Running some ethernet cabling through house

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cyril7

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#2640556 23-Jan-2021 10:37

Hi Paul, yes you can get some that quote all manner of miraculous speeds that supposedly support GigE throughput no less. However as mentioned the speeds and effetctive latency and throughput changes continually depending on the state of the transmission line that is not really engineered for RF only 50Hz.

Further as 50Hz load changes the effective line impedance presented at RF frequencies shifts to cause all manner of issues in an unpredictable (well very predicable if you had complex enough modelling) results.

In a recent situation I had to deal with recently the owner had installed TP-Link the speeds would change from 300-400Mb/s to 1-2Mb/s in a short period of time, with no rhyme nor reason.

These modern PLC modems use OFDM to move around the above mentioned issues, but its still not a perfect or complete solution.

Finally as an aside, I spent a good 5yrs working on PLC solutions (among other more beneficial and stable solutions) in the power metering industry at chip level implementation, I can assure you, the tech is a waste of time and energy if you want stable, consistant and reliable comms, YMMV.

Cyril

bales

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#2640565 23-Jan-2021 11:34

if youre lucky they might have drilled 25mm holes for the coax then you could pull 3cat6s up using one to pull coax back down.

k1w1k1d

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#2640604 23-Jan-2021 12:34

Oh the joys of having a wooden floor that you can crawl under!

tripper1000

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#2641546 25-Jan-2021 11:37

k1w1k1d: Oh the joys of having a wooden floor that you can crawl under!

And wait until you want to remodel the kitchen/bathroom or you have an earthquake - that wooden floor will shave days of work and thousands of dollars off the the bill.

Paul1977

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#2641594 25-Jan-2021 12:03

What network devices will be in the rooms you're planning on running the cable to? I.e. What is the need for cabling as opposed to decent wifi?

Ceiling mounted wifi access point(s) would mean you only need to worry about getting cabling up one wall from the router, then a 10mm hole in the ceiling to poke a cable through is all you need.

Or even easier would be a decent wifi mesh network and avoid cabling all together.

For the average persons use case ethernet is just not required these days.

tripper1000

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#2642197 26-Jan-2021 11:17

Paul1977: .....For the average persons use case ethernet is just not required these days.

...and yet curiously the average home user seems to need/have a fibre connection that is 2 - 10x faster that the average domestic WiFi - which prevents them from using the bandwidth that they're paying for - ? Sure enterprise grade WiFi might solve that problem, but that is more expensive and far harder to manage than a bit of copper wire.

For fixed network devices, and particularly data heavy and bandwidth sensitive devices like video streaming boxes, wired Ethernet is very sensible - particularly with the bandwidth savaging 4K and 8K content being streamed "these days". Save the relatively meagre (and shared) wifi bandwidth for portable devices.

(While mesh networks are great for getting wifi into the furthermost corners of your house, it is just the next weapon in the wifi arms race, and it's effectiveness will diminish as the neighbours rearm with their own mesh to overcome the interference you're causing their network. At some point you have to break the cycle - even the most expensive wifi, can't compete for speed, reliability (security?) and neighbourliness as a humble and cheap piece of Cat5).

Paul1977

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#2642298 26-Jan-2021 12:55

tripper1000:

...and yet curiously the average home user seems to need/have a fibre connection that is 2 - 10x faster that the average domestic WiFi - which prevents them from using the bandwidth that they're paying for - ? Sure enterprise grade WiFi might solve that problem, but that is more expensive and far harder to manage than a bit of copper wire.

For fixed network devices, and particularly data heavy and bandwidth sensitive devices like video streaming boxes, wired Ethernet is very sensible - particularly with the bandwidth savaging 4K and 8K content being streamed "these days". Save the relatively meagre (and shared) wifi bandwidth for portable devices.

(While mesh networks are great for getting wifi into the furthermost corners of your house, it is just the next weapon in the wifi arms race, and it's effectiveness will diminish as the neighbours rearm with their own mesh to overcome the interference you're causing their network. At some point you have to break the cycle - even the most expensive wifi, can't compete for speed, reliability (security?) and neighbourliness as a humble and cheap piece of Cat5).

But most home users will only be on 100Mbps or 200Mbps. Decent wifi shouldn't have an issue matching that. And a 4K stream from Netflix only uses about 25Mbps I believe.

