Network grounding? Shielded Cat6A disscusso

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mesyn191

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So I'm wiring my house up soon and decided on doing a lil' future proofing by going with Cat6A cabling. The particular cable I've chosen is shielded and will have to grounded out somehow in order for the shielding to be effective.

I've found a inexpensive "blank" keystone shielded patch panel that has the grounding wire coming off it to attach to....what exactly?

The patch panel will be connected to a wall via a swing out bracket so its pointless to attach it to that. Do I get some sort of wall out let adapter and ground the system out through the house mains or what?

Or am I going about this in all the wrong way?

TYIA

edit: So I finished getting the house wired up a ways back and everything went smooth. The ground wire ended up getting ran from the breaker box/house mains ground and out to the patch panel. Despite all the predicted horror-show it wasn't all that difficult to run or terminate the shielded cable. Everything was ran by professionals but the actual termination was done by myself and I'd never done a shielded connection before either. Took me about 5 hours to terminate and test everything. The only quirk in terminating them was making sure the ends of the conductors were trimmed almost perfectly flush so they didn't come in contact with the shielded portion of the keystone. A small set of angled snips works perfect for this.
 
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You could ground it via an outlet or you could also attach it to a copper water pipe as well.
 
Unfortunately the pipes in my house are PEX, no copper to bond to.

I wonder about using the outlet but wasn't sure how...just cut up a old busted cable and use the 3 prong plug from that to make an "adapter"?
 
Generally speaking when using shielded cabling you need ground in both ends - otherwise you will basically just end up with a large antenna.

Since fiber is cheap nowadays - why not take a look at that? Using singlemode you have virtually no length limits in your house and you can put all cables into a single area where you put your electric equipment in (switches, firewalls etc).
 
You only ground shielded networking cable at one point back at the patch panel, if you try to shield both ends you end up creating a ground loop. Major no-no. The shielding will also not act as an antenna either.

Even cheap ($.49/ft) fiber is also more expensive than Cat6A, both for the cable and the network adapters. FWIW I paid $250 for 1000' of STP Cat6A and that was not a "door-buster-special-one-time-deal" either. Amazon sells it right now for that price. Free shipping too if you've got Prime.

Now if I was doing some out door long distance (>100m) runs then yes I'd consider fiber but for indoor/in wall networking on a single 2 story SFR fiber still does not make much sense these days.
 
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That sounds totally bogus because then shielded prefabric cat-cables would only have one end shielded (that is the shield covering the connector) and would also demand to be installed in a specific direction - and at least I have never seen any STP/FTP/SFTP cat-cable which demands to be installed in a specific direction.

Here is a summary (wall of text but still :p) regarding shielding of communication cables:

http://www.fixya.com/support/t1189780-ground_shielded_network_cable

"
For longer connections, we provide other links types which do not require grounding at either end (multimode fiber, singlemode fiber, and category-5 unshielded twisted pairs). Direct grounding of the shield at both ends is the correct choice for our application.
"
 
They're discussing a different cable (" two-pair, 150-ohm, balanced cabling") and application and not standard ethernet cable for most of that wall of text, when he does bring up Cat5 network cable he makes sure to note "unshielded" for a reason. Also the article I linked was from a white paper on the subject, you should read all the associated links in it, much better info. than a fixya link.

EDIT: Another 3rd party link on networking ground loops:
"A condition created when two or more parts of a network are grounded at separate points, causing a voltage difference between connected networking components. These voltage differences typically occur because of nonuniformities in the electrical characteristics of the grounding at different locations."

And you realize the shielding runs the entire length of the inside of the cable right?
 
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First of all, shielded cable is not grounded- it is drained. The grounding on ONE END drains accumulated RF energy to ground. Connecting both ends of a shield to ground is BONDING, which you don't want to do with shielded cable.
Unless you are planning on wrapping network cable around your fridge motor, AC compressor and several neon transformers, shielded cable is unnecessary, and quite frankly is a PITA. If I won the lottery and started building a house, I would still go with 5E, because it works perfectly fine. Spending more money does not necessarily equal better. Take the money you save and buy a bigger TV.
 
Thanks for explaining the correct usage of the terms and such.

I knew using shielded cable is trickier to work with but wanted to ensure that I'd be able to get 10G speeds throughout the house (that is where the whole future proofing comes in). Some of the runs are of moderate length and I didn't feel like paying the electrician $rape$ to run the wires carefully away from any mains. Perhaps this is paranoid of me but I'm the sort of person who likes to do something once and never worry about it again.

