Let's get this place ship-shape!

[Medievalist]

I’ve wired all three of the houses I’ve owned, and two I rented before that. Cat5 mostly, although the current house is cat6.

I have used patch panels, but I recommend against them. It’s extra work - especially if you don’t have a toolset that includes a $1000+ cable run tester - and it doesn’t give you any advantages since you won’t need to rewire quickly at any point.

On the other hand, I do recommend male-to-female cabling; if you move furniture in the room, it’s nice to be able to plug in a longer cable. At the router, just have a wire bundle with male ends.

I recommend investing in one very good quality holesaw, nice and long and around 1&1/4" diameter, and one or two of those really cheap cheesy multi-diameter holesaw sets. Save the good one for when you cannot bring the cheap ones into play, for example when drilling up through a wall plate.

If you need more jacks than your router provides, for example in a media cabinet, I’ve had very good results from the TRENDnet “green” switches, which use less power (and thus create less heat) and seem to easily tolerate my habit of switching all my electronics off when I’m not actively using them.

[nimelennar]

@Medievalist

I have used patch panels, but I recommend against them. It’s extra work

I get that it’s extra work if I make a mistake, but I don’t see how it’s that much extra work to punch the cables into a patch panel, as opposed to crimping them directly into a 8P8C plug.

I’m not trying to argue here; I’ve never actually used a patch panel, although I have crimped cables, so I legitimately don’t see what the advantages and disadvantages of crimping vs. patching are. Why would one need a more expensive cable tester?

@Medievalist

I do recommend male-to-female cabling; if you move furniture in the room, it’s nice to be able to plug in a longer cable.

I know what male-to-female cabling is, but I don’t get how it’s pertinent. I’m planning on terminating each cable (on the device end, not the switch end) with actual jack to plug into, if that’s what you mean. I don’t like it when (like one of the cable outlets I’m planning to convert into a network panel) you just have a cable sticking out of the wall.

I will keep your recommendations about saws in mind, although I’m hoping to not have to cut more than one hole (for the basement panel), but instead to use the pre-existing path that the coax is using: up into the attic, and down into the basement (although I have the sinking feeling that the idea of fitting sixteen patch cables through a hole that I assume is currently being used by three coax cables without widening the holes is absurdly optimistic to say the least).

@Medievalist

If you need more jacks than your router provides, for example in a media cabinet, I’ve had very good results from the TRENDnet “green” switches, which use less power (and thus create less heat) and seem to easily tolerate my habit of switching all my electronics off when I’m not actively using them.

I’ll keep that in mind. I’ll probably postpone buying an actual switch for now, as, as I’ve said, I have a grand total of five devices at the moment to plug into my overkill-network (and three of those will work over WiFi if I move the router to someplace where they can talk to it). I’d probably just move the router to the basement and run a single cable up to my desktop if it didn’t mean making a hole in my living room ceiling and floor to run the cable through.

[Medievalist]

[quote=“nimelennar, post:62, topic:74175”]
I get that it’s extra work if I make a mistake, but I don’t see how it’s that much extra work to punch the cables into a patch panel, as opposed to crimping them directly into a 8P8C plug.[/quote]

When I’m doing an ethernet wiring job, I can easily borrow a Fluke cable tester that goes to 1Gig, so I do. Especially on a big job! It’s much more convenient to use the tester (which cost well over $1000 new) than a pair of laptops, or a laptop and a server.

To get a true 1Gbps connection, you don’t want the wires to run untwisted for more than a couple of millimeters (except in gig-rated RJ45 jacks that include spacing or shielding elements that limit crosstalk and interference) and the two wires in each pair should be equal in total length. The places where wires have to run untwisted are in the RJ45 jacks and in punchdowns. The place where wires end up being uneven lengths is in punchdowns.

I’m old, and I have medium-large, somewhat scarred hands, so for me it’s difficult and finger-cramping to do this work. Anything that reduces the number of times I have to clip the end off and reterminate due to a failed test is a good thing! When we did my kids’ school we put in a 196 port patch panel, and my hands were very unhappy at the end of the day. But not just my hands - I can move a cable end to a convenient, well lit spot to work on it, but working the backs of those panels required standing and squinting for hours.

And what does a patch panel give you, at the head end? Not much. If you are constantly doing physical server reorganizations, they are great, but if you are going to plug stuff in and leave it for months or years, it’s just another hunk of dusty kit taking up space for no purpose. I never gained any benefit whatsoever from having one in the two houses where I installed them. It was just extra work and expense.

Where I currently work, all the patch panels were ripped out, and replaced with “home run” cabling in order to decrease total number of connectors in the wire. This has resulted, empirically, in a cheaper, more reliable network.

You correctly interpreted what I meant by male-to-female cabling. At the head end, a tidy bundle of wires, banded with velcro or equivalent, and nice tidy wall jacks or baseboard boxes at the device end.

Your idea of following the coax path is excellent, I routinely run ethernet and coax together without problems. Watch out, though - the coax is reasonably immune to interference from things like florescent light ballasts, laser copiers, and house wiring running parallel in the same channels - the same cannot be said for ethernet!

[nimelennar]

@Medievalist

When I’m doing an ethernet wiring job, I can easily borrow a Fluke cable tester that goes to 1Gig, so I do. Especially on a big job! It’s much more convenient to use the tester (which cost well over $1000 new) than a pair of laptops, or a laptop and a server.

