Routing CAT5 wire through the house

ChickenBalls

Was wondering if anybody has wired up there house with CAT5 or any type of wire using the TV/Phone points that where installed when they where built.

I just want to know the route it took to say go from the front room to the back room - is it thru the floorboards up stairs? If so, which ones did you have to take up?

Any advice would be great thanks.

MarkR

Unless you have some really stringent requirements, have you considered homeplugs?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004INVKP4/

Allows you to send network traffic through the electrical circuit in your house. For example, in my living room I have my UPC broadband box. Connect that to one of those plugs with a network cable. Plug the plug into the wall. Plug the other plug into a socket in another room. That socket now acts as a network point in the house. Connect that to a switch, and your home office / gaming area can all connect to the modem over a wired connection. You can add as many as you like.

I think you can get faster than 200mbps, but really it should be fine for most uses.

Charlie-Bravo

Network cables have 4 twisted pair (of which only 4 strands are used) while the telephone cable has 2 twisted pair (of which only two strands are used). So in theory you can use a telephone cable to run a network over it! It also depends on cable quality but we won't go into build qualities!

The standard 2 bed build put 2 phone points in Living Room and a phone socket in the back bedroom. Of course the point in the bedroom is faced off with a blank plate, similar to the one beside the stairs in the Living Room.

I took the internal distributing spur from the eircom master socket (2 twisted pair), and wired it to a RJ45 socket - all this beside the eircom socket. The spur cable loops at the phone point at the opposite side of the room (beside the stairs) and continues then on up to the rear bedroom. Now I haven't cut the loop in the sitting room so I am guessing this is the route its taking.

So at the moment, there is a straight run from the eircom master to the rear bedroom. I have re-wired two network cables, crimped plugs and all, so the strands end up in the right order for the back of the routers. Hay presto, the router upstairs is on a static IP, different to the main router downstairs which does the DHCP for all the connected devices.

Where do you need your network point?

ChickenBalls

MarkR wrote: »

Unless you have some really stringent requirements, have you considered homeplugs?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004INVKP4/

Allows you to send network traffic through the electrical circuit in your house. For example, in my living room I have my UPC broadband box. Connect that to one of those plugs with a network cable. Plug the plug into the wall. Plug the other plug into a socket in another room. That socket now acts as a network point in the house. Connect that to a switch, and your home office / gaming area can all connect to the modem over a wired connection. You can add as many as you like.

I think you can get faster than 200mbps, but really it should be fine for most uses.

Oh yeah, I forgot about those plugs - thanks! I'll consider for sure but want to get RJ45's setup if I can.

ChickenBalls

astrofluff wrote: »

Network cables have 4 twisted pair (of which only 4 strands are used) while the telephone cable has 2 twisted pair (of which only two strands are used). So in theory you can use a telephone cable to run a network over it! It also depends on cable quality but we won't go into build qualities!

The standard 2 bed build put 2 phone points in Living Room and a phone socket in the back bedroom. Of course the point in the bedroom is faced off with a blank plate, similar to the one beside the stairs in the Living Room.

I took the internal distributing spur from the eircom master socket (2 twisted pair), and wired it to a RJ45 socket - all this beside the eircom socket. The spur cable loops at the phone point at the opposite side of the room (beside the stairs) and continues then on up to the rear bedroom. Now I haven't cut the loop in the sitting room so I am guessing this is the route its taking.

So at the moment, there is a straight run from the eircom master to the rear bedroom. I have re-wired two network cables, crimped plugs and all, so the strands end up in the right order for the back of the routers. Hay presto, the router upstairs is on a static IP, different to the main router downstairs which does the DHCP for all the connected devices.

Where do you need your network point?

Thanks for the info!
I want to have a network point going from front room to back room - that's all. If it's easy enough to do I might venture upstairs too for the bedrooms.
So, one point I have is right beside the fireplace in the front room(is this the eircom master? I dont have eircom and there's no wires being used at this point) so I'd imagine the cable would run upstairs and then I'd have to go all the way across both top bedrooms to the back right and drop it down to the other point. Your saying there's a straight run so how is this straight run done? Is there a some route info? I assume there's joist's upstairs I need to get the wires between - maybe I'm way off here but maybe you know more about it.

