Any good guides for hard-wiring a home?

Here are some guides for ya. Like you said it all depends on your homes layout, access, and how much your willing to open up the walls if need be. Good luck.

http://www.instructables.com/id/How-...r-6-For-Ether/

http://www.crutchfield.com/S-iKupwRc...ng.html?page=3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwXAWsp9wps

It's easy to do, but it takes a little bit of time figuring out how and where you want to run the cables.

You will need some tools such as:
http://www.monoprice.com/products/pr...seq=1&format=2

Also know the difference between stranded and solid Cat cables. I use solid lines. Stranded are recommended for short run. Furthermore, you need to buy the correct modular plugs as well. There are modular plugs for solid and stranded cables. It isn't recommended to mix them because there is a pretty good chance you will not get the right connection.

Then you have UTP vs STP. Unshielded Twisted Pair cable, and Shielded Twisted Pair cable. I use Solid UTP Cat5e cable. I've got a coupled of 90 feet runs that to from the inside of the living room to the outside back inside on the other side of the house, and I've got no issues. If you can afford it, I would suggest to go with Cat6

LOL @ SOLID vs STRANDED advice. So very true. I didn't know the difference and had a H3LL of a time trying to terminate stranded cat6 with plugs intended for solid cable.

Anyways, the most difficult part of the job (IMO) is fishing wire inside your walls. You'll inevitably need to cut holes in the walls not only for the outlets themselves, but also at critical junction points where you need access to get the wire through. You want to have some knowledge as the more holes you make, the more patching you need to do, the more work you make for yourself, and consequentially, the more risk you run into making it evident that you cut a hole in the wall and painted over it.

In general, you typically centralize everything to start (or come back to) the basement, usually near the electrical box (not right beside it, just near the same location / room). Then for the first floor, you try to go directly to the room you need a run in when you can. If not, you do what you do for the second floor which is to go from the basement straight to the attic and then back down to the individual room in question. You'll also want to try and use the inside walls as much as possible, as any exterior walls will have insulation in the way.

Supplies needed are relatively simple, you need cable obviously, then wallplates, 1-gang / 2-gang mounting brackets, keystone jacks, termination plugs, network switches (at least 1), cat/RJ45 crimper tool, and lastly a tool to test your connections with.

If you're not a very handy guy or aren't comfortable having to fish wire inside walls, you could always hire someone to do that for you (I did). Audio stores will usually offer this service, you can also search online classifieds in your area and get in touch with a few people for quotes. You could also use an electrician as a last resort (since they would be familiar with fishing wire inside walls) although they're probably the most expensive labor option.

PS. You should probably mention what city you're in, this way people in your area can provide you with references if they have any.

There are probably who threads about this but why wouldn't someone just get powerline type adapters and use the electrical wiring as physical transport? A brief look at some of the hardware suggests speeds ~500Mbps.

I ask because I'll be moving from my house which I wired with Cat5 many years ago to a home which likely won't have network cabling. I'm quite happy with the 100Mpbs I getting now.

Yeah powerline adapters

Thanks for your help.

Recently got the WD Livewire and was easy to set up just plug in wall and works
very happy with performance without running cable everywhere

http://www.amazon.ca/Western-Digital.../dp/B003VWY0VY

second the cat-6 advice.

I home ran every cable to a "wiring closet", coax, cat-6 and security cam.

2 drops to every room except bathrooms. I did 4 drops of cat-6 and 2 RG-6 to HT equipment rack and 4 drops of cat-6 and 2 RG-6 to my main LR tv location.

Every other room got two drops coax (RG6) and two cat-6.

+1 on the additional drops to all locations. You can use cat wire for just about anything if need be.

Not sure he really needs the cable crimper, I much prefer the punch down CAt5 plugs that pop into the various faceplates. Of course everything should be home runs, and I second the 2+ drops per room. The job is relatively easy on a one floor home with either a basement or attic, but can be done with little damage for a two story home too. One trick I've used many times is to remove the baseboard and punch holes behind it, no need to do any repairs -- if the base is wide enough...