Most (maybe all?) TVs only have 100Mbps network adapters, as a result I can get better speed on my TV via it's wireless AC than I can via CAT6.

I agree that in most cases cabling is a better solution for fixed devices, but if it's too difficult or prohibitively expensive there are some good wifi options which are way better than what's built into the standard ISP supplied router. If the OP is having to cut holes in gib, then the remediation cost of that could well be more than the cost of a decent wifi setup.

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tripper1000

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#2642830 27-Jan-2021 09:11

Don't forget:

1) Wifi is 1/2 duplex, so that 100-200 mbps is only for ~1/2 the time. At best Wifi is only ~1/2 as fast as the "same" speed Ethernet/Fibre.

2) Wifi is a shared resource, so that bandwidth is divided amongst the devices on the same AP where as your TV on Ethernet will have a dedicated 100mbs back to the router.

3) You will only get 100-200 mbps on Wifi when sitting right next to the AP. If you go into the next room/upstairs etc the speeds will quickly diminish.

4) For many ISP's the price difference between 100/20 fibre and gigabit fibre is small (only $6 with my ISP) so many people such as geeks on this forum, will be upsold to the faster plan.

Paul1977

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#2642856 27-Jan-2021 10:01

tripper1000:

Don't forget:

1) Wifi is 1/2 duplex, so that 100-200 mbps is only for ~1/2 the time. At best Wifi is only ~1/2 as fast as the "same" speed Ethernet/Fibre.

2) Wifi is a shared resource, so that bandwidth is divided amongst the devices on the same AP where as your TV on Ethernet will have a dedicated 100mbs back to the router.

3) You will only get 100-200 mbps on Wifi when sitting right next to the AP. If you go into the next room/upstairs etc the speeds will quickly diminish.

4) For many ISP's the price difference between 100/20 fibre and gigabit fibre is small (only $6 with my ISP) so many people such as geeks on this forum, will be upsold to the faster plan.

All true, and I personally go cables wherever I can. But my wifi is also rock solid and fast (cabled APs, not mesh), but obviously uncontrollable environmental factors are always at play with wifi.

I'm not going to argue that cabling isn't a better solution if practical and affordable, because it is. But these days I think reliable wifi is (arguably) more important. I think everyone needs good wifi, but only a much smaller group truly needs ethernet.

For the OP, and those who mentioned cutting the gib to get through the dwangs: Shouldn't any decent installer have those extendable drill bits that they can use to drill down through the dwangs from the attic without the need for cutting into the gib?

EDIT: For clarity

jbrook3708

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#2642933 27-Jan-2021 11:15

Hadn't heard of that technique, sounds interesting though.

That would be one enormously long drill bit. Also not sure about blind drilling from the attic into the wall cavity through multiple dwangs. I wouldn't be volunteering for that job.

Paul1977

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#2642946 27-Jan-2021 11:41

jbrook3708:

Hadn't heard of that technique, sounds interesting though.

That would be one enormously long drill bit. Also not sure about blind drilling from the attic into the wall cavity through multiple dwangs. I wouldn't be volunteering for that job.

I haven't seen it done myself, but I believe they drill down and just add sections to the drill bit as they go. You'd want to be confident there's no electrical or anything in the wall being drilled, and I assume you'd want someone with experience doing it!

jameskiy

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#2643260 27-Jan-2021 22:38

My wifi is decent, im primarily doing it for latency, a reduction of 10-15 ping and more consistent ping,

jameskiy

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#2643262 27-Jan-2021 22:39

i'll contact a professional and get a quote, unless there are any professionals on here in CHCH like the coffee guy!

Bung

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#2660068 20-Feb-2021 11:54

Paul1977:
jbrook3708:

Hadn't heard of that technique, sounds interesting though.

That would be one enormously long drill bit. Also not sure about blind drilling from the attic into the wall cavity through multiple dwangs. I wouldn't be volunteering for that job.

I haven't seen it done myself, but I believe they drill down and just add sections to the drill bit as they go. You'd want to be confident there's no electrical or anything in the wall being drilled, and I assume you'd want someone with experience doing it!

Just seen an install of new electrical cable. As the walls were to be repainted the electrician used a ~100mm holesaw centred on each dwang that needed drilling. The circle of gib cut out was glued back onto the dwang afterwards. Apparently it's probably cheaper to get the painter to do a bit more stopping than have the electrician drilling from ceiling.

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