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Paid an electrician to fish ethernet for me from my utility closet where the router is to my home office. Was well worth the expense. WiFi is great, and I use it for all the other devices in the house. But I work from home most days, and I got tired of the random slow-downs and drops.
Way back in the late '90s, my first apartment was a brand new development with a T5 connection (I think) that offered each unit 8 glorious Mbps. However, I needed to get that connection shared between 2 PCs in different rooms. Wifi was not an option (expensive and slow), even a router was a major financial investment for me back then. So, I bought an extra network card and a 100 foot crossover cable and ran it down the hallway.
It was so successful, that I continued to incorporate very long cables in my builds for the next 20ish years. Even today, my desktop computer is not wifi capable, but first I migrated to powerline ethernet and more recently mesh wifi with my PC plugged into one of the child nodes.
I needed to get internet to a building that’s around 400 feet away. I had the opportunity to get a trench dug, so I took a gamble, laid a conduit and ran shielded CAT6. I say gamble because that’s over the rated limited of CAT cable, but I figured it was going to be easier then trying to get a reliable wiki bridge running. The home network itself has been solid since.
shielded
FYI, the shield only does something if you ground it, and you need to be very careful to only ground one end so as to not introduce a ground loop. If it wasn’t grounded then regular unshielded Cat6 probably would have performed the same.
Going over 300 just limits you on speed after errors
If you have poe on the output end, there are repeaters that you could have buried along with the cable. Not a big enough signal difference in your case to be worth it probably but worth noting for other folks.
Eh, there’s conduit, so they can always upgrade to fiber down the road.
I pay for the internet so the modem stays on my room
When we finished our basement, I had the electrician run two Cat-6 cables to a box right by every outlet and back to a single point. I had to terminate and punch everything down. But, now I have Ethernet throughout the basement.
Totally worth it.I just recently ran a bunch of cables in the house. Lots of work, but yes definitely worth it.
I have a bunch of useless phone jacks in several rooms of my house, and I’m wondering how much this would cost me. I took a look at the housing behind them and it doesn’t seem like anything I could convert myself, so it seems like a qualified electrician job…
You can just cut them out and replace them with Ethernet wall jacks, they are pretty cheap. Most have color coded punch downs on the back. Use the existing phone lines to pull the cables through the walls to wherever the phone lines end in a junction and that’s where you can set up a switch or router.
I literally just did this over the Christmas break. The drywall mounting outlets are a game changer.
My house came with a convenient hole connecting my office to the basement so I just used that.
Incredible stuff! Cat6?
Been a dream project for years but when I first explored it a decade ago, cat6 was still new and expensive, and wasn’t recommended because “who needs internet that fast”.
I remember being told (on Reddit) that the only difference between Cat5 and Cat6 is the shielding in the insulation, and that it wouldn’t affect speeds at all. Shit fucking doubled my speeds!
Many people find Ethernet confusing.
CAT6 and CAT5e are very similar, but standard CAT5 can not do above 100mbps duplex. 5e can, but isn’t tested for 1000mbps duplex, whereas CAT6 is designed specifically for that speed. CAT6 doesn’t actually need to have shielding to be CAT6 but in the early days it was a common way to meet the standards. The biggest difference is actually the connectors. You need CAT6 RJ45 to make a CAT6 cable. 5e cable with a 6 connector works better than CAT6 cable with a CAT5 RJ45 in my own testing. CAT5 connectors have pins that all line up straight across, CAT6 has staggered pins. This staggering helps prevent crosstalk between the wires.CAT8 is the current newest standard, and I am not brushed up on the standards specs yet. CAT7 was never made official, manufacturers made it ahead of time and it might be a little better than 6 but it almost never meets 8 standards, and is about the same price.
Cat7 doesn’t use RJ45 connectors, so it’s not useful for residential use. Any Cat7 with RJ45 connectors is fake.
Cat8 isn’t worth it for residential usage, and IMO 6A isn’t worth it either. Cat6 will do 10Gbps. For anything faster than 10Gbps, I’d use fiber. It’s similar in big data centers - they almost always use Cat6, Cat6A, and fiber (for 25Gbps, 40Gbps and 100Gbps connections). No Cat7 or Cat8 or anything like that.
