single cable vs multi-cables

[steakman1971]

I recently got a network rack and a 24 port gigabit switch. I'm in the process of moving stuff from my basement office to the switch. (The rack is in another area of the basement.)

I have CAT 5e cable ran in part of my basement already. It's not too hard to run more cables in the basement. I'm thinking of running 4 cables to my office and maybe a few more to a future home theater area.

I am also trying to figure out how to run at least a single cable to the first and second story of my house. The builders did not allow me to wire the house and I thought they were price gouging me at the time. I showed them - I didn't pay the $500ish to have it done.

Looking back, I'm kind of screwed now. It is a pain to try to run cable up stairs. So, my question: am I going to take any speed loss in running a single cable and then using a switch to get cables to each bedroom? I'd be using a gigabit switch.

I think I can get a cable into my attic (total pain to do so), then fish down cables to the other bedrooms on the 2nd story. I'd stick the switch in the attic. I'd probably make this a wifi hotspot as well to get better coverage upstairs.

The alternative is to run a cable for each bedroom. I'm going to have to cut part of my walls to get the cable, so patching/painting is the same if I run 1 or X cables.

Advice please? (If I do it again, I'll pay the money to have my house pre-wired. They might have put in a patch panel or other hardware, didn't get far enough along to find out at the time.)

 

[dragonstongue]

http://www.techspot.com/community/topics/whats-the-length-limit-for-a-cat5-cable.1677 hope that helps to answer a bit . I have been in a few server rooms for telecom providers and their cable runs are wicked long.

I suppose the speed you would lose would not come from 1 cable to switch but from how much each is being fed if that makes sense, at least this is the way I would understand it, unless there is some kind of limiter on said switch preventing a specific system from getting more then X speed.

 

[timta2]

The alternative is to run a cable for each bedroom. I'm going to have to cut part of my walls to get the cable, so patching/painting is the same if I run 1 or X cables.

If you cut a retrofit electrical box in to the wall and terminate it with jacks available form hardware/home stores you won't have to repair/patch or repaint anything.

If they used Cat5e or better for your phones (not likely), you could possibly use that as a feed for upstairs. Who needs phone jacks anymore anyway, right?

There is often a lot of fire blocking in modern homes so it can be a real challenge to get to the second floors. Sometimes you can find wiggle room in pipes or other features that run between the basement and second floor. If you get frustrated you can always hire an electrician or low voltage specialist to do it properly, of course that won't be cheap, though but you know it will get done right.

 

[staticlag]

Run a conduit along the outside of your house from the basement to the attic.

 

[Syco]

I'm in the middle of running cat-6 and coax throughout my two story house. The house was built in 89 and no coax was run, which I'm trying to fix now. I do have coax to about half the rooms in the house but it was all run after the fact, and most of it runs outside of the house. I actually planned to do this about 2 1/2 years ago and bought everything then but just finally got to it. The problem I kept running into over that time, was finding a spot to run the cable from the basement to the attic in a straight vertical shot. We decided to do a complete bathroom remodel and I took that time to install a conduit as the best wall to use happened to be one of the bathroom walls we were taking down to the studs. Even that proved a problem, as the upstairs wall and downstairs wall were not perfectly aligned (about and inch off), and the required a bit of a bend in the conduit. But, we persisted and now I have 2 conduit pipes running from my basement to my attic and I have run all of the lines needed for my upstairs.

As for your question, I don't see anything wrong with running a single cable to a switch in the attic (or you might want to consider a bedroom closet due to heat/cold, etc.) The downside to this is that if your data needs ever increase you have a bottle neck between the devices on your upstairs network, and the devices on the downstairs network. Will that ever be a huge problem, probably not, but then again I remember when a 1mbit connection seemed insane. The other downside is you lose some additional flexibility. By having all of the cat5/6 run to a central point, you can patch it however you like, and even use it for other uses. Maybe you need to add some phones, or want to run HDMI over ethernet, by having all of the runs to a central location you can do that. I would also recommend running at least 2 cables to each room, again for the flexibility. It's really no harder to run 2 cables at the same time as running 1 (assuming you buy 2 spools).

The moral of the story is don't give up. Walk through the house and look at every wall, I'm sure you can find one that you can use. You might have to cut a chunk of drywall out to access the header/footer to drill a hole/run conduit, but it's not that much work or time to patch drywall in the grand scheme of things.

 

[mwarps]

So, my question: am I going to take any speed loss in running a single cable and then using a switch to get cables to each bedroom? I'd be using a gigabit switch.

No, not unless you expect every single room to be fully hammering the network for full gigabit speed at every second. If you're just sharing interwebs, you won't notice.

Even if you're backing up to a fileserver, or doing movies or whatever off it, your network is still limited by its single uplink.