We are planning / hoping to buy a 5 bedroom house (4 bds 1 office) by the end of the year brand new. The cabling / electrician guy is going to go nuts because I am requesting:
1)All the run starting from the office room, which will have a server room with at least 2 panels
2)Master room --- 6 cat6 runs
3) all other bedrooms --- 4 cat6 runs
4) bathrooms --- 2 cat6 runs (at least 2 bathrooms)
6) Living room ---- 10 cat6 runs (this will change depending on HT room location)
7) backyard --- 4 runs
8) Garage --- 4 runs

For a total of 40 hook ups . I am trying not to use any switches within the house, and only have direct connections. I want all the crazy switching / panels / routers in the office / server room

Note, I am unsure on how many RG and power cables I will be needing. Still working on it!

GusGus,

Don't forget power and cable to your eaves/porches/patios if you want security cams.

Fixed. Still working on this. It will depend on the layout of the house...

LOL

To actually answer your question, PowerLine adapters are fine if you don't have the option to hardwire. Its a step up (IMO) to wireless, but still not as reliable or as fast as a hard-wired line. I tried them out for a bit back with the 200Mbps models, but could only achieve roughly 20-30Mbps speeds, which was better than my WiFi (which was roughly 10-15Mbps and spotty), but not quite what I was looking for. They're also prone to interruptions when certain appliances turn on (such as your freezer / fridge, stove, microwave, dryer, etc.). Its YMMV though as it depends on what circuit those appliances are on and what the electrical wiring is like behind the walls.

I'm sure they've improved since then, but you're really comparing a shared system to a dedicated one (ie. a truck that's designed to pull weight will always be better than a SUV that happens to have a trailer hitch), so a dedicated hardwired line will be less prone to problems than one that is shared with other elements. Hope that helps.

Thanks for your help (and this time I mean it )

Since my post I have done some research and found reviews talking about ~14Mbps early on to a more recent review of over 150Mbps.

My first choice would be to run Cat5/6 but depending on the home we get, it may be more trouble then it's worth. There are just 2 of us and the likelihood of 2 simultaneous BD streams running through the wires are slim. I am concerned about how other appliances and/or the quality of the existing wire would impact throughput. We'll see what happens when we decide on a house.

Thanks again.

That seems... a tad overkill. I can understand future-proofing your house, but what in the heck are you ever going to do with 2 wired connections to each bathroom?

I guess I can understand not wanting to have a switch sitting out in your living room, but it seems like it would be much more efficient just to stick a switch in a wall access panel rather than running, say, 10 separate cables to your living room. If you're worried about increased lag or something, a switch has nearly zero effect - you're looking at maybe 1-2 ms tops. I guess if you can afford it there is really no reason not to do it your way, just seems very wasteful. When I did this I decided that realistically there wasn't a situation where I needed more than 1 gbps between a given room and central server location, so I just did single cable drops and picked up a couple cheap GB switches from Monoprice for the office and living room (incidentally, the runs were short enough that I didn't need anywhere near 1000 ft of cable which seems to be the smallest amount widely available in bulk; turned out to be much cheaper to buy a couple pre-terminated 50-foot Cat6 cables and just cut them to the length I needed, then put punch-down female jacks on the ends).

That's my set up right now in our 3bd/2b home, and I had a really hard time with my network speeds due to combining 100mbps and 1gbps lines. For some reason or another my switches kept using 100 mbps rather than the gigabit because some of my devices are not gigabit, and for some reason or another the 100 mbps devices would take over, which just bugs the hell out of me.

I know I am over doing the runs, but I rather have them and not need them, than to need them and not have them.

