Wiring Home for future

[morrisy18]

Hi everyone,

Hopefully we are going to be moving into a new home soon and the one were seriously looking at isn't hardwired. I am planning on wiring the whole house and I was wondering what cables would you suggest running? Obviously I am thinking I only want to do this once plus I am thinking future use. Here's what I was thinking of running:

2 sets of Cat6
2 sets of RG6
Maybe Cat5 for phone

Is there anything I'm missing?

Thanks,
Mike

 

[Red Squirrel]

That looks good, you can even get wallplates with like 6 spaces so you could even go like 4 ethernet 2 rg6. I'd just do cat6 accross the board, it'is way overkill for phone but you may want to rewire as Ethernet in the future.

Also consider getting a keystone patch panel. It's basically a blank panel (much cheaper too!) and you pop in the jacks you want. You can do phone, RG6, ethernet all on one patch panel.

Also watch when you buy the ethernet jacks. Lot of them are only rated for cat5e, you may as well go cat6 if you're doing a new install.

There's also HDMI and stuff like that but I'm not even familiar myself about all that. I only wired 2 jacks so far in my house, no need for others yet.

 

[morrisy18]

That looks good, you can even get wallplates with like 6 spaces so you could even go like 4 ethernet 2 rg6. I'd just do cat6 accross the board, it'is way overkill for phone but you may want to rewire as Ethernet in the future.

Also consider getting a keystone patch panel. It's basically a blank panel (much cheaper too!) and you pop in the jacks you want. You can do phone, RG6, ethernet all on one patch panel.

Also watch when you buy the ethernet jacks. Lot of them are only rated for cat5e, you may as well go cat6 if you're doing a new install.

There's also HDMI and stuff like that but I'm not even familiar myself about all that. I only wired 2 jacks so far in my house, no need for others yet.

Good point about just using Cat6 I'll probably do that. How does that work with the patch panel. I was thinking for the data of daisy chaining 2 8port gig switches connected to my router or maybe get a 24port gig switch. With the patch panel do you then just plug the panel into the router or do I still need the switches? I've never used a patch panel before.

Mike

 

[Red Squirrel]

Good point about just using Cat6 I'll probably do that. How does that work with the patch panel. I was thinking for the data of daisy chaining 2 8port gig switches connected to my router or maybe get a 24port gig switch. With the patch panel do you then just plug the panel into the router or do I still need the switches? I've never used a patch panel before.

Mike

The patch panel is nothing but a fancy "termination point" for the jacks. Basically each jack in the house terminates to another "jack" at the panel. You then use a patch cable to "patch" that jack to a certain piece of equipment, normally a switch. You can just go with daisy chained switches for now and later on upgrade to something better later.

This is my setup ATM:

(this pic is from before I ran the cables)

Main phone jack comes in to that white jack, there's also a Cable TV insert that goes nowhere - it's there for future use. I then have a single filter that goes to a splitter for the phones and the other non filtered line goes down to the DSL modem. Then all the jacks above lead to the jacks upstairs.


This is another view with the cables going down from the patch to the switches. Not the nicest setup but it will do until I can afford something better.

I have two routers that are also plugged into each other to form a NAT within a NAT. One of my jacks in my office actually plugs to the one closest to the net which I consider my "external" network. When I need to plug a virus infected PC to the internet I plug it there so it does not affect the rest of my network. Really if I wanted to I could run USB devices through the patch panel using one of those USB adapters. The device could be in one room and the PC in another. Lot of possibilities.

Oh and do yourself a favor and document your patch panel/jacks as you go. Not the end of the world in a home environment, but I've seen too many work places that only bother to start documenting YEARS later, and at that point it's already too much of a mess to figure out what jack goes where.

 

[ViviTheMage]

sweeet red . Looks good.

Did you have trouble routing new wires through walls?

When I get my own place, I plan to route all cat6 everywhere, no point in even doing cat5, imo.