Charlie-Bravo

Is it UPC you have? How about moving the modem into the kitchen and connect it to the coax (which should be at the back of the kitchen)? Or do you need to have two points, one in the front and one in the back for different devices?

JanneG

I know I was told that the cabling in the house would all be cat5 cabling which has since turned out to be a load of b.......

I've tried doing signal testing on the cabling in the house but it would appear that the cables do not appear to be fully connected... most likely the cables may all be coming out at some magic junction box that I am yet to find, but I must say that the "homeplug" system works better than expected tbh...

And if you want to make it even less intrusive you can even get the pass-thru variety which means that you wouldn't even lose out on a socket in the room. And to expand your network, just add another plug and you're done...

I'm getting approx 135Mbps between the front and back room which is more than plenty for what I want to do (and faster than the wireless) plus I don't have to worry about losing the network connection when the microwave is turned on...

ChickenBalls

Yep I'm with UPC - I have it in the kitchen\living area (I'm in a 2 bed terrace) - it's to the right of the back doors. There is a point there that's not used or actually it could be used by UPC need to check that. The reason for this so I can have 2 wireless routers working together for better signal.

Charlie-Bravo

do the home plug system work on different rings? Kitchen ring main is seperate to rest of house.

Does you modem support WDS? You can borrow a router from me if you wish to test it.

JanneG

It's not supported on different rings, however it will work with some degradation of signal speed.

Sure, they say that it doesn't work on extension leads either, but I can personally confirm that it does.

ChickenBalls

Sorry to ask the obvious but how do you route these cables thru the points in the house especially if they go upstairs?

loyatemu

another vote for the homeplugs - faster than WiFi, & easier than running Cat5/6 all over the place. They should be suitable for most home-networking requirements (and they do use RJ45 which is a connector not a cable).

Woodsy-eile

keith123 wrote: »

Sorry to ask the obvious but how do you route these cables thru the points in the house especially if they go upstairs?

It depends on whether or not you mind seeing cables or not?

if you don't want to see them, then you are going to have to chase the cables under the floor (which means possibly lifting the floor up, in parts), up the walls, and through the ceilings. Alot of work if your only doing one or two points.

The other way would just be to chase the cable along the skirting board, up the door frame etc etc, untill you get to where you want to go. You will have to drill through walls in parts. You can use small self adhesive conduit to hide the cables in parts if you need to.

Hope this helps.

ChickenBalls

Woodsy-eile wrote: »

It depends on whether or not you mind seeing cables or not?

if you don't want to see them, then you are going to have to chase the cables under the floor (which means possibly lifting the floor up, in parts), up the walls, and through the ceilings. Alot of work if your only doing one or two points.

The other way would just be to chase the cable along the skirting board, up the door frame etc etc, untill you get to where you want to go. You will have to drill through walls in parts. You can use small self adhesive conduit to hide the cables in parts if you need to.

Hope this helps.

Yeah that's the way I have it at the moment minus the skirting board! (Don't ask...) I just want to make it a cleaner setup and if I know what floorboards I need to take up upstairs then I dont mind doing it tbh.

DK32

Would take me too long to type this up in detail Keith so give me a shout end of the week or the weekend, I was lucky enough to see our place before the walls went up and we had it wired for extra points etc... throughout.

re: CAT5 - I use Powerline adapters myself, (similar to homeplugs) 4 of them in use at the moment, you can try out a pair if you want. They work well and are not affected by using them across different rings in the house.

matt-dublin

JanneG wrote: »

It's not supported on different rings, however it will work with some degradation of signal speed.

Sure, they say that it doesn't work on extension leads either, but I can personally confirm that it does.

i have mine working from the fuseboard upstairs to downstairs, two separate rings

JanneG

That was my point exactly