Having done this a number of times, I have to say usually it's not too difficult, but it can be time consuming. If you know your house well it helps. Cold air returns are a great way to drop cables from the second floor. Usually in the basement they are just sheet metal nailed to the floor joists and can easily be opened up. It's can also be relatively easy to drop cables down from the attic. If you get one line up to the attic you can install a switch there and feed what ever rooms you want from that point by just drilling down through the top plate into the various wall cavities. Odds are you wouldn't even need a fish tape in that situation.

If you do it yourself, get some CAT 5 or if you want CAT 6 that is riser rated. Putting ends on is a pain, but easily doable if you want to invest the time. If not, go the Monoprice route. I just redid the connections to one of my 8 port switches, over the years many of the clips broke, I needed 7 12"-16" cables so I bit the bullet and made them up. took a bit over an hour but all worked fine. All you need is a decent crimping tool, I paid ~$35 for mine that may defeat your purpose and it might be cheaper go with the pre made cables.

Over Kill or Well prepared ?

I was fortunate enough to buy/build a 5 bd / 4 ba .. .which enabled me to get in when no Sheetrock was present .. easiest way to plan and run ETH,SECURITY,CCTV.. Also allowed me to set in 5 2" Conduit between Attic and Basement and also get all my cable elevated and on hangers in the attic

Every room has 3 walls with a RG-6 and Net Cable ports ... My known locations for TV/Media were doubled ( 4 ETH , 2 RG-6 behind Central TV Locations ) (4 ETH behind PC/Desktop Locations )
All runs down to a Patch Panel then to a Netgear 1gig Switch located in a "server" room (8'x5') located in basement.

I didn't future proof for technology change ... It was due to my wife and her need to re-arrange a room based on a "feeling"

I didn't do the bathrooms tho ... but did weigh in possibly a CCTV Monitor only screen in the Mbath to monitor entry door


Shop around for bulk 1000' ft ..

Deepsurplus was ok priced .. I used them for all the wall plates
I was also able to go to a local telephone supply and pickup my cat5e < $100 a box


Go ahead and Label your cables ... I didn't .. and found myself having to use a fluke meter and identify them later

If your home is already cable (COAX RG-6) wired and your Cable/ISP is FIOS just use MoCA network.

All you'll need is this:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005DIQ2OC/ref=ox_sc_act_title_2?ie=UTF8&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER
in each room where you need wired internet.

If you need multiple network point in one room you can add ethernet switch.

100' seems overkill. If you figure 9' per floor ( 8' floor to ceiling + 2x8 or so) 20' should get you into the attic, then just add you horizontal runs to your wiring closet and distribution point in the attic.

What I would do is find a well located cold air return on the second floor, drop a fish tape to the basement and pull the CAT5 up to that point. Then I'd pop a 1/2" hole in the top plate of the cold air return and feed a good amount of cable up the cavity. In the attic I'd located the same stud space, feed a fish tape with a hook end on it and try and grab the cable. Might take a few tries but usually works. If your cold air returns are close to the ceiling as in most new homes, I'd opt for a drill extension and drill up rather than down. Once you get the cable into the attic for good measure fill the holes with fire-stop caulk - not cheap ~$12 tube - but good practice and required by code in new construction/remodeling.

I'd mount an 8 port switch in the attic, you never know how many connections you might want at some point, and then just run drops to what ever rooms you want. I usually run 2 per bedroom, making sure that cable will not run across doorways or such and taking into account furniture arrangement. When you open the wall for the wire all you need is the low voltage plastic frames - I usually see orange ones - no need for a box. The frames have plaster ears on them and grip with flip out wings behind the drywall/plaster. I use the punch down connection, no need for an end on the wire. Same can be done at the other end, make up a patch panel and just buy or make short jumpers. The punch down connector make the whole thing pretty fool proof.

If you have to run the cable outside I'd put it in a conduit, but usually you can get the wire into the attic without resorting to that. As for the MOCA option with coax, I see added expense and possibly poorer performance, any time a signal gets processed you loose a bit of quality. plus, for me, there is a kludge factor.