About to smart wire the house and just want to check a few things please

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gedc

355 posts

Ultimate Geek

#166154 4-Mar-2015 12:50

Am about to start some internal house renovations – primarily moving plasterboard walls around to change basic home layout. I have also decided to smart wire the whole house from a central distribution hub – currently the house is served by a 16 port gigabit switch and a wireless modem. I’ve previously run some cat5e to a couple of rooms and these feed back into the switch that pulls together my home NAS, various kids PC’s around the home and my main desktop on a basic home network.

We currently have an ADSL2+ connection through copper but in approx 3 to 5 months post renovation we will be switching over to fibre that is now in the street.

I’ve read through a lot of articles previously listed and still have a few ( perhaps obvious questions).

Free to Air TV – In the future I may look to supply this to the kids’ bedrooms. I presume I run the aerial on top of the house to the star unit and split it back out to the various rooms using RG6. The aerial currently feeds my main TV but rarely gets used as I use mysky hd. I am presuming the following:

a) Most new tellies seem to have an option of built in freeview decoder.
b) I can terminate at the wall behind the TV’s and convert into a ‘normal’ aerial wallplate that plugs into the back of the telly.
c) I may need to put an amplifer into the star box for the signal quality.

Wired Internet – Was planning on running cat5e and appreciate it’s an older technology.

I am presuming the following :

a) It will be adequate for transferring and streaming data around the house. I currently use it to stream HD media from the NAS to an HTPC over about 40 metre distance and no issues so far.
b) Cat 6 seems to be more difficult to install and problematic if not done correctly. Cables and connectors are less forgiving
c) There is still a sizeable cost difference between 5e and 6
d) I’m not aware of much limitations on it for now or indeed the future ?
e) Happy to be convinced otherwise if I’m wrong

Wireless Internet – Will still be looking to supply a strong wireless around the home for all the little devices the family carry around.

a) What’s the best way to do this – particularly given my adsl2+ modem / router supplying the wireless signal will be going to the cupboard once fibre is on the table?

LennonNZ

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#1251006 4-Mar-2015 13:32

The best way to do wireless is NOT use the Wireless built into your ADSL Router. Get an external unit(s) more like a Unifi Pro or alike.

Run some Ethernet Cables from the Distribution to a few points in your roof in your house and just place the wireless units on the celing in the middle of the main area.

Using your ADSL router which you say will be in a cupboard which will restrict the wireless signal will give you many days worth of trouble with the signal.

Gozer

184 posts

Master Geek

#1251032 4-Mar-2015 14:09

Wifi use an enterprise grade access point, UniFi is a great option. If you do a single static user speed test consumer and enterprise grade gear will look the same, but with a busy family moving around and using lots of different devices devices like the UniFi just work more reliably.

As for Running RG6 I would strongly consider doing this kind of thing over IP rather than running RG6, there are a number of different ways of doing this but having a central TV server capture device and streaming to TVs Laptops etc would be my pick. Spend the money you would have spent on RG6 on a good quality capture card.

scorpiworld

192 posts

Master Geek

#1251966 5-Mar-2015 22:31

Cool project you are about to start, I recently finished wiring our house up and really happy with the performance. We are UFB connected and wasn't making the most of the 100Mb connection! (probably still aren't)

Quick answers would be:

1 Yes, run RG6 from ariel to star point, then run RG6 from star to all rooms. We looked at HDMI over CAT and the end point devices were quite expensive.
If it's just freeview for now go RG6, if you might do TV capture and broadcasting run a couple extra CAT cables and leave them unterminated in the wall for future use.

1a For standard consumer TV's yes, if you get business grade they are generally optional.
2b Correct, you can use a "F Type to PAL Insert" or you could run RG6 from wall plate to TV and use a F-Type Female Socket into the TV. The screw ends keep everything tighter for longer.
3c You will need an X-way splitter from the star to all rooms (X = the number of rooms you want to liven up).

Even though I recommend running RG6 to all rooms (while the walls are down), you don't need to liven them all up at the star point if they are not in use. I bought a powered splitter just in case it needed amplifying, we went 3 way and no issues.

I read the more you split the lower the signal quality can get. And if you have a poor signal, an amplifier will just amplify the poor signal, not improve the quality. A qualified aerial installer reading this maybe able to confirm or bust those statements?

