New Home Build - Network Options

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Cambo

107 posts

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#280132 28-Nov-2020 12:51

We are building a new home with an established franchise in the South Island, and will be shortly meeting with the electrician to discuss wiring.

I am wanting to set up a strong network which is somewhat future proof, but want to keep the budget reasonable.

We have 2 smart TV's, standard family phones/tablets/computers and I want to venture into some basic smart home stuff as well. Wife doesn't care about keyless entry or robot vacuums, but I want us to modernize a bit.

I am thinking of running Cat6 to TV points and study area, and getting Mesh WiFi installed for everything else. No point in lots of Ethernet points if I want to rely on WiFi, right?

The home is 106m3 in size.

What are some things I need to consider?

Thanks for any anecdotes or ideas.

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#2612219 28-Nov-2020 13:08

First of all, do not let sparkies do network wiring, they're usually crap at it.

Secondly, wire cat6 to every single room, at least 4 ports to the living room and office, two ports to every other room such as bedrooms/kitchen/etc. You'll thank me later.

You'll also want a central place for the "comms closet" where your ONT/Routers/switches will live. (Get a decent 16/24 port switch)

Wifi is not a replacement for wired ethernet.

https://www.tcf.org.nz/industry/standards-compliance/infrastructure-connections/premises-wiring/ has guidelines. It's better to build all the networking stuff in now as retrofitting it later will cost more/be way more painful.

Delphinus

611 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2612221 28-Nov-2020 13:12

No point in lots of Ethernet points if I want to rely on WiFi, right?

The correct answer is: Put in lots of ethernet points to anywhere you want your wifi AP's. That way you can provide power and data via the CAT6, which will be much better than mesh wifi.

Plus more ethernet points for other places that might need it. Cat6 is cheap, especially while the walls are open.

JessieB

37 posts

Geek

#2612240 28-Nov-2020 13:39

Wireless access points are best power-over-ethernet (poe) ceiling-mounted. Do you have good access to ceiling space? If so, then you don't need to worry so much about future-proofing wireless. Don't go for mesh tho', just do ordinary star topology. As for walls, in particular if there is insulation, do ducts with ethernet inside. Fibre is coming. (This is advice from somebody who has in the past put in heaps of coaxial and telephone wires, most never used.)

raytaylor

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#2612241 28-Nov-2020 13:39

Our electricians guide:

If the room or location exists in the list below, you must run the cables to it:

- A large cabinet/home hub - dont use the medium height one.

- 4x CAT6 to the lounge or shared entertainment area television/media

- 2x CAT6 to each other TV such as bedroom wall (infrared and streaming data) even if there is currently no tv installed.

- 1x CAT6 beside each bed or bedroom desk

- 1x CAT6 to each ceiling location for wifi access points

- 1x CAT6 to the kitchen counter for a telephone jack

- 1x CAT6 to the external wall facing the garage for future use, or actually run a pair of CAT6 cables to the garage or detached shed

- OptiCat cable from the demarcation box to the homehub cabinet. Ensure there is 5 metres coiled up at each end. To conserve space and external appearances, OptiCat in the demarcation box may be stripped and the copper pairs may be cut to 20 centimetres of available length, with the 5 metres of fiber remaining coiled up within the demarcation box.

- 3x CAT6 to the office

- 1x CAT6 to any other desk

- 2x Outdoor CAT5E gel filled to the roof apex if the house is rural and outside of fiber coverage areas.

- 1x Outdoor CAT5E gel filled + 1x Opticat to the property boundary in 25mm or 32mm green duct in the direction of the chorus or fiber pedestal

COAX:
- 2x Coax cables to the roof
- 2x Coax cables to the lounge for satelite decoder and output return to homehub splitter for distribution.
- 1x Coax cable to each bedroom tv location even if there is no TV installed
- 1x Coax cable to the office

All telephone outlets are to be RJ45 CAT6. Do not use BT or RJ11 outlets.
All cables are to be a single span run back to the patch board in the home hub. Do not "daisy chain" one outlet off of another outlet.

