Ethernet wiring the house

8 replies [Last post]
Tue, 01/19/2010 - 18:34
nilzxx
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Hello fellow 3GM forum members!

Good to see you all back after the long break. I've had this question that I've waited to ask until now:

I'll be moving back to Germany this summer and I would like to run Ethernet to some rooms of the house. I have not yet counted how many, but it will around 10 (3 levels including the basement). The central station will be in the basement, where my computer lair will be. Now I need your advice on how I should do this. Here are some options I thought of:

1. Run a separate wire for every room down to the basement
2. Have some sort of switch for every level of the house so that I only have 2 Ethernet cables running along the house's wire tree.

Which is the better choice? Or do you have a completely different idea? I would use the network mainly for Internet access but also for some file sharing with one or two servers/NAS in the basement. I have a 32-Port hub that i can use in the basement.

Would you also recommend using Cat6 cables instead of Cat5e? I could still tranfer with gigabit speed over cat5e, right? What is the advantage of cat6 then?

Many thanks in advance for you help!

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Wed, 01/20/2010 - 17:27
#1
Warmacblu
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If I were you, I would run a cable to every single room from the basement. It will take longer and maybe cost more but I think it will be easier in the long run and easier to diagnose and problems if any occur. As for the type of cable, I would recommend cat6. Many modern computers can take advantage of the extra speed and there isn't really a huge price premium over cat5, maybe in the cents.

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Wed, 01/20/2010 - 20:49
#2
nilzxx
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Actually the price for the 1000ft roll from cables-to-go is doubled for cat6...

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Thu, 01/21/2010 - 20:15
#3
Warmacblu
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Posts: 155

I guess I never looked at the prices on a 1000 foot roll but the cat5 on monoprice.com is about $70 and the cat6 is about $100, so not that bad. I would highly recommend buying from monoprice.com, they have the best prices and fastest shipping. The only downside is that the shipping can be expensive depending on what your purchase.

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Fri, 01/29/2010 - 20:01
#4
d3uS2029
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1 switch per floor. Cat6 from the node to the switch and from switch to switch i would run fibre.

thats how universities/colleges do it :)

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Fri, 02/19/2010 - 08:25
#5
KaNe
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Posts: 2

Hi nilzxx,

That was my exact situation 3 years ago.

After thinking for some months that's what I exactly did:

-3 floors with 6 rooms in total
-2 cat5e connectors in each room with direct cable to the basement
-4 cables in other areas for future (not yet done) wireless adapters installation

basement installation:
10" rack mount 8U with
-2 x 8 rj45 cat5e female connectors
-1 x 3com gigabit switch 8 ports (only active connections)
-1 DSL Router
-1 D-Link NAS (old model)

And now the important thing:
-Cable installation was about $600 (don't remember how long where the cables, but they are quite big bunch at the basement with 16 in total)
-Rack and connectors about $500

Result: very happy and quite good data transfers between computers, laptops, PS3, appleTV an so...

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Sat, 02/27/2010 - 16:45
#6
XxAngelwingsxX
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Joined: 02/27/2010
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pm me with a generic floor plan of the house and i can give you a detailed recommendation on how to go about this.

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Sun, 02/28/2010 - 02:54
#7
Tiv
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Any of these ideas will work. Get Cat6 for cheap future-proofing. Most places here have Cat6 priced with-in reason. No matter how good your cabling is, the bottleneck will be the computer. CAT7 is available now. CAT 6 will give you 10gb up to about 50metres, CAT5 will only give 1gb or so max.

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Sun, 03/07/2010 - 10:47
#8
nilzxx
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OK, I think I know what I will be doing this summer. I will route Cat6 from all neccissary rooms to a central location. I don't want to have to mess with power to switches within walls, nor do I want to pay for Power-over-ethernet. It's cheaper to just run Cat6 to a central 32-port hub that I already own. (Bought it for 1$ from a closing down office.)

 

Many thanks for your advice!!

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