Is physical hardwiring(CAT5e/COAX/etc) outdated? - Page 3

Originally Posted by Kurtz9

......................
Wait, this thing?

http://www.provantage.com/apc-surta1500xl~7AMPT02H.htm

You run ~$10,000 worth of UPSes at your house?

actually, wait, that's just the UPSes... the extended batterys seem to be another $345 each-
http://www.provantage.com/apc-sybt2~7AMPU031.htm

If those aren't the ones you run please post links of the ones you do, I'm pretty curious about your setup... (and how it wouldn't be tremendously cheaper at that point to just have a whole-house standby generator setup)


regardless though, I'd submit the -typical- person has about 20 minutes of UPS power on average, so they wouldn't really care how easily they could stream video on UPS power.

Originally Posted by qz3fwd

Well, a 14,000 square foot house will likely have multiple tv's and multiple bedroom's / offices and therefore multiple simultaneous streams potentially going. So 100 mbit will not necessarily suffice since bandwidth is shared.

Image the parents watching a BD in the master bedroom along with 2 children each watching in their own rooms. So thats potentially 3 x BD bitrate, or to simplify the math 3 x 50 mbit = 150 mbit. Imagine the quality of service when each experiences stutters / pauses due to lack of bandwidth. Then you also have to add in internet useage, p2p, streaming video, and all sorts of other use cases.

Go ahead and run 100 mbit ethernet.

Originally Posted by Swampfox

Although it makes no sense in this day and age to use a 100 mb backbone, it isn't really true that you share bandwidth. The only device on a switched network that 'shares' it's bandwidth is the server.

Originally Posted by Kalani

That depends on the exact configuration of your wiring... it's not uncommon to use a trunk line to link a switch on the opposite end of the house to a main router, instead of an ideal star topology where all lines terminate in one master switch (which is often only feasible in new construction or massive retrofits), then multiple rooms/devices connected to the remote switch will indeed fight for bandwidth over that trunk line.

In all cases, of course, the server (and internet connection) shares it's bandwidth (and drive read capability, if multiple streams are being pulled) to all devices pulling on it.

Originally Posted by Swampfox

Agreed, but I'm assuming that for this specific 14K ft house it's new build.
I disagree with the "he's a millionaire so wire for 10gb" attitude. Currently you can run multiple BD streams on a gigabit network. Even proposed ultra-high def content will run on gigabit. There is nothing on the horizon that will need 10 gb to a display device. Wiring the house for 6a would add far more than several hundred dollars to the cost. The cable alone is 4-5x the cost and installation is more expensive.

Originally Posted by Kurtz9

1Gb is fine for todays video, absolutely.

But proposed ultra-high def? not so much.

http://web.forret.com/tools/video_fp...ital+Cinema+4K

That's the bitrate calculator on a 4k video at 24fps. 3.82 Gbps bitrate. (or 3.6 Gbps depending on your unit standard)

Even switching to lower quality, high compression, 4:2:0 video, it's still 1.91 Gbps.
http://web.forret.com/tools/video_fp...uv420&depth=12

Good luck streaming that over a 1Gb network.

Originally Posted by FX4

Well I don't see streaming these rates anytime in the near future. What equipment will handle this? Nothing on the market today that is in the realm of home theater. I do agree that he should wire for cat6 as a future proof measure but using it is a long ways off.

Originally Posted by Kalani

Agreed, not to mention 4K content available to home theaters is likely even farther away than the networking gear that can handle it.

Cat 6 is plenty. Cat 6a if you want a little additional future-proofing, but Cat 6 is likely fine for the foreseeable future.

Anyway you shake it, outside of really modest homes with really modest needs, wireless is not going to cut it for whole house distribution.

Originally Posted by gregzoll

It will cut it for portable devices, hand held devices, and those devices being used for control of certain elements. Only device we use for any kind of streaming over WiFi is our Roku, when we use it in our Master Bedroom. That is only because I am too lazy to pull another Cat-5e run to that room.

Originally Posted by gregzoll

It would work in theory if you set up enough AP's to allow proper distribution, but who does that in a normal setup.

Originally Posted by Kurtz9

1Gb is fine for todays video, absolutely.

But proposed ultra-high def? not so much.

http://web.forret.com/tools/video_fp...ital+Cinema+4K

That's the bitrate calculator on a 4k video at 24fps. 3.82 Gbps bitrate. (or 3.6 Gbps depending on your unit standard)

Even switching to lower quality, high compression, 4:2:0 video, it's still 1.91 Gbps.
http://web.forret.com/tools/video_fp...uv420&depth=12

Good luck streaming that over a 1Gb network.

