Wiring house with CAT6 questions...

[kxrider85]

I am going to be wiring my house with ethernet soon, and when looking at tutorials, I have noticed that a lot of people opt to run more than one wire to a room, so that they have >2 ethernet ports coming through one wall plate.

 

What is the point of this? Why not just run one wire to each room, and then buy a 5 port switch for the room if that isn't enough.

 

 

One other thing. My plan is to run a single CAT6 cable from my router at the far end of my house to the laundry closet in my hallway nearby two bedrooms I want to wire. That cable will connect to a switch, and split off into two other cables that will run to each bedroom. My second question is: Is it okay for all of that internet bandwidth to ultimately travel through a single CAT6 cable, or would it make a difference if I ran two cables that connect to two different ports on my router.

 

I know this won't matter for my measly two bedroom setup, but for the sake of future expansion, I'd rather not have to run another wire all the way across my home through the attic again.

[WereCatf]

6 minutes ago, kxrider85 said:

What is the point of this? Why not just run one wire to each room, and then buy a 5 port switch for the room if that isn't enough.

Because then all the 5 ports on that switch would be sharing 1 gigabit bandwidth. If you instead run multiple, separate cables, they'll all have 1 gigabit bandwidth all to themselves.

[mariushm]

Some people prefer to configure separate VLANs on their routers/switches and have separate networks for the things in their house.

For example, they may have one cable going into the room, which goes to the TV - the TV may have access only to a NAS through a VLAN, or may only have access to the Inter - it won't be in same network with the computers in the house.

Or there may be a cable just for telephones, like voice over ip, or to connect a wireless router for  wireless internet in that portion of the house.

 

 

[kxrider85]

26 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

Because then all the 5 ports on that switch would be sharing 1 gigabit bandwidth. If you instead run multiple, separate cables, they'll all have 1 gigabit bandwidth all to themselves.

But at the end of the day, all bandwidth has to go through the one wire that connects my router to the switch that runs to the bedrooms. So the bottleneck is between the router and the switch, not between the switch and the rooms, if you know what I mean....

 

That was kind of the motivation for the second question, because I'm not sure running a second ethernet cable to another switch would solve it. It seems like it would be 1Gb/s per router, not 1Gb/s per port on the router, but I don't know.

 

In other words, if I have a three port router, then do I get 3Gb/s or do I get 1Gb/s shared between all three ports? I thought it was the latter, in which case it doesn't matter how you run the cable, because you are always limited to the 1Gb/s coming from the router.

 

9 minutes ago, mariushm said:

Some people prefer to configure separate VLANs on their routers/switches and have separate networks for the things in their house.

For example, they may have one cable going into the room, which goes to the TV - the TV may have access only to a NAS through a VLAN, or may only have access to the Inter - it won't be in same network with the computers in the house.

Or there may be a cable just for telephones, like voice over ip, or to connect a wireless router for  wireless internet in that portion of the house.

 

 

Ah okay. This is definitely more sophisticated than what I am trying to do.

[WereCatf]

43 minutes ago, kxrider85 said:

But at the end of the day, all bandwidth has to go through the one wire that connects my router to the switch that runs to the bedrooms. So the bottleneck is between the router and the switch, not between the switch and the rooms, if you know what I mean....

You asked why other people do it that way, I answered. If you've designed your system so that you've got network-bottlenecks, that's on you.

[kxrider85]

54 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

You asked why other people do it that way, I answered. If you've designed your system so that you've got network-bottlenecks, that's on you.

But wouldn't this be a problem that everyone has? I'm sorry, I'm a networking noob, but my current understanding is that if you have a router capable of 1Gb/s, then everything connected to it is sharing that 1Gb/s connection, and there is no different or better way you can set things up to solve this.

 

As far as I know, the normal thing to have is a single modem connected to a single Gb router, connected to a single switch, connected to a patch panel, and finally connected to wall plates in the rooms that need internet.

 

 

The setup you described sounds completely equivalent to what I am talking about. Technically speaking, I'm not understanding what the difference is between these two.

It sounds like you are saying this

is better than this:

 

I'm just curious why that is if thats what you meant....

[WereCatf]

8 minutes ago, kxrider85 said:

It sounds like you are saying this

The whole point is that in the upper picture, all the computers connected to the switch can communicate with each others at the full 1Gbps-speed. In the lower picture, all the computers inside the room can communicate with each other at the whole 1Gbps-speed, but to communicate with computers in the other rooms, they'll be competing for bandwidth.

 

This doesn't sound like it's a concern to you, but there are plenty of people for whom it is a concern, like e.g. multiple people need to be able to access a NAS or a virtualization-server simultaneously at the full 1Gbps-speeds, regardless of what room they are in.

[kxrider85]

9 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

The whole point is that in the upper picture, all the computers connected to the switch can communicate with each others at the full 1Gbps-speed. In the lower picture, all the computers inside the room can communicate with each other at the whole 1Gbps-speed, but to communicate with computers in the other rooms, they'll be competing for bandwidth.