EDIT: in a conservative fashion, my weekend time is worth $100/hr. If you spent more than 5 hours on this project, you made a poor decision not having the electricians do it, and it looks like you learned your lesson.

 

[dragonstongue]

I have always run mine through the duct work or beside it, they tend to have tons of space beside can easily be mounted to/in and usually the register cover is hiding a gap left for spacing, drill a small hole and you got the cable run in a space already made and do not have to worry about extra work that doesn't need to have been done.

Though by all means a dedicated conduit sounds perfect, maybe you can combine both of said ideas?

 

[Haven]

If they used Cat5e or better for your phones (not likely), you could possibly use that as a feed for upstairs. Who needs phone jacks anymore anyway, right?

My house was built in 2000 and all the phone lines are CAT5e. I plan to eventually switch them all over to Ethernet instead of phone. I also had CAT5e network jacks in most rooms as well. So this just gives me an extra network jack in each room.

 

[steakman1971]

Thanks for the advice. I am either going to scout out my ducts or find an area where I can make minimal adjustments to the walls (will likely have to drill the floors). I can patch these easy enough.

We don't have CAT5 for the phone jacks. In fact, we only have 1 in the whole house. Our builder wanted $250 per jack. I thought this was ludicrous, so did not opt for extras.

I do have 10 feet of GlowRods - this should help with shoving the cables.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I never understood the thing of builders not allowing to run cable between work. I would lay them off, do the wiring, then hire another crew to finish the rest. Heck, just telling them this might make them just let you do it. I'm sure they'd hate to lose out on lot of work because of some silly decision they made. It is your house afterall and you hired them to do a job and should be flexible if there is other work going in at the same time. Sounds like it's too late now though.

Is the basement done too? I find the easiest is to cut a hole in the wall, then drill down, and then just shove a coat hanger or fish wire through and pull the wire up. Run along the joists to where the network/server room is. For second story guess this is where it would get trickier... could run it right in a corner wall and drill up then use vertical moulding or something to hide it. I imagine you still have paint left over from painting? If yes then you can get away with making some holes in walls as needed as the paint colour should blend in easily given it's new.

 

[/usr/home]

I never understood the thing of builders not allowing to run cable between work. I would lay them off, do the wiring, then hire another crew to finish the rest. Heck, just telling them this might make them just let you do it. I'm sure they'd hate to lose out on lot of work because of some silly decision they made. It is your house afterall and you hired them to do a job and should be flexible if there is other work going in at the same time. Sounds like it's too late now though.

Is the basement done too? I find the easiest is to cut a hole in the wall, then drill down, and then just shove a coat hanger or fish wire through and pull the wire up. Run along the joists to where the network/server room is. For second story guess this is where it would get trickier... could run it right in a corner wall and drill up then use vertical moulding or something to hide it. I imagine you still have paint left over from painting? If yes then you can get away with making some holes in walls as needed as the paint colour should blend in easily given it's new.

If he's getting a new house built, the developer owns it up to final sale so technically then can charge and do what they want.

 

[wizdum]

I never understood the thing of builders not allowing to run cable between work. I would lay them off, do the wiring, then hire another crew to finish the rest. Heck, just telling them this might make them just let you do it. I'm sure they'd hate to lose out on lot of work because of some silly decision they made. It is your house afterall and you hired them to do a job and should be flexible if there is other work going in at the same time. Sounds like it's too late now though.

Is the basement done too? I find the easiest is to cut a hole in the wall, then drill down, and then just shove a coat hanger or fish wire through and pull the wire up. Run along the joists to where the network/server room is. For second story guess this is where it would get trickier... could run it right in a corner wall and drill up then use vertical moulding or something to hide it. I imagine you still have paint left over from painting? If yes then you can get away with making some holes in walls as needed as the paint colour should blend in easily given it's new.

I don't understand it either. We were never like that when building homes. Maybe its different if the builder owns the lot, and then sells it to the customer?

If you have baseboard, there usually about 1" of space between the floor and the sheetrock. Thats a good place to hide a cable or two for horizontal runs. If there's a closet or something below the room, you can sometimes drill up through the ceiling and into the wall above, then cut a small hole for an old work box to fish the cable through.

 

[schnell]

I have always run mine through the duct work or beside it, they tend to have tons of space beside can easily be mounted to/in and usually the register cover is hiding a gap left for spacing, drill a small hole and you got the cable run in a space already made and do not have to worry about extra work that doesn't need to have been done.

Though by all means a dedicated conduit sounds perfect, maybe you can combine both of said ideas?

I hope you are using Plenum rated cable if you are running it through air ducts. If not it can create very poisonous gasses if it ever catches fire and now it is blowing around your house since it is in the air ducts.

 

[jeffmoss26]

THIS! ^^