Home networking and walls

[fuzzymath10]

I'm in a fairly new (2004-2005) condo with no LAN lines, only coax and ethernet ports for vdsl. All of these route to a cable box inside a closet from the keystone wall jacks through what look like standardized gray tubes (I can see a threaded tube about 1" diameter entering the metal housing behind the faceplates).

I was hoping to run patch cable from two rooms (bedroom and living room) to the closet box by adding an extra keystone block to the existing coax+vdsl ones. I bought two pre-made 50' cat6 cables and some keystone couplers (I've punched my own jacks before but I was lazy this time and I figured 50' wasn't a big deal, plus solid cabling is hard to get if I just want 100'). The cable box has two outlets inside and enough room so that I can put my router and modem in it, which is nice so that they're completely hidden.

The only issue is adding the extra patch cable. The tubes (one going from each jack to the cable box) don't look particularly thick and they're already carrying one or two cables. The connectors won't help since it's a pre-made cable. I have a 40' fishing tape; will this do the trick?

 

[skyking]

No.
what you need to do is use the existing wire as a pull cable. You can drag in a couple of wires but only at the same time.
Do not mess around with pre-terminated wires. That will not pull. Get some solid and tape one to the existing wire, then tape another a foot or so farther down. This makes less of a bump to pull through.
Drag the new wires in and terminate.

 

[fuzzymath10]

Thanks for the warning. I'm not sure I follow 100%; are you saying I should remove the existing cable from the tube, attach solid to it, and then reinstall all the cable as one group? I don't think pulling anything is possible, unless you mean as follows:

1) attach solid to existing cable which has some slack.
2) push cable in maybe 1 foot so that the solid is slowly entering the tube
3) hold solid steady and pull existing cable back so can repeat until eventually solid has reached other end.

 

[skyking]

yes, use the existing cable as a ready made pull string. Toss it or reuse it somewhere else afterword.

 

[kevnich2]

Yep - skyking is pretty much dead on with this. You'll have to use the existing in the wall cable as a pull wire. So whatever cable that is, (eg coax) you'll need to tape together some new coax and ethernet cable and then tape that to the existing cable and then pull from the other side until it's through.

 

[Emulex]

1mm flatwire cat6 or rg6 ftw. it really does fit everywhere. windows/under baseboards you name it. cheap too. pre-crimmped just buy a bunch of cheap 5 port gigabit switches and throw them around your condo and have pure bliss speed.

 

[fuzzymath10]

Thanks all for the suggestions. I'm going to try and see how it goes as soon as my shipment arrives. This should be fun.

 

[fuzzymath10]

So with a couple of hiccups with jamming in the tube, I got both my cables though 🙂. We ended up using thin fishing line (40lb) to tow. We did one cable at a time; there was enough room in the tubes to do that.

I did have to chop one VDSL/phone cable because it wasn't a keystone-type connector. If I'm going to order a replacement at monoprice, which is the correct replacement? I can't tell if the wire was stranded or solid Luckily there should be enough slack cable left in the wall housing. See image.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2695094/networkconnector.jpg

Since there are multiple LAN devices in each room (one room has a printer, server, desktop, the other has a PS3 and an HTPC), I guess I need a switch for each. Do I need to worry about configuration or do I just plug one patch cord from switch to wall and then patch from devices to switch?

 

[skyking]

We ended up using thin fishing line (40lb) to tow. We did one cable at a time; there was enough room in the tubes to do that.

I hope you did not cut or "burn" the first run with either that thin line or the second cable. There was a reason I suggest pulling them in at once.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2053136

7) if dragging wire in through a conduit or long restricted space, be aware of the possibility of 'burning' a wire. 'burning' occurs when a wire that is already in place restricts the new wire being dragged in, and the new wire literally burns or cuts through the jacket and into the conductors of the original wire. It is a real bummer because you may never see the damage and have a hell of a time troubleshooting it when it fails certification.

I have not done that but I have come back to fix it when somebody else has messed up my wiring. That fishing line could cut your finger off easily; a network cable would be no match for it.

 

[fuzzymath10]

Yeah, we thought about that. For one room, we used fishing line for the first and twine for the second (that wasn't a great idea since twine can fray and is weaker but the second cable had no connectors to pull through so it was quite smooth). Also for the other room, we put the coax in first, and it seemed to feel quite rugged so hopefully nothing happened to it while we threaded the ethernet cord though with fishing line.

So far, things seem to work fine empirically but I've only got 100M equipment; maybe something will show up if I try gigabit?

 

[Scouzer]

1mm flatwire cat6 or rg6 ftw. it really does fit everywhere. windows/under baseboards you name it. cheap too. pre-crimmped just buy a bunch of cheap 5 port gigabit switches and throw them around your condo and have pure bliss speed.

Does Monoprice sell that stuff? I'm not seeing it.