Ray Taylor

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Mehrts

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#2612244 28-Nov-2020 13:54

Cambo:No point in lots of Ethernet points if I want to rely on WiFi, right?

This is the wrong way to look at things.

If devices are stationary (TVs, gaming consoles, Desktop PCs etc) then it makes zero sense to have them connected to your LAN via wifi. Wifi should only be used by the truly mobile devices (tablets, phones, laptops etc) or those smart home devices which can't connect with Ethernet.

Reason for this, is the more client devices which are connected to each Access Point (AP), the more time the AP spends "talking" to each device, therefore slowing down throughput for other client devices. Sure, wifi has come a long way in capacity & speed over the past few years, but the physics still stand true.

Wifi is also only half-duplex, so the fancy high speeds you'll see on the boxes of APs are total BS, basically halve that number for any real speeds you'll see in practice.

There are a lot of variables with wifi performance too, such as radio frequency interference from neighbouring wifi networks or other sources, plus wall type & density can really impact wireless performance. 5GHz doesn't propagate as far as 2.4GHz, but it provides much faster throughput capacity.

To cover an entire home with reliable wifi, it's best practice to use two or three separate APs & reduce their transmit power, so that client devices are free to roam to the closest AP which help to ensure speeds stay fast.

As for Ethernet, stick with Cat6, that's totally fine, however I recommend that you run twice the number of cables to each run that what you think you'll need, or at least allow for more cables to be easily pulled through in the future.

Run Ethernet cables to ceiling points as well, for wifi APs. The UniFi range of networking gear made by Ubiquiti is hard to beat for its price range & offers plenty of performance & features for the home network. All of their APs are powered via Power over Ethernet (PoE), so they only require the one cable to provide data & power which makes life so easy.

Also consider their In-Wall APs, which mount to a vertical flush box & provide great wifi performance while also allowing either two or four Ethernet ports. These are ideal for mounting behind TV units.

Food for thought 👍

Jase2985

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#2612246 28-Nov-2020 13:56

Cambo: getting Mesh WiFi installed for everything else. No point in lots of Ethernet points if I want to rely on WiFi, right?

its fine to want to use WiFi but don't build a new house, run network cables then go for a mesh WiFi network.

As mentioned run network cables to where you would put an AP and connect that via Ethernet cable for the backhaul. more reliable and is about as good as it gets for AP's

rogercruse

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#2612349 28-Nov-2020 15:46

For our new home, we had our Fibre ONT device in our central cupboard connected via a 8 port switch and CAT6 cables running to each room where there was a Google Wifi devices and an additional switch. This meant that the Google Wifi provide aa mest Wifi service and was backed up by a hard-wired infrastructure. With also had Sonos speakers in most rooms providing a additional separate Wifi network. We also have a couple of POE devices and a POE switch for these in our networking cupboard.

Didn't bother with Coax, RJ45 or satellite cabling as these technologies are already redundant.

I may invest in some manage switches in the future if I could see any benefit.

Lenovo

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chevrolux

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#2612351 28-Nov-2020 16:13

- Run cables to stationary devices

- Coax is a waste of time in 2020, except for Sky.

- For 100m^2, a single, high-quality, well-placed, access point is going to be totally sufficient.

Edit: I ran 40-something cables in to a 160m^2 house and used maybe 10 of them. TVs, access points, and a couple PCs. Everything else that needed a cable was in the comms cupboard. I dont subscribe to "run double what you need" anymore as WiFi is just better these days.
Just to qualify that too, data cabling used to be my day job so was very much in the "run double" camp.

cyril7

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#2612352 28-Nov-2020 16:14

Hi, in general I agree with others above, however I feel we as geeks are incline to go over board with cabling, end result is lots of good cable gets wasted and never used, believe me I have seen this happen time and time again.

