Home Data wiring question - 2nd floor switch

Consider this. Gigabit ethernet doesn't have enough bandwidth to match the maximum bandwidth of a single HDMI link. Still sure it can handle anything you could throw at it?

CAT5e and CAT6 are both rated (with proper installation) for up to 100m (about 330 ft), far in excess of your 200 ft current maximum.

Colm is also correct in his statement that a single run of CAT6 does not have enough bandwidth for all current possibilities, and with new distributed HD solutions coming to the market, it's better to spend a little extra and pull more CAT6 now while the walls are open.

In my home, each bedroom got 4x CAT6 and 4x RG6QS; the living room has 8x CAT6 and 4x RG6QS, and behind my media rack there are 8x CAT6 and 6x RG6QS.

All of it goes here:

Cat5/Cat6 is useful for lots of things that aren't Ethernet (meaning 10/100/Gb Ethernet, aka "data networking"). The HD-over-cat5 (component/HDMI/HDBaseT) A/V distribution systems use this commonly-installed wire type for exactly that reason - but it uses it in a completely different way than Ethernet does. In that sense, it's not necessarily about the bandwidth of the cable, its the number of wires needed, since non-Ethernet systems use discrete signal paths for the different pieces of the system.

That's why you want lots of it. It's darn useful stuff. Many (inexpensive) HD-cat5 systems require 2 cables to handle everything, for example. These days, running at least 3, maybe 4 cat5/6 cables to each video location is a good idea (1 for Gb Ethernet, 2 for HD-over-cat5, and 1 "misc/future").


Jeff

No, definitely not. You want them all to terminate in one place. Cat6 is cheap, pull it everywhere. I would put minimum two runs at each outlet location. Significantly more for any locations where you're doing local AV systems or TV locations and the like, but where you run those to may differ.

Cat can be used for a zillion things, and running a single run anywhere is dumb thinking.

Further, running everything to a local closet and then just running one back to a main switch is extra-dumb. That will gloriously cripple your network.

Standard practice is two pulls of RG6 and two pulls of cat6 for really basic structured wiring. In any robust system, you're going to be pulling a LOT more cat than that all over the place for all kinds of reasons.

I agree but also consider conduit for future needs. If the walls are open, run an *empty* conduit to your main locations: home theatre and home office, for me. At least, I sure wish I had...

Craig

I totally 100% agree with this.

Conduit is always a fantastic idea for major locations, and particularly between say attic and basement crawl spaces, etc.

I was simply stating the crudest baseline for a really basic structured wiring setup in any average new home or condo. I would always do much more than that myself.

This is clearly a retrofit, hence he is fishing wires through the walls. Once you're into wall-fishing, I'm not convinced there's any reason to plan very much- just fish what you need when you need assuming that you aren't going to lose any access you currently have at the moment. That's pretty much what I've got.

OTOH, it certainly makes installation easier to just run a standard set of wires to every room.

I'd say 2xRG-6 and 2xCAT at minimum to each location. If you're going to go beyond that, it's probably best to add more CAT cables.

The switch idea is not completely stupid, that's how businesses run. They have a network core, and a then closets out farther to the edge with switches. The key is to have a good backbone connection between the switches.

A middleground option is to have, say 12 CAT cables going between the two cable aggregation points, and that way you wouldn't have to run a massive number of cables that extra distance, but you'd still have tons of bandwidth, and initially you'd probably just be able to patch them straight through. That being said, if reasonable to do so, aggregate at one point, as that is more flexible.

Even if you are going all IP, it is still convenient to have two ethernet runs. That way, if you have a computer and a bunch of random devices, you don't have to buy another gig switch. The computer gets one line for gig, and the other stuff gets an $11 switch from Newegg that can do 100mbit.

KingLeerUK, what are you going to do with that much RG-6??? Even with satellite, cable, and OTA, you'd only burn through 3 per room.

That's totally not a comparable analogy. Those switches often have fiber uplink to the main switch which provide huge bandwidth between the switches. Or they aggregate.

You can do this in your home with enterprise grade equipment if you needed to, but it's cheaper just to pull long runs of Cat6 as required (and simpler) unless your house is ridiculous. Some switches allow you to run multiple runs between them to increase the speed between the switches by aggregating the uplink to whatever the main switch is. Otherwise, if you just run a single link from a switch to a regular switch off in a closet, that single link is the TOTAL bandwidth between all the devices on that switch and the rest of the network. And this clogs everything up. It's not as much a concern if say you're just running like 4-port switches to desktops in an office or something where you're just emailing, but with high traffic across different parts of the network, you don't want to bottleneck it down to a single gigabit link which is what you get if you just use regular dumb switches in this manner.

All but the most advanced home users can't saturate a 1gig backbone. Individual computers likely won't use more than 300mbit each, and what's the chance of a bunch of computers trying to move data at the same time? Also, it is likely that all the machines would be trying to use a server with a gigE NIC in it, so there's the same bottleneck right there. Also, remember, 1 gig over copper was what business was using for thousands of computers just a few years ago. Yeah, now they are using 10gig.

Even streaming blu-ray movies to multiple computers at the same time would only be 70 mbit per computer, and it's likely that you again have a single server pumping them out. Regular HDTV, even with Fios is only 19mbit.

I don't disagree with the notion of centralizing all the wiring, it's the best way to do it, but I am just saying that performance of a two switch setup should be just fine.