Running Ethernet in the House

[izzy]

Yes, in response to the finished basement

[izzy]

Unless you're rich or don't have time at all, I strongly recommend DIY.

Get the best cable you can to future proof it. Think like Cat-7, foil wrapped with a ground wire. (SF-UTP or SF-STP) and get a grounded block - budget $80 or so, ($#$%ing brain fart, I know what it is called - ETA a second later, patch panel) to run them all into your cabinet. Then do short little patch cables to your router, etc. You can get the tool kits for cheap - under $40, and a huge pack of shielded RJ-45 connectors for under $20. A spool of 500 feet of cable could be had for probably $250.

If you had someone do that, you're looking at a $1,000+ job. There is truthfully no skill to it - just google the order of the wires, push them in the connector, crimp. A big problem is, whatever you quote, they are highly likely just to put Cat-5e in, who is going to know? (from their perspective) Or at the very least, cheap chinese cable that might say cat-7, or cat-6, etc, but really isn't.

ETA: The shielded increases your top speed when grounded, and also reduces risk of equipment damage from any kind of EMF event even if rare - runs of twisted pair make for huuuuuuge antennas otherwise.

I've done it before and found it to be a major pain in the ass. I had everything run through conduit when I had it done.

[Frac]

For a DIY I think I would recommend a cat5e install to get gigabit speeds. That?ll be plenty fast for your home internet connection and it is so much easier to install for a novice. Plus components and crimpers are cheap.

Google 568B or ?568A for color pin outs on the male connectors. Female connectors are marked for both standards.

Use old work boxes to retrofit if you have drywall up already. As someone else stated, use plenum rated cable if you run through a duct. If you have a finished basement, you might be able to run the cable under the baseboards.

I wouldn?t even mess with a 111 punch down block or similar. I would just terminate the cable runs in a closet with male connectors. Plug directly into a cheap switch.


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[izzy]

I'd like to hear how this turns out one way or another. I'm really happy with what I ended up with and would be very interested in what you decide to do. If you use as much internal bandwidth as we do you'll be happy.

[Grant H.]

Unless you're rich or don't have time at all, I strongly recommend DIY.

Get the best cable you can to future proof it. Think like Cat-7, foil wrapped with a ground wire. (SF-UTP or SF-STP) and get a grounded block - budget $80 or so, ($#$%ing brain fart, I know what it is called - ETA a second later, patch panel) to run them all into your cabinet. Then do short little patch cables to your router, etc. You can get the tool kits for cheap - under $40, and a huge pack of shielded RJ-45 connectors for under $20. A spool of 500 feet of cable could be had for probably $250.

If you had someone do that, you're looking at a $1,000+ job. There is truthfully no skill to it - just google the order of the wires, push them in the connector, crimp. A big problem is, whatever you quote, they are highly likely just to put Cat-5e in, who is going to know? (from their perspective) Or at the very least, cheap chinese cable that might say cat-7, or cat-6, etc, but really isn't.

ETA: The shielded increases your top speed when grounded, and also reduces risk of equipment damage from any kind of EMF event even if rare - runs of twisted pair make for huuuuuuge antennas otherwise.

Cat7 for a house is overkill. I get your want to "future proof" the cabling, but any good Cat6 will support gigabit and even beyond (I've run 10gb/s on cat6) when you are talking the distance for a regular house to a central point. If they are for sure going to 10gb/s, then sure, but their budget just went way the hell up.

As for grounding the shielding of the cable? Unless you are providing a true earth ground tie point at both ends of the cable run (extremely unlikely for a house... because the ground leg of the plug on your device doesn't count) you're still relying on the grounding/isolation equipment in the switch, router, or computer.

I promise I'm not trying to pick on you. I've done this kind of work all over the country for years, and there is a lot of misinformation in what you wrote.