Also my TV is already 6' across, borderline oversized for my living room.
 
There is no garantee 6A will be compatible with a 10GbE implementation for home. You are asking for trouble now to possibly, maybe save money in the future. Making an uninformed decision is not future-proofing. Future-Proofing is when you design to a documented standard for a designed lifetime. Just picking an alphabet soup does not gaurantee anything.
Paying electiricians to install data infrastructure is just dumb. Best practice for running Data cable (and I believe all LV cable) is 6" separation. I've run CAT5E 50' alongside 240V wiring (no choice) with no discernible issues, I qualified it with a Fluke Cable Qualifier.
Living in the land of Unicorns and Dreams, you can convince yourself of anything. In the real world, you are spending unnecessary money on what amounts to a guess. Unless you can come up with a documented infrastructure that gaurantees 10Gb interconnects at a price you can afford, it's all just a guess. 10Gb will NOT be implemented for homes with the hardware currently available. I doubt it will move much on price either for 5-10 years- there is no pressure to get it in production for business or home computers.
If you really, really must 'future-proof' your home data cabling, use flexible conduit for any inaccessible runs. Run CAT5e UTP for now, when the desired standard comes along, use the recommended cable.
Another issue is unless you are willing to pay to have your cable qualified/certified for 10GbE, you really don't know what you have.
 
RocketTech said:
First of all, shielded cable is not grounded- it is drained. The grounding on ONE END drains accumulated RF energy to ground. Connecting both ends of a shield to ground is BONDING, which you don't want to do with shielded cable.
Unless you are planning on wrapping network cable around your fridge motor, AC compressor and several neon transformers, shielded cable is unnecessary, and quite frankly is a PITA. If I won the lottery and started building a house, I would still go with 5E, because it works perfectly fine. Spending more money does not necessarily equal better. Take the money you save and buy a bigger TV.
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Well the side which plugs into your computer is most likely also grounded since the chassis is grounded along with the bracket to the nic (which is also how the nic gets its analog ground for emi/emc purposes along with as reference).

Other than that I totally agree with you... if you are in a situation where shielding is needed for emc/emi/tempest purposes then you would go with a multimode or rather a singlemode fiber. The later will have no issues with 10Gbit/s or even 100Gbit/s and higher.
 
I wish there was such a thing as future proofing.

I ran CAT6A through my home. Make sure you have shield keystone jacks and a shielded patch panel. You also need to make sure that you properly terminate all cables at each end due to the shielding in the cable. This is the biggest PITA. I did it myself because I couldn't find anyone, who worked on homes, that had experience with shielded cables and termination.

In terms of grounding my choice was to go with isolated ground to the patch panel which is basically dedicated copper wire ran from the ground bus in my home's break box to the patch panel. I would avoiding using pipes. If you Google the subject Siemens has some good papers on it.

Good luck.
 
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RocketTech said:
There is no garantee 6A will be compatible with a 10GbE implementation for home. ,,,, Future-Proofing is when you design to a documented standard for a designed lifetime.
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I looked at what else is available on the market right now and I think its a pretty safe bet, after all the market looves its evolutionary upgrades. Also quite frankly the arguments against Cat6A you guys are giving sounds an awful lot like the arguments against installing Cat5E that I heard over 10 yr ago.

RocketTech said:
Paying electiricians to install data infrastructure is just dumb.
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I know someone who I can borrow the certifier from and the electrician has the tools to run the cable through exterior insulated walls, which I need done in a few places, his price was also pretty good compared to other quotes I got for the job which includes some electrical (ie. install a 220v line + other stuff) work too.

RocketTech said:
Best practice for running Data cable (and I believe all LV cable) is 6" separation. I've run CAT5E 50' alongside 240V wiring (no choice) with no discernible issues, I qualified it with a Fluke Cable Qualifier.
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I'm sure you did but these anecdotes don't do it for me guys.
 
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Psychor said:
Make sure you have shield keystone jacks and a shielded patch panel.
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Yeah got all that already.

Psychor said:
You also need to make sure that you properly terminate all cables at each end due to the shielding in the cable. This is the biggest PITA. I did it myself because I couldn't find anyone, who worked on homes, that had experience with shielded cables and termination.
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Same thing here. I've already fiddled with the cable some. The screen (drain) is really the only finicky part for me, the rest of the termination is pretty straightforward.

