Any advice for in-home ethernet wiring?

Getting the place wired in CAT5E should be more than enough for what you need - there should be no need to use shielded either - and this should mean that it's nice and easy for your cable guys to run (and easy generally means "cheaper") ... CAT5E will run up to Gigabit which should be more than enough for you for now.

Just make sure that they *PROPERLY* test each cable run with a proper cable analyser and not just a basic continuity based tester and give you a report detailing the results for each run.

Phil

A new technology that looks really interesting and would be much easier to install than cat-cables would be POF (plastic optical fibre).

If you would be OK with (currently) a 100 Mb/s speed limit, this could be a good and affordable alternative.

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aleg

Fibre always sounds like a great idea (and has done for years) but the switches with fibre transceivers are much more expensive than a reasonable quality NetGear ProSafe wired Ethernet unit, the tools to deal with fibre are more specialist and - basically - CAT5E is just so widespread that it's a bit of a no-brainer to get installed.

By all means go with fibre if you wish but IMO it isn't necessary.

Phil 

I'll see what my local dealer recommends, but good ole CAT-5 sounds just fine.  I'll be nice to be able to have the NAS in another part of the house; it really doesn't "go" with the decor, nor do I have a shelf for it on the Quadraspire.

If the only issue with the existing CAT5 is that a couple of pairs have been used for the phone(s) it may be worth thinking about running a new phone wire through instead - returning the Ethernet to its intended use?

It would be cheaper/easier and may even route through the existing conduits(s) extremely easily?

Has the Ethernet only been used to extend, or offer extension points, which may now even be redundant, thanks to cordless phones, perhaps? (I doubt it's been run from the master box - though who knows!?)

If it is "property-wide" how has it been terminated in each room? Have they removed the Ethernet sockets and replaced with BT ones!?

Did anyone leave a stetson behind, by any chance?

Just some thoughts.......

Yeah I was going to say head for a wireless phone perhaps and return the wiring to proper CAT5.  A push down tool and Ethernet tester can be had for next to nothing and it really is very easy.  The tester would tell you which cores are wired properly.

I used one like this to put some cat5 in.

It might be worth checking if you have 4 cores wired properly as I think 100BaseTX can run over just 4 cores (someone correct me if I am wrong) wiki Ethernet_over_twisted_pair.   Gigabit does need all wires I think. the wiki says 10BASE-T and 100BASE-TX only require two pairs to operate, located on pins 1 plus 2 and pins 3 plus 6.

Fozz that's a great idea thanks. I'll look on Amazon for ethernet testers.  We don't use the wired phone jacks in most rooms -- have just a couple of cordless phones.  Maybe the existing wiring is salvageable.  Where they all terminate in my laundry room looks like spaghetti, however, so I might still bring in a professional to get me up and running, even if they don't have to pull cable.  Me and small mechanical devices with lots of wires don't get along so well

Bart,

Where are you located, if you're not a million miles away, I'd come and have a look for nothing for a fellow Naimee...

Kind regards

Jo

Yes, I agree Cat 5 or Cat 5e is fine and supports 1Gbps up to 100metres. 10 and 100 Mbps use 4 cables (1 twisted to pair to send and 1 pair to receive) and 1Gbps or higher uses all eight cables or 4 pairs.

Cat6 has shielding around the twisted pairs but unless you have very long lengths (such as >50m per segment )  at 1Gbps or higher or you have an extremely electrically noisy environment (industrial environment)   I would suggest Cat 6 is superfluous.

Although many consumer - and some industrial devices auto detect, it is best to remember you need a cross over Ethernet cable between a switch port and an IP endpoint.

If you want to future proof - perhaps run two parallel Ethernet links in parallel, you can use this for resilience or EtherChannel (or link bonding) to increase throughput and some point in the future.