For Cat6 I recommend 2x runs to AV sites, 2 possibly 4 to study/office, and one to each bedroom to feed smart TV's. Cabling to Smart TV's and other streaming devices is critical, as is obviously the study/office.

Next run cables to ceiling locations to at least 2x wireless AP's obviously depending on the house size and layout a third may make sense, its critical in my view to ensure you get good full house coverage using ceiling APs with products like UniFi, Ruckus or Aruba, infact I recently had to deal with Grandstreams and was well impressed, so another option.

As for running cat6 to the side of beds, this no longer makes sense, most devices used in bedrooms (other than smart TV's) is better services by ensuring the hosue has good wireless coverage.

As for RG6 coax, in this day and age, just have a single run to each AV location and each bedroom TV.

As for do you run the bedroom TV cables to a high or low point on the wall (ie at TV height or at standard 250-300mm off floor) if you are undecided about TV location or even if there will be one at all, I suggest just run it to the lower location with a power point on the other side of the stud, and ensure power/data and coax cables can be accessed at the 1200-1400 height directly above and pulled between the low and high location with ease at some time in the future, this is not hard to plan for.

As others have said ensure the ONT is placed in the hub with the rest of the cabling, so ensure 20mm conduit is run with OptiCat5 cable within.

My 2c

Cyril

nztim

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#2612355 28-Nov-2020 16:25

I agree with @cyril7 except just a few more cat6 at AV locations to send Sky over Ca6 around the house because I am to cheap to pay for Sky Multiroom

Any views expressed on these forums are my own and don't necessarily reflect those of my employer.

cyril7

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#2612411 28-Nov-2020 17:35

Ahhh, sky is over rated.............. my hope is sky will develop better streaming options that makes multiple devices on a single account easier, and save resorting to projecting HDMI or CVSB over the house.

Cyril

webwat

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#2612426 28-Nov-2020 18:15

cyril7:

Hi, in general I agree with others above, however I feel we as geeks are incline to go over board with cabling, end result is lots of good cable gets wasted and never used, believe me I have seen this happen time and time again.

For Cat6 I recommend 2x runs to AV sites, 2 possibly 4 to study/office, and one to each bedroom to feed smart TV's. Cabling to Smart TV's and other streaming devices is critical, as is obviously the study/office.

Next run cables to ceiling locations to at least 2x wireless AP's obviously depending on the house size and layout a third may make sense, its critical in my view to ensure you get good full house coverage using ceiling APs with products like UniFi, Ruckus or Aruba, infact I recently had to deal with Grandstreams and was well impressed, so another option.

As for running cat6 to the side of beds, this no longer makes sense, most devices used in bedrooms (other than smart TV's) is better services by ensuring the hosue has good wireless coverage.

As for RG6 coax, in this day and age, just have a single run to each AV location and each bedroom TV.

As for do you run the bedroom TV cables to a high or low point on the wall (ie at TV height or at standard 250-300mm off floor) if you are undecided about TV location or even if there will be one at all, I suggest just run it to the lower location with a power point on the other side of the stud, and ensure power/data and coax cables can be accessed at the 1200-1400 height directly above and pulled between the low and high location with ease at some time in the future, this is not hard to plan for.

As others have said ensure the ONT is placed in the hub with the rest of the cabling, so ensure 20mm conduit is run with OptiCat5 cable within.

My 2c

Cyril

Really good advice Cyril. Watch out for the ONT though, because you need to plan for an accessible pathway into the cabinet so fibre can be pulled in by the Chorus tech. If you have to put in a draw wire then make sure it can still be pulled before the walls etc get closed up.

Good call about the TV outlets, some people hate the idea of wall mounted TVs or prefer a different room layout, so you must think of future users as well as your own preferences. If you do put something inside the wall for a future TV, its best to be directly above the low outlet so its both easy to find and easy to pull a cable through without getting snagged inside the wall.