Psychor said:
In terms of grounding my choice was to go with isolated ground to the patch panel which is basically dedicated copper wire ran from the ground bus in my home's break box to the patch panel. I would avoiding using pipes. If you Google the subject Siemens has some good papers on it.
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I might do just that.
 
That's kind of amusing as I know someone who's using cat6 and is running 10gb ethernet equipment and he's in the forums here over in data storage.

Cat6A is future proofing to some degree, but its no guarantee you 'll get to capitalize on it.

Cat6 is rated to run 10gbe for 40 meters. Cat6A is rated for 100 meters at 10gbe. That assumes that you use the proper ends and terminate them correctly.
 
There is only one reason to F-Proof using Cat6-7 and that is 10ge. There are NO other reasons to upgrade. Cat6-7 is sort of in a way already doomed.

I would strongly suggest you NOT future proof with Cat6/a/7 and here is why.

There are inherent negatively impacting issues that occur with copper cabling that is running at such high frequencies such as 500mhz required to get 10g speeds. Secondly unless some amazing engineering is performed there is no way that copper is going to support speeds much higher than 40gbit which is commonly referred to as infiniband. That is about the max limit it will ever support according to industry leaders and top professional engineering firms.

For instance...

Copper for 10ge is heavy, it literally weighs in 20x more than fiber.
Copper for 10ge is range limited by more than just length.
Copper is also highly impacted at 10ge speeds when bent out of its allowances.
Copper at 500mhz frequency is highly susceptible to crosstalk both locally and alien crosstalk.
Copper is also way harder to manage than fiber esp. using cat6+ standards due to the increased diameter of the cabling, the shielding required to prevent alien crosstalk, and the heavier amount of copper needed.
Copper has far less port density on 10ge applications than fiber.
Copper is going the way of the past due to its inherent negative limitations as bandwidth increases are experienced regularly with each generation (my words).
It is also advised for future proofing reasons that copper is highly energy inefficient compared to fiber. For instance a 10ge copper port can use a maximum of 45 watts of energy per port to maintain signaling power able to sustain 10ge bandwidth. Cx4 however can use 4.5. 10gb SFP+ only uses a specified maximum of 1watt per fiber. That is cheap on energy.

Additionally copper has a much higher phy latency due to the massive amount of computation necessary to prevent and correct bit errors due to crosstalk, voltage drops over distance, and other highly technical conditions.

Fiber on the other hand is extremely future proof as it basically negates all of the above listed negatives.

Fiber is cheaper
Far better latency due to almost zero bit level inconsistencies.
Can hold a much higher range of frequencies, i.e. a red light laser and a blue light laser for channelized frequency based multiplexing, can run 2 10gig channels on the same exact fiber at the same time. There is no wait period for the lasers to have to switch between color frequencies. It is simultaneous operation.

Fiber is much smaller, far denser at the switch.

Fiber is also just as inexpensive as copper and if sourced correctly can be had for less foot for foot.

OM3 and OM4 "Aqua" fiber is also under IEEE development that all existing OM3 and 4 fibers will be able to achieve 100Ge throughput in the very near future. When 100ge goes mainstream and it will you can expect a significant drop in 10ge prices, especially on the used part markets as enterprises shift from 10 to 100. This is debatable as far as the pricing and shift is concerned of course. Save that for another forum.

There was one time when only enterprise could afford 1gbit/e and it was entirely cost prohibitive for any home user to run. I remember those days. It was a mere 7-10 years ago. Now it cost as little as $1.50 to put a gig/e phy on a common Asus mobo.

I am in the process of completely future proofing my home and business networks by shifting to all fiber optics and associated hardware on my signature desktop, office PCs, and going 10ge on my NAS and servers in both my home and office. My standard access devices, i.e. printers, IP phones, etc... all stay on copper of course where latency and throughput isnt important factors on the level fiber potentially offers.

This is probably way too much however I am learning a massive amount about fiber vs. copper as I am having to shift many of clients over to fiber.

On fiber networks I notice a significant buttery smooth feel with networking, enhanced latency, faster server response times, and over fiber transfer rates are more consistent. I suppose this is due to the almost virtually loss-less signaling that light over glass provides with little to zero interference possible. I know this sounds funny but some of us are gamers and have those 120fps eyeballs. I definitely have 120 fps network eyes if I were to try to make a metaphor for this conversation.

