned this, because it reminded me how difficult it is to find good documentation about wiring Ethernet.
As a wise Slashdot reader once said, "You can't have too much overkill", so here is the wiring scheme shown 3 different ways. I hope it saves you the time of gathering it together yourself.
Slashdot doesn't allow the HTML PRE tag. Slashdot removes leading spaces, so I've used dots below. Another problem is that the lameness filter is lame. That lameness filter is definitely named correctly.
Use only Standard EIA/TIA T568B. This is also called the AT&T specification. T568A is NOT USED.
T568B:
When the hook of the RJ-45 Ethernet connector is underneath, pin 1 is on the left.
Pair 1 is pins 4 and 5, Blue and White/Blue.
Pair 2 is pins 1 and 2, White/Orange and Orange (Transmit Data + and -)
Pair 3 is pins 3 and 6, White/Green and Green (Receive Data + and -).
Pair 4 is pins 7 and 8, White/Brown and Brown.
Pair2 \--R22 Orange
/--------- -T33 White/Green
/
Pair3 \ Pair1 \-T15 White/Blue
\--------- -R36 Green
Pair4 \--R48 Brown
Pin ColorPairName
1 wh/or 2 TxData +
2 or2 TxData -
3 wh/grn3 RecvData+
4 blu 1
5 wh/blu1
6 grn 3 RecvData-
7 wh/brn4
8 brn 4
I know this sounds crazy, but standard Ethernet uses ONLY pairs 2 and 3, for both half and full duplex. The other wires just sit there, unused. (It is possible to buy external adapters to use the other two pairs as a second 10- or 100 Megabit 100Base-T connection.)
The R1, T1, R2, T2 designations are for telephones. R1 is Ring 1 (the red wire at the telephone box). T1 is Tip 1 (the green wire at the telephone box). Ring and Tip are old names for the telephone wires, but if you talk to a telephone company installer, he or she will use those names.
Quite obviously, someone messed this up majorly, as in "How can we make this confusing?"
If you are new to wiring Ethernet start with the simple explanation at Johns Closet (as in wiring closet): Wiring: Color Codes, Terms, and Tools.
See the Leviton Do and Don't Guides
See the Wiring Guides at the Leviton Learning Center . See the Residential And Light Commercial Installation Practices (Tia-570 Compliance) [PDF file] guide.
Also see the wiring specs at FAQS.org: 9.0 Standard EIA/TIA 568 (Use ONLY T568B)
More information about wiring: Data Communications Cabling FAQ
Your local store will probably try to charge too much. Shop around for Ethernet cable and connectors. You need the real thing, cable marked "Category 5". Other cable won't work.
One last thought to those who are new to Ethernet networking. A Hub broadcasts all data to all computers. An Ethernet Switch sends the data only to the computer that where the data will be used. Therefore, switches are faster in cases where the network is sending data between more than one pair of computers at the same time.
--
Senator Biden (and Osama bin Laden) say that the Saudi government cannot continue without U.S. support: What should be the Response to Violence?
Bush's education improvements were
Wire/coax are cheap if you value your time at all. Don't bother with phone wire, use cat5e for phone lines you get more options this way. Run 2 coax and 3 cat5e to way more places than you ever think you'll want to, but you don't have to actually hook them up right away or ever. Use Panduit Mini-com jacks that can be removed from the cover without unwiring them and just terminate what seems reasonable at the present time. Put blank covers on those places that you're sure you'll never need anything and roll the wires up in the box... you will need to connect something to at least one of those ridiculous wires sometime. I put a cat5 jack out on my front porch last summer so I could sit on the porch swing with my laptop. Will run one out by the pool next summer.
I like to buy different color cat5s and hook up the blues to ethernet, the reds to phone but leave the yellows dark. Everything should be a star (including security/smoke alarms) and should terminate in a nice large closet that has a big piece of plywood on the wall.
Use cat5 e for security wiring too. Even though a lot of security systems require their circuit to be wired in series this can still be accomplished at the head and you may want change our your security system at some point. You waste a lot of wire this way but you've got more options. Run 3 cat5e and 2 coax to the detached garage, but if it's very far away run a 4 "conductor" fiber out there too and don't forget to run a string or two in that conduit. Even if it's not so far, the fiber won't pass the electrical potential difference that can occur when lighting strikes close to your garage and you'll save your hubs/switches.
I've done a lot of this and even by being anal as hell there's always some place I miss. It's not at all unreasonable to put a mile of cat5 in a small house. Also buy as many boxes of wire as your biggest run (most conductors). That way you can run all the wires simultaneously and they'll look better when you're done. Don't pull on the cat5 very hard at all.... if it's stuck get off the ladder or off the floor and gently massage it into place.
If you stub a conduit up into the attic make damn sure you insulate and seal the top of it. In a factory I wired, the electricians had graciously ran conduit from the attic down all the walls to metal boxes. They left the conduit sticking up through the insulation in the attic so I could stuff/fish my wires down them. They didn't cut them to length up in the attic some were just through the top plate and others were 18" above the insulation. The metal conduit acted like a chimney in the winter, warm air rose up the conduit, hit the cold attic, water condensed, ran back down the conduit and shorted/corroded about 150 jacks (Panuit mini-coms BTW). Ports on the on the phone system began to blow and I couldn't figure out what the hell was happening. Fortunately one of the metal boxes got crushed by a fork truck and I discovered the corroded jack. Upon replacing most of the jacks in the building water actually ran out of some of the boxes when I pulled the covers off.