If there is a possibility that a TV or office device (like a printer) could have an alternative location then run cable to both spots. If you aren't sure about wifi coverage the run a cable to another location as well. Don't forget any security cameras, door cameras, aircon controllers, or IoT devices that might need network or might become an option in future. Also the alarm cabinet probably can use ethernet for monitoring. Any location you want to put a phone should be thought of as internet, since the phone signal is patched in at the network cabinet, allowing the phone to be moved anywhere with a network outlet.

I do agree that its still worth running coaxial (RG6) to TV locations, but these days most likely just for freeview (if you can get UHF reception) since I don't believe Sky has that much future. You could run extra coax to an AV unit or the network cabinet just in case.

Finally, make sure they test all network connections end to end. Nothing should be connected to the landline phone service except with a patch cable at the network cabinet, one patch cable per outlet. All outlets terminate at one or more patch panels in the cabinet, so preferably the only thing connected directly to any "voice" panel is the incoming telecom landline.

Time to find a new industry!

everettpsycho

614 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2612428 28-Nov-2020 18:17

We are planning a 170m² house and I was genuinely only thinking 2 cables to each location, so that's:

Living room TV
All 3 bedrooms
Study nook

I'll see what a spark says about maybe upping the TV and study to 4 but this felt like a sufficient amount to me as switching equipment is an option. Running cable across the loft space could be done later should we need to add APs. My logic was 2 cables is plenty for either 2 devices or one there and one return if you need it for some reason. As most have said the likes of TVs and consoles drink data, get them off the WiFi if you can as they are things you won't exactly move about but all the devices you do move about will perform noticeably better on uncongested WiFi. Not to mention reliability, I've had absolutely no issues with my chromecasts and Google homes since running cables, something I can't say was true before I picked up the ethernet adapters.

Definitely worth running to where ever you want WiFi points though, even if you choose to use a mesh network or access points wired backhaul sees a decent improvement on most lower end systems. Unless you are springing for one that has its own dedicated wireless backhaul they tend to share their 1200mbps of traffic also bouncing traffic between the nodes. Plugging one in by your TV and cabling to the one in the bedroom removes all of that traffic again freeing up space.

We only have the tenda mw6 which is by no means fancy and by removing everything we could from WiFi and then cabling the backhaul we regularly hit 400Mbps on them and have blanket coverage which I'm more than happy with. I know people will say running to APs is better, and it is, but for an average user the $200 I paid for the tendas would be more than enough if you can use ethernet as much as you can.

nztim

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#2612492 28-Nov-2020 22:15

cyril7:

Ahhh, sky is over rated.............. my hope is sky will develop better streaming options that makes multiple devices on a single account easier, and save resorting to projecting HDMI or CVSB over the house.

Cyril

The problem is skysports now quality is awful, its 2-3 minutes behind broadcast tv, that just doesn't work for me and as a lover of live sport there is no alternative

Any views expressed on these forums are my own and don't necessarily reflect those of my employer.

fe31nz

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#2612509 29-Nov-2020 00:27

cyril7:

Ahhh, sky is over rated.............. my hope is sky will develop better streaming options that makes multiple devices on a single account easier, and save resorting to projecting HDMI or CVSB over the house.

Cyril

If you do not mind a do-it-yourself solution, then you can already distribute Sky on your network. I have made it available from 7 of my 8 tuners on my DVB-S2 card using minisatip to send it out as SAT>IP format data. So the MythTV boxes anywhere in the house can play or record any Sky channel I am paying for, on up to a combined 7 multiplexes at any one time. The other DVB-S2 tuner is used for collecting the EPG data and scanning for channel updates. I also have DVBViewer Pro on my main Windows PC which can record but I only use it for live viewing occasionally. I think MediaPortal is also able to record SAT>IP. It really is better if TV can just be put on the network instead of having to have separate aerial cabling.

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