Unfortunately while fiber is cheap as dirt right now the switching is NOT. Maybe in 2-3 years as it becomes even more commonplace in the small to very small business sector it will be less expensive. 1gig fiber cards can be found for $30 on ebay and new about $100 so that is NOT cost prohibitive at all really.

Lastly and required to say... There is NO reason to upgrade desktop PC's to fiber as the switching required to run them is far too expensive and completely cost prohibitive. The market just isnt in place for desktops to switch to fiber honestly. I believe that copper 1gig is going to remain the way of the future for a loooooong time when applied to access level equipment. Servers and NAS/SAN however it is almost required to go fiber in order to remain on top of performance and stability.

If this is too much info then maybe someone else could have a few confusions answered by this wall of text. I know much of this doesn't apply to home environments of course but some of us are enthusiast and will add a couple or a few 10ge links in our homes. I am the process now. Just got my two Cisco 10ge SR modules for my switch and I am waiting on my ebay Intel 10gig SR cards to arrive from ebay. All used ... 2 10ge links from desktop to switch and switch to nas for $650.00 not bad at all.
 
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And to add in to my above... dont switch to fiber for gaming. Your gaming latency will be limited to the copper that is connected to your house.
 
tangoseal said:
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This is interesting information but I'm not building a data center here where I'll need a network that can move 100's of Gb of data in the next 5 years and all the crosstalk issues are easily handled by the shielding...which is why I wanted it in the first place.


I'm far more worried about the latency from my ISP than my home network.
 
I've tried to purposely cause interference on a standard cat5 cable and it's very hard to do. I did not have proper measuring equipment though, I was just doing a ping -f and had a couple transfers to see if I drop any packets. Would be a fun experiment to try again with a better way of measuring it though.

Anything you do to your network wont affect your internet though unless you are a lucky bastard and have FIOS or other super high speed connection.
 
mesyn191 said:
This is interesting information but I'm not building a data center here where I'll need a network that can move 100's of Gb of data in the next 5 years and all the crosstalk issues are easily handled by the shielding...which is why I wanted it in the first place.


I'm far more worried about the latency from my ISP than my home network.
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Right but since we are discussing future proofing and Cat6, not necessarily related to your specific needs I figured it would be okay to share a great deal of info.

On the other hand there is no measurable increase in network performance (1gbit) using cat 6 over 5e. All that chart indicates is that you have less noise on a cat6 over a 5e. Honestly for the home it is not necessary but there is no reason not too if you want it
 
Also keep in mind that CAT 5E/6/7 is just about for which specifications the cable was certified/tested against.

There do and always will exist physical cables thats only been certified for a lower standard but will perform just as good as a cable certified for a higher standard. Not to mention that today its not uncommon that cables being sold as CAT5E actually are CAT6 cabling (but just tested for the 5E spec and not the 6 spec - but of course the other way around exists aswell a CAT6 cable that fails CAT6 specs but is ok for 5E is then sold as 5E).

So yes just looking at the standard a CAT5E pair will only be able to do 125MHz (or 62.5MHz per line) where a CAT6 pair is tested for 250MHz bandwidth (or 125MHz per line) among other stuff.

The major drawback of fiber is the two standards: multimode vs singlemode. Personally I would go for singlemode as "futureproof" even if interfaces are slightly more expensive for singlemode than multimode. Which is the other drawback, slightly higher prices (just make sure to get equipment that does SFP/SFP+ and you should be futureproof here aswell) compared to using regular copper RJ45/CAT5/6/7.

A third drawback is most likely that you cant do fibermounting on your own (needs somewhat expensive equipment to solder it correctly, doing Macgyver-style with a lighter will most likely not succeed =)
 
Theres no need to do any fiber melting macguyver stuff lol.


Fiber in mm and sm on monoprice is like $10 for 3-4 meters. Plus you wint use fiber for common access equipment. Just high performance storage, vm, isci, fcoe and elite badassness.
 
Soldering (or whatever its called in english when you melt a fiber with a pigtail) is needed if you want to put up a clean patchpanel unless you use prefabricated lengths.

And personally I prefer fiber over copper for 1Gbit/s and upwards but perhaps im the only one in here with those preferences? :p
 
Apachez said:
Soldering (or whatever its called in english when you melt a fiber with a pigtail) is needed if you want to put up a clean patchpanel unless you use prefabricated lengths.