In a home where romex electrical wiring is allowed, non-plenum wire should be just fine. Romex is the 12-2 14-3 etc wire that is inside a flatish molded plastic covering. if your building codes won't allow romex and you're house has conduit you better buy the plenum.
A big UPS in the head is always nice... maybe you should have your electrician run a few "home" runs of 110V to some color coded electrical jacks to get that UPS power up to some of the more deleicate and expensive electronics equipment in your house. Have your electrician put 110V recepticals and light sockets on many of the junction boxes in the attic and crawl/basement... when you have to add a phone line that you forgot you'll be grateful for the handy power and light and it's so inexpensive to do before-hand.
Run a couple of power home runs to the entertainment center area.... you won't need the amperage but you'll get cleaner power for the tivo.
That is all.
No Really that's it.
Other than bragging rights, fiber in the home is pointless. Your CAT5 can be used with gigbit ethernet NICs and switches to give you performance that is just as good. Your other alternative is to go with 802.11a (high speed wireless). It's faster than the 11 Megs per second (Approx 54 Mbps) that 802.11b gives you and performs better over longer distances. The money you'd spend on fiber should give you more bang for your buck if you use both of the above mentioned approaches in combination. I wired everything up for CAT5 in my house (14 nodes) and I'm a happy camper.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
>cat6 hasn't been ratified yet, but will allow gigabit and beyond
AFAIK, there is no beyond.
Gigabit-ethernet was the last standard for copper.
The 802.3 will not work on faster copper standards.
The next standard 802.3ad (10 Gb/s) is fibre-only.
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
There is no particular reason to install pull string when the conduit is installed, other than proving the continuity of the conduit. Professional electricians blow the string through with a compressor, or use a fish tape if it's a short run. No competent electrician installs pull string 10 feet at a time as he installs conduit, because any code-compliant conduit installation is fairly easy to string. The main issues in code compliance being: All pull boxes, condolets and junction boxes are accessible, and no more than 360 degrees of bend between access points.
Why not just use cat-5 for EVERYTHING, including phones, like many companies do in their offices? It's much more flexible.
You can either use jacks with both types of connectors or standardize on RJ45 and use RJ11/RJ45 cables to connect your phones. In this case it helps to keep certain conventions like 'top jack is phone, bottom jack is ethernet' but it's also good to be able to break this rule.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
$1800 per drop! Are you insane? Your company will go broke with you making purchasing decisions.
We just installed 53 drops of 3M Volition Fiber. This stuff is amazing. You can tie the fibre in knots. The connectors (VF-45) can be yanked out (literally) and replugged hundreds of times without failures. This is in stark contrast to some of the problems experienced with the old-school fibre connections. And to top it off, it's only a bit more than Cat5 per drop.
Check out the 3M Volition web site for technical details.
Also, check out Gemflex for some inexpensive 100Mbit network cards and 8-port switches. 3M also sells a line of high-performance Gigabit switches, but they are still out of range for a normal home network.
To give you an idea, Gemflex pricing is around:
- $ 90 VF-45 NICs
- $400 8-port switches
- $100 RJ-45 to VF-45 converter
It will be more expensive to build a fiber network, and for a home it may not be worth it. For a small/medium-sized office, however, I think it's a great future-proof option.
I think the other poster meant wiring duct, such as this Panduit product which is actually a raceway. Your comments, of course, apply to ventilation ducts.
Sometimes it's that easy, and I've done that. Other times the wall includes a "firebreak". This is a piece of 2x4 nailed transversely between the studs, and it can really put a crimp in this plan. The solution is to drill through the firebreak with a diversabit - a long flexible drill bit. Because it's hard to guide the diversabit to the center of the firebreak, you risk breaking out through the drywall.
I'd pull innerduct or plastic flexible conduit or whatever you want to call it. (If I ask at the electrical supply place for innerduct they know what I am talking about.)
Essentially, this is a flexible tube, probably about 1" in diameter for your application, which is DESIGNED To have data cable ran in it. I've seen this stuff at home depot but I think they call it something else there. Generally it has ridges or "ripples" circularly around the tube. I have pulled many a wire through metal conduit and have also had my fair share of problems. Recently, people have been using the innderduct instead, and the cables are much easier to pull through, etc.
Installation is also a breeze. It's a lot more like running a slightly-stiff garden hose than say pipe. You might need to staple/strap it in key spots, and check code requirements. Since it's data, generally you can get away with almost anything.
Get a spool of Innerduct, a big juction box to connect everything into, and put at least one dual-gang box on each wall, if not more. I've also seen one Innerduct ran to the first one and a second one "jumpering" to a second (or third) box on the wall, so you can actually terminate the wires anywhere you want.
