Cat5 Cable vs. Ethernet over Power

H

H4N_S0L0

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Nov 21, 2010
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Being relocated and just purchased a new house.....

What direction should I go:
--> Get my house wired up with Ethernet cables
--> Get a series of Ethernet over Power devices.


My current house when it was built (3 years ago), it was prewired in all the rooms with Ethernet.

They all terminated in one location, where I had a router / wifi setup. The impact on the connectivity for our family has been 2nd to none... and we want to be 'wired' in the new house.

The new house is also new but lacks the pre-wired ethernet. The IT guy at work recommended to look into Ethernet over Power. I did look into it and there are some reasonably priced 85, 200 & 500 mb systems. (some even had 4 port switches + wifi)

The decision would be a slam dunk but I've read some issues with the traffic when there is a nosiy appliance in the house (refregriator, vaccum cleaner)

Can you please school me by answer two questions:

1) get it wired or use ethernet over power
2) how do I isolate noise items such as the fridge? (rember the DSL filters that use to come with a DSL setup from the phone companies, is there such a device?)

Thanks.
 
I'd get it wired up with cat6 (not really much more expensive) and be done.

I see EoP as a poor man's or temporary network, I personally would not use it permanently. If you don't have the money or time to wire the house up now what I'd do is use secured wireless for now and slowly wire it up as time/money permits. If the basement is unfinished the task is fairly easy. Cut hole in drywall, drill a hole down, go in basement, look for hole, shove wire up.

The way I did my house is I installed a keystone (blank holes) patch panel in the basement where I will be building the server room. Each jack that I installed leads to this panel. Phone jacks also go to that panel using cat6 - I can convert to RJ45 in the future if ever I go with a voip setup. I also ran a phone jack from the nid, and I have one splitter, a filter is attacked to one side, with another splitter going to the phones. The other side of the first splitter is for DSL.

A setup like that allows for many possibilities. I have one jack that is actually on a separate network as I just patched it differently in the basement. I can change this quickly if I need to, just plug the patch cable somewhere else. When I work on people's PCs I plug them in there and it's outside my main network.
 
Nothing will beat having a wired cat5e/cat6 network in your house.

Power network devices are really for extreme cases where cabling is not doable, IMO. Live in a Victorian era house and don't want to punch holes in that fancy woodwork? Yeah, I would find another solution too.

If you are capable and the house is workable then yeah, go for it. It is worth the extra effort.
 
Two best things I did to the last house I bought: install ceiling fans and wire every room for network. Don't go cheap - its just as easy to pull two cat6 to every room as it is a single cat5. Its fairly easy to get a good Cat6 patch panel for the main termination. The extra cable & parts will cost you a few $hundred. Never having to say "I wish I had..." later is priceless.

Spend a day (or two). Do it right.
 
For cheap cabling check out monoprice.com too. I personally love keystone patch panels, they have blank slots like wallplates, so for each drop buy two keystones, one at both ends. You can use the patch panel for phone jacks and even coax (have not tried but I assume it works too). The possibilities are endless.
 
Yep- go CAT6, multiple drops to each room, while you're at it you may as well run Coax too. One thing to keep in mind too is to run multiple drops in to larger rooms (say a living room for example). When I did my house I did 1 coax and 3 cat6, two for data and one for phone but it could be done for data if needed.
 
to add to all that information- if your new house is actually new then it will be wired correctly and up to code so you can disregard this... but if your 'new' house is older and uses any combination of some older two conductor non grounded cable, or older aluminum wire, or any steel-sheathed wiring, be prepared for terrible EoP speeds and LOTS of interference. the house i am in now- i might as well rip all the sheetrock out and start from scratch. there is no way EoP would ever work in this house. i just installed 18 network drops as soon as we moved in, no sense in doing it half assed.

and there are devices you can get that plug in near large interference producers like refrigerators and fans. something similar to this, although this is specifically for X10 automation controls, they still use signals over power so it should filter out the same interference.

http://www.smarthome.com/1626-10/FilterLinc-10-Amp-Plug-In-Noise-Filter/p.aspx
 
EoP is a terrible hack solution. Run yourself proper CAT6 and do it right.
 
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