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What can one have a home network do?

C

Caveman

Platinum Member
Thinking RG6 for cable/sat TV, CAT6 for Network/DATA transmission, and CAT5E for phone support at each drop.

What else should be added to a system?

I assume there needs to be a video amp to pipe the RG6 a long ways through a large house?

I'll be serving a fax a voice line over the same CAT5E cable...

What about VOIP? What kind of cabling/hardware do I need for this?

Need recommendations on a CWP too... The wiring guy is recommending a SHUTTLE SOHO 42" SAP-42 or SAE-42DC (not positive on the Part No) ; 8 port switch, bi-directional amp, 6 port (CAT 5?) data, 8 port voice module, 8 way video splitter (1000MHz). I can't find this CWP on Shuttle website... Anyone else have recommendations?
 
Built my house 4 years ago, smart wired the house. Every major room has on opposite walls 2- RG6, 2-Cat5e used for networking, 2-Cat5e used for POTS. All wires terminate in a utility room in the basement where the feed is for the utilities. This may be a little over kill but it has been convenient. My sons love it when they invite friends over to play multi-player games. I used the Leviton products for my house. How many rooms are you thinking about supplying?
 
Are you saying you're running CAT5E for regular twisted-pair phone lines? If so that's massive overkill, you can go with CAT3. For VOIP however you would want CAT5 or 5E. CAT 6 for data/computers/game consoles/whatever is probably a good idea. If it was me, I'd get a 24-port rackmount switch and wire all my networking and maybe even VOIP into it depending on how your service works.

I've recently discovered that video can be sent over up to 150ft cables but beyond that no amp will be able to send a decent signal. I would hesitate to put in a system that's supposed to be able to serve the entire house unless I've seen it in action.

EDIT: Coax should be able to carry video signals farther than 150ft, whether the signal would be worth viewing at that distance is questionable.
 
Originally posted by: Fraggable
Are you saying you're running CAT5E for regular twisted-pair phone lines? If so that's massive overkill, you can go with CAT3. For VOIP however you would want CAT5 or 5E. CAT 6 for data/computers/game consoles/whatever is probably a good idea. If it was me, I'd get a 24-port rackmount switch and wire all my networking and maybe even VOIP into it depending on how your service works.

I've recently discovered that video can be sent over up to 150ft cables but beyond that no amp will be able to send a decent signal. I would hesitate to put in a system that's supposed to be able to serve the entire house unless I've seen it in action.

EDIT: Coax should be able to carry video signals farther than 150ft, whether the signal would be worth viewing at that distance is questionable.
Click to expand...


CAT5 is probably just as cheap as CAT3, since CAT5 is most likely more available than CAT3, since CAT5 is considered the generic standard.

Also if someone is running CAT5 all throughout their home, why purchase a seperate roll of CAT3, when you can just throw a strand of CAT5 out there for your phone..
Afterall, wire is wire.. CAT5 just has more pairs 🙂


 
Thanks all... A few comments...

The way the house is constructed, there's really only 1 furniture config/room, so I'll probably be able to get away with 1 drop in each of the 5 bedrooms, 2 in a bonus room, 1 in the living room, 1 in an office, and 1 in the kitchen. I may do 1 in the garage too, but figure it's a waste for the laundry and dining room. So... 10-11 drops total.

I guess that means I need a 12 port switch?

Yes, I was told that the difference in price from CAT3 to CAT5 is negligible...

At first, I'm guessing that I'll have standard phone service from Bellsouth, etc... But, I'd like seamless ability to go to VOIP "whenever", hence the CAT5 (or 5E?). BTW, what would be the driver to use VOIP? Price?

The CAT6 is to make sure there's a great connection for file sharing, gaming, and streaming movies to any drop.

To add to the complexity... The standard builders package includes speaker packages to 4 areas of the house for ambient music, etc... I'm also planning to have a HT set up in the bonus room. It seems logical to serve the HT and house speakers from the same Rx, but I'd need so many speaker outputs that the Rx would probably cost megabucks... So... I'll probably have the tie-in for the in-house speakers at some other place than the CWP (with a separate (cheap) Rx), but try to keep the CWP close to the main HT Gear for easy access... I'd like to be able to output .mp3s, movies, and games stored on a desktop in the bonus room to the HT equipment...

One last bit of complexity: Ideally, I'd like to use the bonus room desktop computer as the "main machine" that resides in the bonus room, but is accesible to the downstairs office which will only have an LCD, mouse, and printer lying around there. So... To get that to work, I assume I need some sort of video and keyboard amp and a small KVM, (and some VERY LONG (100ft+) video and mouse cable if there is such a thing?



 
for satellite, consider whether or not youll be wanting the more complicated DVR units. i work with a satellite company, and when we do pre-wires, we usually wire for a dual-dvr unit (since doing new construction, thats what most people decide to spring for), and need at least 4 wires where the DVR will be: 2 inputs from the satellite, and 2 outputs (one for the tv in the room, one to backfeed to the second tv that the unit can handle)

we also ran cat5 for the phone lines to each box, because we keep alot of it for doing the wireless internet installs we do anyway.
 
Put 1" conduit chases in to each room terminated at a box from your cabling closet. Cheap to put in and allows unlimited upgrades far in the future.😉
 
That will help, but if you need to pull in Fiber Optic a larger size, say 1 1/2 would be the best choice.
The last thing you want to do with Fiber is create a Kink in it when you are pulling it thru the pipes
and if you run plastic pvc pipe, which is okay and legal for low voltage / data systems, the cost
between 1" and 1 1/2" pipe is not that much more
 
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