Once you have the innerduct in, it doesn't matter what you put in it.... Fiber, Coax, CAT5, CAT6, etc. etc. etc.
Definately run CAT5 now. Optionally, put dark fibre in next to it. You don't have to use it now, and the cable itself is probably cheap - it's the termination and the net cards that will cost.
;-)
But probably it makes more sense to just run trunking and string so you can pull more stuff later. Who knows, in 5 years we may have wireless at fibre speeds, or sub-ethanet, or be able to run terrabit over CAT-7 copper, or whatever.
Remember, when running the CAT-5, the first rule of cabling:
"Put more cable in than you need, because the customer cannot be trusted when she says "I will only ever need x wires to that point". Even if the customer is you!"
I've just had a day of crimp-tool fun making doublers to run two phone lines down a single CAT-5, largely because the customer did something that was guaranteed as "unthinkable" when we wired the damn site. Should have followed the rule
REmember as well that CAT_5 is well established, and so you will be able to get all sorts of interesting baluns to run all sorts of nifty stuff down it.
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
I strongly suggest you do not install fiber. For many reasons. First, fiber is expensive. Second, terminating fiber is expensive. Third, the toold are expensive. Fourth, the NICs and hubs/switches are expensive. Fifth, you can't just "run" fiber. It takes special conduit, or armored fiber. Feel free to contact me with more information.
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -Douglas Adams, THHGTTG
As most connected home owners know, you can get cables about anywhere you need them, one way or another. And if you can't, most good electricians can. I've helped my dad, a licensed electrician, do some crazy stuff to get wires where they need to go.
If you're building a house, put in a wiring closet. Wire all your phone, cableTV, network, and home-theater connections into that location. You can get some fine management stations at most home centers. Make it in a central position in the lower level, and make sure there's a way to get wiring to second floors if necessary. One good way to do that is to put a 3" conduit next to a heat duct or air return or something similar. If you can, put a junction box somewhere on the second floor as well. Whatever the case, extend the conduit through to a junction box in the ceiling. Put several pull strings in alongside the existing cables.
Also, make sure you have a cable raceway on the ceiling in the basement (if you have one) so that if you finish the lower level you have a way to get cables through the ceiling.
Most home setups don't use the 10Mb/s to capacity, much less 100Mb/s. Can't see a good reason to even think about fiber yet.
- Sig this!
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.
You should check with your local city building code before doing this. While most places won't have a problem with it, in the village where I live (Chicago area, ~30,000population) any in-wall piping is required to be metal conduit. This is done for fire safety reasons regardless if it is electrical wiring inside or not. Just something to consider.
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POTS terminated onto an RJ45 might not be such a good idea because the line voltage will fry a NIC if they used the same hot pair
Ethernet usually runs on pairs 1&2 (orange) and 3&6 (green). Telephones (at least of the US style variety) have the line on pins 3&4 (RJ11) or 4&5 (RJ45, blue). The only possible complications are two line telephones which use pins 2&5 RJ11 which correspond to pins 3&6 RJ45 for a second line.
Actually Cat5 is the requirement. Cat5e "has improved signal carrying capabilities" over Cat5 but aren't required for GigE. 1000Base-T (802.3ab) standards have a complex signal encoding scheme that is very similar to 100Base-T2. It also uses all 4 pairs. My source (besides my own knowledge) is O'Reilly's Ethernet: The Definitive Guide". An excellent read BTW.
In a new house I woul go for cat7 wire. It has several advantages. First it's certified for gigabit ethernet, secondly the wires are individually shielded. It has 8 wires in each cable and you can easily run two 100Mbps/FDX in one cable.
//TheToon
I've wrapped plenum-rated cable around a soldering iron that was hot enough to fry the copper off a board if I wasn't careful (normally ran it through a diode for PC board work). No effect. PVC-insulated cable, on the other hand, roasts and stinks rather quickly.
Incidentally, "plenum" is not the name of the cable; it's the name of the air space. Literally, it is an air space at higher pressure than the surrounding air space (e.g. for ventilation). However, it has come to mean just about any air space, especially the air space above the ceiling and in walls.
I'm literally putting the conduit in this weekend. In the future, I can pull whatever cables I want.
In my living/dining room, which I'm currently rennovating, I'm adding four outlets with conduit to the basement. Each outlet has space for six connectors. Leviton plug-in style. I can run voice, ethernet, cable, speaker, etc.
I'm just putting a box plate onto the stud and drywall, no actual device box. The wall plate goes on the finished side. Behide is a vapour barrier box, with 1" conduit going out the bottom through the floor.
Plan for change.
--
Marc A. Lepage
Software Developer
The issue isn't whether or not PVC cable is dangerous -- it's whether or not it meets code. When you go to sell your house, it will be a real bitch when the home inspector writes you up for building code violations and the buyer's mortgage company makes you tear it all out (or replace it) before they approve the loan. Do the job right the first time and it will increase the value of your home rather than being an expensive liability. Home improvement is NOT the place to go cutting corners -- your home is probably the biggest investment you'll ever make, and only a fool would fail to protect that investment.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
No, really. Imagine the potential impact on resale value, especially if organized crime ever moves into your area.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.