2 So many pros and cons here between 5,5e,6,6a and so on... I managed to get a good deal on 2 boxes of CAT6, the cost of patch panels, plugs and jacks was slightly more expensive, PBTech were very competitive here.

So I went with 6 and have a 1Gig network, very underutilised right now and we are VoD heavy users. 5e is also 1Gig capable so its personal choice. If you have plans for several 4K TV's streaming Netflix, CAT6 might be a better option as it can do 10Gig.

1a Agree for the current use 5e is sufficient
2b I thought the same but turned out all ok, I installed ~20 ports and only 1 failed. :)
3c PBTech do good deals if you go in store with your shopping list priced up.
4d Hard to predict and there is always new compression techniques squeezing more down the pipes, with a 1Gig connection over CAT 5 or 6 you should be fine.
5e If I haven't already I'll say no more. I'm not into sales ;)

3 We have the modem WiFi off and a repurposed router with DD-WRT installed acting as a dedicated AP close to where WiFi is most used, we still have a couple weak spots.
We have a Ubiquiti UAP-LR on the want-list which uses PoE and can be installed in the centre of the house. As already suggested run a few cables to points in the ceiling that will be good AP locations.

Before starting I read lots and lots online and followed some of the previous Geekzone posts.

Couple sources I referred to were:
http://www.geekzone.co.nz/sbiddle/7252

http://www.geekzone.co.nz/sbiddle/4511
http://www.geekzone.co.nz/sbiddle/4573
http://www.geekzone.co.nz/sbiddle/4867

http://www.tcf.org.nz/content/95569cab-9c46-4d2b-b644-41540a148468.cmr
YouTube also came in handy to explain techniques and show how things should go... we couldn't pull walls down so it was blind drilling through nogs with a rather long drill bit and where there wasn't roof access for the drill bit we pulled old cables back and forth.

Space was limited so make the most of the walls being down and run as many cables as you can, even for stuff you don't know you need yet, as doing it when the walls are back up is very labour intensive!

Good luck and keep us posted with the updates, photos always help the next person looking to do the same.

Edit: Spelling and grammar corrections.

richms

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#1251994 6-Mar-2015 00:45

Run the RG6, You dont need it to go to the _same_ cabinet as the Cat5/6 runs. The cabinets were all the rage when people would modulate sources and send them back and combine them so you could have all that kit in one place and re-patch things between sat or rf, and change the runs to be back feeds etc.

now that HDMI over cat6 is so cheap, there is no real reason to backfeed anything other than sky. More and more you will be using player devices like appletv, roku etc at each TV instead of sending a single source to many, but it can be useful to send one source to many which some relatives of mine do to keep an eye on what the kids are watching, both their TVs only have the RF modulator tuned into them, and that is fed from the composite switching side of a home theater amp's zone 2 or 3 so that it can see the mysky, a freeview box and some other things and it makes it easy to monitor and control what is watched. It looks lousy but as they are normally watching nickolodian or disny or FOUR it doesnt really matter.

That would all be done on HDMI if it was done now, but the split source is useful with sky where you pay an outragious amount per month for each additional box.

You can stuff the splitter under the house etc and power any amplifier over the coax from one of the TVs if you want, but I would still get a second box for it all just so you know where it is and isnt subject to moisture etc from basement air.

If you are going for the uni-fi's etc, then you have to allow for their power supplies if you are not going for a Power over ethernet switch, it all adds up space wise in the box so less legacy stuff like coax the better.

Richard rich.ms

gedc

355 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1264333 20-Mar-2015 22:19

Sorry for not replying sooner. Been onto other things but this is about to start. Thanks for all the advice. I'll let you know how we go

benchit

37 posts

Geek

#1277913 6-Apr-2015 17:09

HDMI outlets over ethernet (Cat6) is also a nice way to run things for video boxes/STB etc.
I concur with richms, plus it's the smarter way if you have centralized runs of ethernet throughout the house.

I did have something similar to the below I got from Australia at a decent price.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Full-HD-1X4-1x2-4Port-Hub-Repeater-v-1-3-3D-1080p-Amplifier-HDMI-Splitter-Box-/261712343863

I've seen other commercial setups have video extenders though delivered over CAT5e instead of multi output. Depends on your setup I guess.

Around the time I started my last house project, I found this to be useful and quite informative if your still going ahead with this or need ideas;
http://www.geekzone.co.nz/hazza87/7956