The one place I’d always use fiber instead of Cat6, regardless of distance, is when connecting to a different building. There’s risks with lightning strikes, ground loops, etc that fiber avoids since it’s just light.
I’m getting 10gbps over my 100ft 5e run. But iirc 33m/100ft is the max for that
When you’re renovating that expense is relative imo. And the cable is relatively cheap imo. Nice wall sockets for them are super expensive though. 200 euro or thereabouts for 500m of cat6, but 20 euro per outlet pair adds up. Definitely still worth it, because like expected there’s more stuff to connect.
As somebody who does networking for a jerb, you are getting ripped off if you are paying $20 USD for a CAT6 wall plate. What you want to get is punch down keystones and a keystone wall plate, at least half the price. Maybe that’s what they cost at the hardware store though, I haven’t ever had to buy one from there. I order all mine.
I use these keystone jacks: https://a.co/d/2sl6M8I. A bit expensive ($60 for 50) but they’re toolless and work better than other toolless designs. Haven’t had any issues with them. You can likely find cheaper ones outside of Amazon.
For faceplates, I usually use some like these Legrand On-Q ones, which are usually $0.99 each: https://a.co/d/ieAqlSq
I use keystone blanks to cover the unused ports (eg like these: https://a.co/d/3JYTdAq). I initially only had Ethernet near my TV, but I added HDMI too (using keystones like these: https://a.co/d/bknAVDc). Using the 6 port faceplate meant I didn’t have to replace the faceplate when routing the HDMI through the wall.
This is what I did. Grabbed UL certified faceplates and a bunch of keystones. Total outlay was probably $50 including drywall/Sheetrock mounting brackets.
I went all out with Cat6A. I have some 10Gbps capabilities with my home lab, and although I currently do not have any 10GbE copper capable systems, I thought I’d try to go future proof.
My only regret is that I only went with riser grade cable - plenum was way too much, even for plain Cat6.
Just run OM3 and you’ll be set for 100gbe!
By that point might as well go with OS2 and be set for 400gb+
If your house was built after 2000 (or has updated wiring) you might wanna look into Ethernet over power. The kits are usually less than 50 bucks (depending on the speeds you’re using) and they allow you to hardline your computer without running a cable across the entire house.
The way they work is by plugging a parent box directly into the wall near your router you can run a short Ethernet to the box and then plug in the sister box near your gaming rig and run another short Ethernet from the wall to your computer. It basically just uses the copper wires of the house wiring to transfer the data.
There are some exceptions to be aware of. If you have a particularly large house the speeds might suffer over a long enough run. Or if they have the internet on an entirely different breaker panel it won’t work.
I am currently using one at my house. The wire gives me better ping, but slightly lower total download speed. So if I’m downloading a big game or something I’ll just unplug the Ethernet at let it download faster over wifi and then I switch back to wired for gaming.
I wish there was a way to test this without spending 50 bucks. My results have simply been that the resulting signal is just as unreliable as WiFi.
I used one in an apartment where I had my modem in the living room, then went out to power, power back to an access point in my room that had my work VPN built into it. Ran a VoIP phone off of of it and 2 work desktops. Worked in IT at the time so I was using multiple remote softwares and didn’t have any issues.
Maybe just order one for pickup at a local store and return it if you aren’t satisfied.
I did in my house which was built in the 1950s or 60s and it works. With that said, it was only ok and I wouldn’t use this for anything but internet access and some light streaming. This was 10 years ago so it is possible they have gotten better. I have since moved to mesh wifi and it literally solved every issue I had and the whole house has incredible wifi no matter where you are. Plus I use the AP’s to plug in my more dedicated stuff since it’s faster than wifi to use the backhaul the APs use to communicate with. I do wish I could afford to redo my house and put in ethernet wiring everywhere and have a dedicated switch for everything.
I used to use a powerline adapter in a house built in the 60s and it worked great.