And personally I prefer fiber over copper for 1Gbit/s and upwards but perhaps im the only one in here with those preferences? :p
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Assuming the OP is putting drops in to quite a few places around the home though, fiber isn't exactly practical is it? :D

Unless its just between a SAN and some workstations I suppose. Can't imagine having fiber to my IP phones, xbox, and whatever other twisted pair devices I have at the time. Media convertor at every wall socket, not too convenient.
 
The Intel x540-T1 NIC for RJ45 copper may make some of this thread obsolete.

It's already as cheap as $350 new and will get cheaper.
 
mesyn191 said:
Thanks for explaining the correct usage of the terms and such.

I knew using shielded cable is trickier to work with but wanted to ensure that I'd be able to get 10G speeds throughout the house (that is where the whole future proofing comes in). Some of the runs are of moderate length and I didn't feel like paying the electrician $rape$ to run the wires carefully away from any mains. Perhaps this is paranoid of me but I'm the sort of person who likes to do something once and never worry about it again.

Also my TV is already 6' across, borderline oversized for my living room.
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If that's the case then just run 2x cat5e and fiber to each location. terminate the cat5e and leave the fiber in the walls until you need it. you can't argue that fiber is the future, you just can't guess when fiber in the home will be "normal".
 
Just to clarify, I'm not saying electricians don't know how to run cable and fish,nor that they don't have the proper tools to run cable. I have and still encourage people to hire an electrician for any electrical wiring.
Hiring an electrician to install data cabling (run, terminate, certify, document) is like having a knife sharpener make you a decent sword- they are familiar with the concept but lacking in experience and foresight.
I have seen so many data installations done by excellent electricians (no sarcasm, they really were excellent at AC wiring) totally screwed-up and installed with no eye to future needs. Forget no labels/documentation, no certification, fastened with staples, terminated incorrectly, mid-span splices, etc- They assume the customer knows what they are asking for... they don't have the experience in Data Networking to advise the customer.
Why doesn't your friend who is willing to loan you a $10,000 10GbE Certifier give you a hand? They should certainly have a better grasp of what you have and what you hope to accomplish.
 
I had a horrendous time trying to find an electrician that understood how to terminate shielded networking cable. I only looked around because I didn't want to spend the time to do it myself (time vs. money, etc.). In the end I did it myself and I'm glad I did.
 
I wired the data lines in my place with cat6a terminated with cat6 ends.

Currently everything is gigabit, but I do foresee a time in the future when I will upgrade to a couple of 10gb circuits.

Honestly, drive speed transfer rates are the limiting factor. My storage array is the only thing that is consistently being held down my the network.

I expect my VM host to be in the same situation shortly. I can stream multiple HD channels with ease over gigabit. 10gb is more than enough. Since I highly doubt I will see speeds higher than 1Gbps from comcast anytime soon, 10Gbps is plenty fast for home use. Even Ultra High Definition TV is expected to be in the 40-80Mbit range for streaming using H.265
 
RocketTech said:
Why doesn't your friend who is willing to loan you a $10,000 10GbE Certifier give you a hand?
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It doesn't take long to run certifier apparently but he doesn't want to be bothered with dealing with any possible termination issues. Looking online those things are expensive but the LANTekII seems to run around $6-7K for the full kit.
 
bds1904 said:
If that's the case then just run 2x cat5e and fiber to each location. terminate the cat5e and leave the fiber in the walls until you need it. you can't argue that fiber is the future, you just can't guess when fiber in the home will be "normal".
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I don't need 2x ethernet ports in each location and by the time Cat6A becomes obsoleted what is available out there will have changed so much that sticking fiber in the walls may very well be pointless.
 
mesyn191 said:
It doesn't take long to run certifier apparently but he doesn't want to be bothered with dealing with any possible termination issues. Looking online those things are expensive but the LANTekII seems to run around $6-7K for the full kit.
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Right around $7K for the LANTEK II-500, + another $2K+ for the 10GbE Alien CrossTalk kit, needed to properly certify 6A for 10GbE use. I use Fluke because of their traceable certification, the LanTek II looks like a good fit for your purposes.
 
OP

any of your neighbors have trucks with more than 5 antennas and a license plate that says like "WA5VLB" or something?

no?

don't worry about it

proper RF grounding is actually really hard to achieve under the best of circumstances, and is usually unnecessary unless you are at a transmitter site.
 
mesyn191 said:
I don't need 2x ethernet ports in each location and by the time Cat6A becomes obsoleted what is available out there will have changed so much that sticking fiber in the walls may very well be pointless.
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You don't need 2x ethernet ports in each location NOW. Running 2 cat5/6 instead of 1 isn't much more labor.

