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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?"
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.
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.
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
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.
Right now, I wouldn't even consider using fiber.
You would need a lot of other hardware to make it work.
With Ethernet, hubs and switches are cheap... you can wire everything back to a patch box and from there have it connect to your ADSL or cable modem.
I'm not sure what the costs are on actual fiber cable, but it's certainly not as cheap as CAT5. What's more, you would either need a NIC in your computer capable of accepting fiber (over $US300 I think) or you would need a Fiber-->CAT5 converter box at each point where fiber comes out of the wall. Those boxes aren't cheap either.
Really, it just comes down to this. If you want super-fast communication between your computers in your house, and are willing to pay a hefty premium, them fiber it is. But it's not going to make your Internet connection much faster. Your Internet connection will only every be as fast as whatever the Cable or DSL modem has going out... and that's usually a 10Mbs connection running at 2Mbs download max.
Personally... if you want scalability, I would just make sure that the CAT5 you string is high quality and has *all eight conductors*... that way it is good for Gigabit Ethernet... which is slowly coming down in price and is already more affordable than Fiber for LANs.
enjoy
Good luck with the project!
df
Just be careful... putting a 2-pair modular connector in the space for a 4-pair can bend the pins on the outside of the 4-pair.
Ryan Dorman, CCNA Network Communications Specialist Millersville Univesrity
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
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
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.
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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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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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!
Of course, the only proper entryway for something like this would be a button that makes a bookshelf swing open...
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."
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.
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.
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.
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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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