Finally when wiring your house try and not  daisy chain your distribution switches, try and have a neat hierarchical structure, it will save headaches later if you ever start to get any sort of load on your LAN in the future. Also consider PoE (Power over Ethernet) which can be used to remotely power edge switches without having local noisy powersupplies

That's very kind Jo, but I'm on "the other side of the pond" from you.  I'm one of the American Naim fans here

Ah, OK cool, couldn't tell on your profile. I would recommend, if you can't salvage your existing cabling to go for Cat 6, it's only about 20% more than Cat5e, future proof yourself, and always run 2 cables per run for redundancy, and possible port trunking etc.. As Simon says a little overkill on shorter runs for now, but who knows what the future holds.

There're quite a few reports on the web about cat5 v cat6 offering improved performance, not sure you'd be taking advantage of that in your current application, but worth it none the less for the future. I changed my cat5 to cat6 between my PC, router and NAS and found copying large files quicker by a small margin. This wasn't a benchmarked scientific test, so can't confirm differences, but I'd still say cat6 given the cost.

Kind regards

Jo

Are the ethernet cables running parallel to electrical wires?

I don't know . . . as I can't see through the walls   I'd not be surprised if they are, however, as the home is pretty new (2006) and all was wired at the same time.

Bart, I should add if you do use twin Ethernet leads to connect between switches, you must  use commercial/industrial switches and NOT consumer ones. This is because a special protocol MUST be used called Spanning Tree. This stops network loops and a collapse of your network through frame storms. Most Cisco switches for example have Spanning Tree on by default.

I would go for CAT6, they just a bit more expensive.

It's hard to predict what you'll connect in de future (K4/Ultra HD 3D tv with 24/192 audio..??), and remember that in a family household several devices are used simultaneous. I would avoid any rewiring hassle.

Pay attention to the exact CAT code, ie 6 vs 6A. I believe CAT7 isn't officially approved yet (Wikipedia is your friend).

Good luck, Fred

I would stick with 5e, there is nothing on video or audio which it cannot handle and its 30 quid for 150m

Fred, yes CAT 7 is standardiized. It is part of standard ISO/IEC 11801:2002 Class F,

Here is an example test certifcate by a conformance lab of validating a CAT 7 cable.

<cite>http://www.teldor.com/files.php?actions=show&id=1514</cite>

Having said I agree with Gary I would stick with Cat 5e, everything else is bling for a home network and you are pouring money down the drain.

 Remember Cat 5e can comfortably deliver 1Gbps over 0.1km!!

1Gbps equals approx 667 concurrent CD PCM streams. Most people only have 1 or 2 network players active at anyone time!! or approx 80~100 concurrent hidef 3D video streams. You would need several industrial servers with forced cooling in data centre conditions to serve that sort of data...

Simon

Fred, well I guess it's howfar you want to look into the future. I guess if you want to really future proof it would be best to have accessible service ducting to lay the cables and or fibres in. Trying to second guess, the chances are you will have wrong for 10 years time.

For Ethernet speed options, although Cat6 is double the bandwidth of Cat5 Ethernet can't use it. You need Cat6a or Cat7 to go to the next Ethernet speed of 10Gbps. But for effective structured wiring it is essential physical constraints are not exceeded, like mInimum radius, pinching etc, or bandwidths are significantly reduced.

Now looking into this further there does appear some possible advantage of using Cat 6 or higher between the switch and the audio equipment. This is because of reduced cross talk and therefore less EMI or radio field strength. Therefore less chance of RF coupling to your audio equipment.

Iwill try and experiment here... 

Simon

Some very valid comments, I think if I were forced to re-cable it would be worth building in allowances for the future as much as you can.  However getting the thing going with the existing cable sounds like a good plan to me, path of least effort and sure to sound better than wifi.   I have wired up for gigabit but the vast majority of my appliances only work at 10/100.   At least the computer to the NAS is a  fast connection for ripping though.

My hi fi dealer will be out to my home next week to look at the wiring and give me some advice, and I will be sure to report back.  Given that I probably won't be living in the home in 10 years (just because we here tend to move around a lot!), I likely will go for an easy fix rather than future-proofing.  The decision likely will be driven by how easy or hard it will be to pull cable.  If I were building a new home today the variables might lead to a different answer.

You wont pull thecable they are too fragile.

As you wont be there for the long term stick cheap cat5e in. I can stream two hi def movies and move large files etc atthe same time, the only miting factor being the speed of the nas.