All of upstairs needs new carpet

theteal

So while I'm ripping it up I'm going to take the opportunity to cable up all the bedrooms.

Thankfully, imo this should be a fairly straight forward process due to the layout of the house i.e. 2 rooms at front, 2 rooms at back separated by stairs in the middle of the landing (see the ever so skillfully detailed diagram attached). I was thinking of just terminating 2* Cat 5e from each room and running them down (beneath floor boards) to a patch panel in the big cupboard under the stairs. The router currently lives just outside this cupboard, it would also be moving inside, out of sight.

Anything else you'd add to the project? Am I overlooking anything basic? Any bits and pieces you could recommend for the job?

I've not considered HDMI or anything else, we're not a big "telly in the bedroom" family, the only room that currently has a TV is the guest room (bottom left), my office/laundry room/rubbish tip (top right) may also get one at some stage but every room already has an aerial connection so it's not a big deal. Current wireless coverage is perfect with crap ISP router (I do have a Draytek 2860n (iirc) that will be taking over soon enough).

ED E

Potential of one to the ceiling upstairs. As speeds go up having an AP there might be beneficial.

Johnboy1951

I would run two cables to each ethernet socket ..... one as a spare in case of problems in the future. The cable is cheap, and the spare can sit unused, or you can use a double RJ45 socket face plate as you wish.

I would put the face plate at the expected location of a TV (if one was to be used) as live media and stored media can also be distributed over the Cat5e if you decide to do so in the future.
You could even separate the media LAN from the rest if you wished by using the 'spare' cables.

theteal

ED E wrote: »

Potential of one to the ceiling upstairs. As speeds go up having an AP there might be beneficial.

Yeah, I had considered an AP, it wouldn't be too difficult of an addition.

theteal

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

I would run two cables to each ethernet socket ..... one as a spare in case of problems in the future. The cable is cheap, and the spare can sit unused, or you can use a double RJ45 socket face plate as you wish.

I would put the face plate at the expected location of a TV (if one was to be used) as live media and stored media can also be distributed over the Cat5e if you decide to do so in the future.
You could even separate the media LAN from the rest if you wished by using the 'spare' cables.

I was going to run 2 cables to each room with the intent that both would be active - I'm thinking perhaps for a PC and TV in the future. Would 2 spares be overkill? i.e. 4 cables to each room.

Johnboy1951

theteal wrote: »

I was going to run 2 cables to each room with the intent that both would be active - I'm thinking perhaps for a PC and TV in the future. Would 2 spares be overkill? i.e. 4 cables to each room.

IMO, no.

My suggestion was to run a spare cable with each of the two you intended to fit.
Unless you can run the cables freely within a duct all the way, in which case there would be no need.

I know from retrofitting here that there was no way a cable I ran could be pulled back and a new one pulled in, because of the routes the cables took, so I fitted double cables, even though only one being used was the intention.

The cable is very cheap, and it is as easy run two as one.

Also as it turned out there are a couple of places that I have fitted double rj45 sockets .... one an internet radio and the other for other use, so both cables got used.

As I see it here, my use of such sockets is expanding rather than contracting, which might be expected because 'everyone uses wifi'