Originally Posted by Kalani

Even in a corporate setup, it would be a rare thing. For instance, bedrooms in residential houses are often back-to-back, and one common scenario would be two people watching BRs late at night, in their bedroom. Who is realistically going to have a dedicated AP per room (and hopefully on a different channel!) to allow this? On opposite sides of a large house, sure, but when the rooms are super close like that? Even in corporate installs, it would be rare to have one AP for each adjacent room, which is what you'd need to stream full bitrate BRs to two adjacent rooms. More likely, when such a need is determined, instructions on using hard lines would be issued.

Theoretical discussions are fun, don't get me wrong, I enjoy pondering ways that I could get it done, but it's more realistic (and probably cheaper, and definitely more reliable!) to simply recommend running CAT 6 instead of installing the seriously expensive hardware that would be required to have anything truly reliable and usable in such a scenario.

Originally Posted by aaronwt

I have four APs in my 1350ft condo. If I had a three level house I would have around a dozen APs. At work we set up a bunch for corporate clients as well on each level. But of course not usually in each room. Sometimes there can be some in adjacent rooms if the wireless survey dictates it. Sometimes you have blockage of the signals in a certain area so you have no choice but to put the APs in adjacent rooms in that area. It doesn't happen very often but I've seen it a handful of times. But the point of the wireless survey is to ensure complete coverage, so the number of APs is dictated by the survey and the number of users that will be accessing it.

Originally Posted by gregzoll

It would work in theory if you set up enough AP's to allow proper distribution, but who does that in a normal setup.

Originally Posted by Swampfox

The great thing about new build is that you can design and plan. Thus, you can hard wire the most likely locations that will need data access. Hopefully, most of the rooms will then be furnished accordingly limiting the need for multiple wireless video streams.
IMO, wireless is still mandatory, but can mostly be used for WEB surfing, email, Skype, wireless remote control, music streaming and other relatively low bandwidth portable applications. Known stationary high bandwidth applications seem best served (pun intended) by wired connections.

Originally Posted by FX4

The guy is building a 14k sq ft home. I would home run every room in the house. The additional cost of construction is minimal. A couple thousand dollars additional cost. Each room should be home run with, cat6, coax, and cat3 as well as alarm system wiring. Additionally I would strategically wire for APs throughout the house for things like laptops and iPads. Four or five APs should cover the house well.

Originally Posted by FX4

Who wants that much RF running around their home and you are talking still running a bunch of cat6 to do this.

Originally Posted by gregzoll

Not anymore than already in the airwaves around you on a daily basis.

Originally Posted by Kurtz9

100 mb is PLENTY to stream even the highest bitrate bluray around. Gigabit is way way way more bandwidth than needed.

That said, wireless today still isn't fast enough to reliably do that, wired 100mb is though.


So there's 2 things here:

802.11ac, which is the next wifi standard, and you'll see hardware available for it as early as this fall, WILL be fast enough (likely sustain throughput faster than 100mb ethernet).

So if you could wait that long wifi would be fine for that purpose.

As long as you're not streaming to 5 different rooms at the same time or something... in which case you're still better off being wired for gigabit.


The second thing though... is not what's fine for today, but what's fine for tomorrow. or tomorrow 5 years from now. Or 10.

When whatever replaces BR comes along 100mb wired or not won't be fast enough....hell, GIGABIT won't be fast enough... you'll need 10GB networks to stream uncompressed 4k video for example.

So go wired. And Cat 6a.

Originally Posted by FX4


There are just too many problems going with a pure wireless solution. Believe me I tried. I gave up and wired everything. I have a 3500 sq ft home. Wireless now only supports mobile devices and it works well.

Originally Posted by aaronwt

I have four APs in my 1350ft condo. If I had a three level house I would have around a dozen APs. At work we set up a bunch for corporate clients as well on each level. But of course not usually in each room. Sometimes there can be some in adjacent rooms if the wireless survey dictates it. Sometimes you have blockage of the signals in a certain area so you have no choice but to put the APs in adjacent rooms in that area. It doesn't happen very often but I've seen it a handful of times. But the point of the wireless survey is to ensure complete coverage, so the number of APs is dictated by the survey and the number of users that will be accessing it.

Originally Posted by Kalani

4 APs in a 1350 sq ft space is HIGHLY unusual outside of a very specialized corporate environment. And it's still nowhere near as good as wired.

Clearly, you're doing it right, as far as your wireless needs. But that doesn't mean wireless is as capable as wired. Given a choice, wired is the way to go for all but portable devices. The OP (who seems to have long since abandoned this thread LOL) should definitely tell his friend to go with CAT 6 or CAT 6a (in addition to whatever wireless gear he needs for portable devices) and get on with life...

Originally Posted by FX4

Holy cow man, I thought I was heavy at 47 devices.