If you are convinced that so much will change with fiber before cat6a is obsolete then the very basis of your "future proofing" is flawed.

I install cat5/6 in people homes and businesses every single day for a living. Believe me, if you think you 1 Ethernet jack in a location now, you will need 2 in the future.

Just remember, all forms of multimedia and communications are heading towards IP based. Hell, all the new DVR's coming out (more than IP based TV companies too) can run the slave STB's over Ethernet.

Personally, if it was my house I would run fiber from the basement to where you will have your TV, computer, servers (if it isn't where the fiber terminates anyways) as well as to next to your power panel in the basement. Run 2x cat6 to each jack, including where you ran fiber. Hell, run 4 drops to the main TV. Also, don't forget to run 2x cat6 over to next to your power panel too.

That's what I call future-proofing.

Oh, and if nothing is run parallel within 12" of electric, you are well within spec for anything you want to do.
 
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Dude FIber is not going to be obsolete. Light can carry well in excess of 10,000 times the amount of data that electrical energy over copper can. Cisco's words, not mine.

lets put this into perspective .... Copper can run one signal per pair in duplex.

Fiber can run, using DWDM, 64++++ signals at once on a single fiber. That means you could have 64+ 10GB signals all on one single fiber... lets see.. that is 640Gb/s on one single fiber.

Show me copper that can do that. I believe that copper is going the way of the dinos and soon, say 10 years or so, everything including your home will be fiber. It probably wont be long until HDMI cables are replaced with fiber version of HDMI.

Light is in an entirely different spectrum of technology that copper can and will never reach.

Hey on another note... I just got my 2 Cisco X2-GB Short Reach pluggables for my 3750E and all I am waiting for now is my 2 Intel XF SR 10gbit cards. Im so stoked to be running a full 10gb/e network between my sig rig ->. switch -> nas
 
Apachez said:
So yes just looking at the standard a CAT5E pair will only be able to do 125MHz (or 62.5MHz per line) where a CAT6 pair is tested for 250MHz bandwidth (or 125MHz per line) among other stuff.
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Actually the two halves of each pair are specced and run at the full 125 or 250Mhz. They are 180deg out of phase, so the amplitude adds together, but the frequency does not.
 
bds1904 said:
You don't need 2x ethernet ports in each location NOW. ,,,,,Just remember, all forms of multimedia and communications are heading towards IP based.
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Most of the rooms are bedrooms, in the office/TV area there are multiple runs being done for this purpose. 6 alone are going behind the TV. 12 10Gbe lines for a 3 bdrm home is plenty.

bds1904 said:
If you are convinced that so much will change with fiber before cat6a is obsolete then the very basis of your "future proofing" is flawed.
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Not before, after Cat6A is obsoleted, likely well after. I certainly don't plan on upgrading my home network before its "fairly" obsolete, and 10Gbe will be more than enough for my home for a very long time. Over 10 yr easy, probably closer to 20. Alot is going to change over that time period.

bds1904 said:
Oh, and if nothing is run parallel within 12" of electric, you are well within spec for anything you want to do.
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Oh its a lot longer than 12" of length by the mains, FWIW I would've went shielded anyways since some of the runs are of moderate length while being bundled closely together.
 
mesyn191 said:
Oh its a lot longer than 12" of length by the mains, FWIW I would've went shielded anyways since some of the runs are of moderate length while being bundled closely together.
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I mean cat6 and electric running parallel within 12" of each other (example: think of zip typing cat5 to electric). Crossing electric at 90 degrees isn't too bad, but running parallel within 12" is.

Bundling cat6 together with only 30 drops really isn't bad at all as long as everything is run correctly by spec in the rest of the house. its not like an enterprise where all 30 drops are running data traffic simultaneously all the time.

Oh, and for a 2 story, 3 bed home with office and 1 entertainment center, typically I do 26-28 drops.

2 in each bedroom (pc & stb)
2-4 to kitchen, depending if they have a TV in the kitchen (voip, spare, stb, spare)
6 in the office area (printer, wap, pc, voip, backup drive, spares)
8 to entertainment center (stb, tv, bluray, ps3, 360, network media player, spare, spare)
2 drops to central location in basement and upstairs for additional WAP's or other things.
 
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