Yeah they can work on older homes but I find they tend to work better in newer construction
Be aware though if you use DSL: the frequency of the Powerline devices will most likely match and disturb your (in most cases) unshielded two copper wires over wich your DSL Signal is transmitted
Though this also depends wich DSL Variant you are using.
For example Super Vectoring - 250k Down /40k Up will have troubles in most cases to uphold packetloss to a minimum.
All of this is ment to be a thing with DSL Speeds over 100Mbit (at least in Germany).
Source: I am an IT dude, had DSL Problems, Telekom Technichian was sent out and I talked to him about the causes and such.
To add some non-text source:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywQeJCa3jl8
LTT Quick Vid about Powerlines and how they work.
When I used one of these it jammed the wifi
I have never had that issue. I would have been very curious to try and trouble shoot that. Was it older house? Plugged in near the microwave?
Older but not too old. Not near the microwave. There was a problem with the WiFi not penetrating a wall well so a WiFi extender on the other side connected to Ethernet over power was supposed to fix that. But that turned out more unreliable than before. In the end a WiFi mesh network worked the best.
Mesh networks are pretty hard to beat. Especially for houses with walls that aren’t kind to wifi.
Just pop your ancient phone line/ cable outlet off the wall and fish a couple wires up/down the wall
Don’t pull up that coax man. If it’s good, you can use MoCA. Some cable modems even have a MoCA bridge built-in.
Oh yeah Moca is solid!
Just as long as it’s not all going to a box outside or something
By right, to get the most out of MoCA, anybody wanting to use it should do themselves a favor and spend 10 minutes reading about where to place the filters and why some of the decades-old coax splitters in their house should be replaced first. And maybe try to map out how the coax is already running, if they can see it.
I had one room in my old house where the line wasnt stapled to the framing and was able to bind them together and pull it through at the other end. the rest were stapled
current house I can run them through the attic and down the inside of the walls but the attic is full of rat shit and I can’t motivate myself even with hazmat suit.
Never owned a house, so for the past decade, I ran wiring up the side of stairs and to the side of walls.
Last year during the move, I’ve been too lazy and got wireless. Been fine for us! We’re also not playing anything that requires low ping or anything.
Once I own a house and can drill holes, I’m absolutely going back to wires.
I would love if I could do this, but wouldn’t matter because speeds are bad here most of the time because it’s an apartment complex. I’m just lucky I don’t play online games that require a good connection is all I’m saying.
Better make WiFi routers hubs between every 20ft and interconnect them as mesh network this way your setup will be many times more robust, speaking from experience, on the job we have internet cables drawn inside walls so they aren’t accessible and some cables can lose some signal strength after a few years of usage, these hubs are mainly for strengthening signal at key points, but also if at some point signal is lost then WiFi bridges can act as temporary solution until you find where is that cable in chain of cables and replace it
Sir this is the shitpost community not the shittysysadmin community.
On anothernote: take my upvote :D
Thanks)
Or just, get good cables.
OP is likely running it through hallways.
some cables can lose some signal strength after a few years of usage
Roughly how many years are you thinking about? I’ve been using the same 10m ethernet cable for more than 20 years. And my expectation was that only physical wear would damage it (eg. rolling and unrolling it to deploy in a different place; possibly closing a door on it accidentally… that kind of thing).
Same, but cable detoriated despite being untouched inside walls
Either your cables are made with the absolute worst insulation I have ever heard of, or your environment is doing something to the cable. I have done networking in 200 year old building with CAT3 from the 1990s that still works today. I installed a CAT6 cable in my parents house in 2003 that still works.
If I ever had a cable in a wall just go bad I would put that cable vendor on the blacklist immediately. Is it possible that the cables are being damaged during installation?
I agree that wifi is a great fallback option, but what happens when the cable running to the AP deteriorates?
Whole mesh network then, WiFi 6 offers good speed now anyways and it’s not so expensive, only downside is that devices that are not WiFi routers are mostly WiFi 4 or 5 Edit: i agree tho that it would be worth it to invest in good cables, but problem is, I’m working at that company for one year and architecting and building that network was done 15 years ago, i was highschooler then
This will have literally a hundred times the latency and terrible jitter.
Still better than open half a building of walls
