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Organizing Home Network Cables?

Posted by Cliff on from the untangling-the-rat's-nest dept.

not-so Anonymous Anonymous Coward asks: "A few years ago, while finishing our basement, we wired each room of our house with two CAT-5 and two RG-6 cables. All of the cables were run to a central place in the basement, with the intent of building a "cabinet" to house and better organize the cables. Well, it is time. As you can see from the pictures, it is a jumbled morass of spaghetti. So I'd like to get ideas from the Slashdot crowd as to how to finally organize this mess, build the cabinet, etc., etc. No doubt there are many other readers in a similar situation, wanting ideas for organizing all the communications/network cables in their home."

6 of 85 comments (clear)

  1. One word: Ether... by PaulBu · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Yeah, a properly secured WiFi network...

    Why does a single house need that many cables in the closet anyway? I know that I have a mess of power, 10baseT and USB cables next to my workstation (many of them belonging to the broken/obsolete appliances and totally unused), but how many places in your house do you need to run a real cable connection to?

    Paul B.

    1. Re:One word: Ether... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      When I wired my house five years ago, I put ports everywhere except to bathroom. Most of them I have not used, but it is very difficult to predict usage patterns. Where will you sit with your laptop? Could you have guessed about new devices such as networked DVD players. By having all that wiring, it is very flexible.

    2. Re:One word: Ether... by WhatAmIDoingHere · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Wireless can be secured if you work at it, yes. It is VERY nice to be able to just walk around with a computer. But the guy already RAN THE CABLES and CUT THE HOLES! How can wireless help him now? Or at all?

      WiFi is great, I like being able to work on my back deck with my laptop when it's nice out. But sometimes I need to transfer large files to or from my desktop. That's why I chose to run a buttload of cable everywhere while the plumbers were in installing our central air and the holes existed. I just pop in, sit down in my dining room, transfer the file, and head back out.

      --
      Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
  2. 2 RG6 to each room? Who are you Jennicam? by Radical+Rad · · Score: 3, Insightful

    First put your drywall up. It looks like you already have an electrical outlet nearby. You might want another one there and now is the time to do it. I would make separate holes for the Cat5 and the RG6. Then put up a 2'x2' plywood backboard to screw things into. Screw that into the studs with drywall screws. Go buy a drill bit that makes 2" holes so it looks nice where the cables feed out.

    Forget the cabinet. Just buy a little 19" rack with about 12 RJ45 jacks (modular racks are much more expensive but then you could probably terminate your RG6 into it) and terminate all your cat5 wire neatly. Punch down all 8 conductors. That way you may be able to do 1000Mbit networking on your cat5 wire IF the runs are short and IF you bought cat5e connectors for both ends and IF you terminated to 5e spec using the 568a or b wiring standard.

    Also make sure that the rack you buy lets you plug RJ12 into the same connectors so you can use the wiring for phones if you feel like it. Of course you would need dialtone down there to do that and a way to split it out. That's why I suggested a rack with 12 connectors. Punch down several of those to a 66 block and then you can cross connect dialtone to any of the new connectors.

    You don't need a 19" switch to mount in the rack. Just mount your little switches or routers above the rack to the backboard using woodscrews. It will still look very nice and neat. Use 3' patch cables to reduce clutter. This whole project should cost you about $120 not counting the drywall or the short patch cables.

  3. Re:rack by walt-sjc · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You can get wall-mount mini racks that would work for something small like this.

    Something more appropriate is the Leviton Integrated Networks system that has a panel and modules that are DESIGNED for smart-home systems. Reading comments further down I'm hearing "go wireless" - my answer is that there are MANY other things you can run over cat 5 - like an IR repeater system, digital AV senders, intercom, cameras, digital volume control for whole house sound systems, etc. - you should think outside the box.

    When I did some major rewiring of my house, I actually put in 2 sets of jacks in bedrooms allowing for easy reconfiguration. That puts 4 RG6U and 4 Cat5e in each bedroom. For the main entertainment system, I ran 8 Cat5e and 8 RG6U to the back panel of which most is already used. The leviton boxes I felt were a little limiting, but some of the components were useful such as the IR and AV modules. The little 8 port switch was not enough - I use an HP Procurve 2400 24 port switch that I got on ebay for $200 (new). I ALSO use wireless, but limit the use to laptops. 802.11g is pokey in certain cases - I do network backup to a server with an autoloader DLT drive, but still use the server for most storage.

    One thing I reccomend is putting a 4'x4' 3/4" plywood on the wall behind everything (in my case 4x8). Makes attaching stuff easier - not everything rack mounts nicely. For the few bits of rackmount equipment I have, I built a simple frame out of 2x2's, glued and screwed (and even some angle blackets) and used some door hinges to make it swing out from the wall. Total cost was about $10 compared to several hundred for a commercial wall mount rack system.

    OK, I admit it, this is over the top, but I'm a geek. Wife thinks I'm nuts but also doesn't complain about the whole house audio, being able to watch her soaps that she has tivo record (which is in the basement) on any TV in the house, etc. Oh yeah, did I mention the Asterisk VoIP phone system? She likes that too - no more telemarketers. Power bill is a little high though :-)

  4. Re:all you need by walt-sjc · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I suggest velcro over tie wraps. Easy to undo and impossible to tie too tight (which I see all too often with Cat5 cables.)