 

This doesn't sound like it's a concern to you, but there are plenty of people for whom it is a concern, like e.g. multiple people need to be able to access a NAS or a virtualization-server simultaneously at the full 1Gbps-speeds, regardless of what room they are in.

Okay I think I am starting to understand what you're saying. Suppose there were three computers in the top picture trying to access another computer at 1Gbps. You're saying they should all be able to have access to 1Gbps speeds, but don't they all have to simultaneously communicate with the router over one cable at 1Gbps first in order to send information to the computer in question, or does it not work that way?

[Donut417]

3 hours ago, kxrider85 said:

But at the end of the day, all bandwidth has to go through the one wire that connects my router to the switch that runs to the bedrooms. So the bottleneck is between the router and the switch, not between the switch and the rooms, if you know what I mean....

 

Not necessarily. Internal data transfers will only go as far as the switch. So the only time the router gets involved is if you need internet access to the data. 

 

4 hours ago, kxrider85 said:

What is the point of this? Why not just run one wire to each room, and then buy a 5 port switch for the room if that isn't enough.

1. Switches require extra power to run, if you only need two devices connected at a location then its a waste to have a switch. 
2. Some might have Ethernet in multiple locations of a room in case they move devices and such around. 
3. What if 1 Ethernet cable fails? You still will have one thats good. 
4. As @WereCatf stated, congestion 

 

Im not saying your solution wont work. It will work, probably fine. But you have to think about how your going to use your network. There are cases where you can easily fill up a 1 Gbps link. Which is why in some cases people might use 10 Gbps copper or Fiber in areas they expect to have congestion. 

[kxrider85]

 

3 hours ago, Donut417 said:

Not necessarily. Internal data transfers will only go as far as the switch. So the only time the router gets involved is if you need internet access to the data. 

How does the switch know what computer to send data to if it never reaches the router?

 

I will probably just wire it the way you guys are talking about anyway. I will have plenty of extra cable. I'm just curious how it works at this point. >_<

[Donut417]

1 minute ago, kxrider85 said:

 

How does the switch know what computer to send data to if it never reaches the router?

 

I will probably just wire it the way you guys are talking about anyway. I will have plenty of extra cable. I'm just curious how it works at this point. >_<

Switches exist to allow people to have LAN's. The switch itself is all that is needed and it has the ability to get the traffic where it needs to go. Switches exist due to the fact that if more than one machine talks at a time on a LAN, you have a collision of packets. This was the problem with Network hubs back in the day. On a switch each port has like a traffic cop at it, that lets each machine know when the coast is clear to transmit data. Routers actually have switches built in to them. The only thing a router can do that at least a normal non managed switch cant do is DHCP. The DHCP server is what assigns IP address to all the devices on your LAN. 

 

Now if you want to get really in to it, look up managed switches. Those in some cases can replace a router. They provide much more advanced settings and tuning. 

[skywake]

8 hours ago, kxrider85 said:

What is the point of this? Why not just run one wire to each room, and then buy a 5 port switch for the room if that isn't enough.

Adding to what everyone else has said there are also scenarios where you might want the two cables to be two different things. Not just VLANs or more bandwidth necessarily. You may want one to be powering an access point or a camera via PoE. You may want a direct 10Gbps link between two devices but not want to have to buy multiple 10Gbps switches. You might even want to play around with one of those HDMI over Ethernet devices.

 

Speaking for myself? I did a single run to every point I wanted networking and it's certainly workable. But there are certainly some locations where more than one run would've been handy. Honestly, if you're doing this make a point of overdoing it a bit and you'll save yourself money/effort in the long run. I ran my cables about 5 years ago, 5 runs in total all 1 cable. At that point that was pretty overkill because I had basically one device per run with the exception of my TV room. I now have only 1 room with 1 device, everywhere else has 2-5 wired devices. So 5 & 8 port switches in every room. I also have two rooms which have access points which are powered via PoE and I have to use a PoE injector rather than a central PoE switch. Also even though I don't need it at all I've toyed with the idea of 10Gbps but to do that the cheapest option would be to do more cable runs.

First world problems for sure, having 1Gbps to every room alone is pretty amazing compared to the speeds I used to get across the house on WiFi. But if you're doing cable runs do at least two for every location. The cost/effort of running a second cable while you're doing it anyway is pretty trivial. If I had done two runs instead of 1 everywhere I would currently have:

- 3 more spare power points around the house

- my UPS backing up power to both access points instead of just 1 (and more flexibility in where I put my second AP)
- A couple of hundred $ cheaper upgrade path to 10Gbps between my NAS/PC if I wanted to

..... also if I was to do it again I would've done separate runs for my APs and mounted them on the roof instead of ghetto mounting them on the wall after the fact. Something which I am thinking of doing anyways