We had one of those where I used to work (and we were all very careful with it). I just don’t remember it necessarily having much of an advantage over the $10 version.

@Medievalist

To get a true 1Gbps connection, you don’t want the wires to run untwisted for more than a couple of millimeters (except in gig-rated RJ45 jacks that include spacing or shielding elements that limit crosstalk and interference) and the two wires in each pair should be equal in total length. The places where wires have to run untwisted are in the RJ45 jacks and in punchdowns. The place where wires end up being uneven lengths is in punchdowns.

Huh. I didn’t know it was that important. I know that less-untwisted=better, but a couple of millimeters is barely anything at all. I might need to buy new 8P8C plugs, as I’m not sure the ones I have can meet that standard.

But yes, now I see how a patch panel might be more trouble than it’s worth. I might just add it, along with the 24-port switch, to the list of possible future upgrades.

@Medievalist

the coax is reasonably immune to interference from things like florescent light ballasts, laser copiers, and house wiring running parallel in the same channels - the same cannot be said for ethernet!

Hrrm. And STP cable is about half-again as expensive as UTP. I’ll have to see what the interference is like after I run the cable — replacing the cable if I need better shielding ought to be much easier than running the cable in the first place, especially if I run a pull string along with the cables on the first go.

[Medievalist]

@nimelennar

We had one of those where I used to work (and we were all very careful with it). I just don’t remember it necessarily having much of an advantage over the $10 version.

The $10 version will give you connectivity confirmation, and that’s it. Maybe TDR in a $20 one ;).

For true cat6 (good to 10 Gbps) or cat 5e (1Gbps) you need to be able to isolate a very high frequency signal. The consistency of the twist (pitch) is what gives you that, but since there’s no twist in the connectors, it’s best to use cat6 or 6A rated connectors.

I’ve seen people re-head a cat6 cable five or six times before they got a connection that wouldn’t fail down to 100bT. (Although I’ve also seen highly skilled people do ten or twenty in a row without a flaw.)

Oh - non-obvious caveat - always use the color code. In theory, you can do your own wacky color code as long as you don’t break up the pairs. In practice, sometimes when you pull a cable apart you’ll find a different pitch to the twist on the various pairs, and the cable won’t pass the tester unless you use the right color code.

[nimelennar]

@Medievalist

For true cat6 (good to 10 Gbps) or cat 5e (1Gbps) you need to be able to isolate a very high frequency signal. The consistency of the twist (pitch) is what gives you that, but since there’s no twist in the connectors, it’s best to use cat6 or 6A rated connectors.

I’ve seen people re-head a cat6 cable five or six times before they got a connection that wouldn’t fail down to 100bT. (Although I’ve also seen highly skilled people do ten or twenty in a row without a flaw.)

Good to know. I was planning on using Cat6 connectors anyway, but now I’ll definitely do so. And maybe get into practice with the old Cat5 cable I have lying around.

@Medievalist

Oh - non-obvious caveat - always use the color code. In theory, you can do your own wacky color code as long as you don’t break up the pairs. In practice, sometimes when you pull a cable apart you’ll find a different pitch to the twist on the various pairs, and the cable won’t pass the tester unless you use the right color code.

T-568A or T-568B?

[nimelennar]

@Medievalist

For true cat6 (good to 10 Gbps) or cat 5e (1Gbps) you need to be able to isolate a very high frequency signal. The consistency of the twist (pitch) is what gives you that, but since there’s no twist in the connectors, it’s best to use cat6 or 6A rated connectors.

I’ve seen people re-head a cat6 cable five or six times before they got a connection that wouldn’t fail down to 100bT. (Although I’ve also seen highly skilled people do ten or twenty in a row without a flaw.)

Good to know. I was planning on using Cat6 connectors anyway, but now I’ll definitely do so. And maybe get into practice with the old Cat5 cable I have lying around.

@Medievalist

Oh - non-obvious caveat - always use the color code. In theory, you can do your own wacky color code as long as you don’t break up the pairs. In practice, sometimes when you pull a cable apart you’ll find a different pitch to the twist on the various pairs, and the cable won’t pass the tester unless you use the right color code.

T-568A or T-568B?

[Medievalist]

@nimelennar

T-568A or T-568B?

Either one should work, but I prefer B. Somebody posted this on imgur to show the visible variation in twist of the pairs in some cheap cat 6 (with a drain wire):

[nimelennar]

I haven’t climbed into the attic yet to complete that part of the planning, but I have unexpected good news.

I looked at the DSL/phone cable where it comes into my house, where the phone technician was fiddling with it when he set up my Internet. It seems that only the red and green cables are hooked up to anything; the other two are not being used.

I checked the jack that my modem is currently plugged into, and, sure enough, only red and green are connected to that outlet, not yellow and black. So my memory is playing tricks on me, because I was pretty sure the DSL tech was fiddling with that outlet, and specifically connecting those wires.

So I moved the modem to the basement temporarily, and the DSL works fine, at full speed (more or less; I was testing via a cell phone app).

One fewer thing to worry about: all I need to do now is crawl up into my attic, determine the current path of the coax, and then buy, run and terminate a whole bunch of cables. No trouble at all.