Questions before I wire my house

95 Taco · March 20, 2019

Hey guys, I have a few questions to ask before I get elbows deep into wiring my house with Cat 6.

First, a little backstory.

We currently have the ISP router/modem AIO unit in the upstairs bedroom at the end of the house, while it gives good results for most of the house the office (opposite end of the house and downstairs) has abysmal wireless performance (7Mbps on a good day vs 54 hardwired or 30+ wirelessly at the router) and instead of tackling this issue with something like power line adapters I decided to bite the bullet and do some wiring in the walls.

My first step was to buy a Netgear R6700 Nighthawk router (inexpensive, I know, but I'm on a budget and it will perform better than the AIO) and I've since decided to mount it on the ceiling in the center of the house, and then from there I'll run ethernet to the office as well as a PC that's in the upstairs bedroom.

Attached is a very simple drawing for what will be done. the line on the left side with all the devices listed will be what is attached to the switch, I went ahead and listed the TV's but I probably won't connect those, I would still like to have an extra port or two on the switch when I connect the devices I use.

Oh, and as for the "upstairs" position on the switch that's simply a cable that will be run to the room above the office in case I put a smart TV in there, I don't fully expect it to be used but didn't want to run it from the router.

My biggest question is, will I be better off dropping 2 lines from the router to the office? Is there a performance difference in having a 10 port switch vs two smaller switches?

ETA: from some light googling I just did I may be better of running the second wire and using it for the TV DVR.

intertan · March 20, 2019

as far as switches it depends. Cheap ones are just cheap. for the most part general home use shouldn't matter

I work for an isp and we like home runs to the basement/dmark to install equipment. have ran into issues were they do a run from the fiber ONT to a location. That run goes bad for some reason now every other wiring in the house wont work unless that gets replaced.

My house for example has over 20 cat6 runs all to 1 location. No one sees it unless I am in the furnace room. I also don't want this behind my tv and gives me lots of options to hard wire and install wireless AP if needed. We are getting to the days with many devices on wifi, slowing down wifi when you could hard wire more devices. Plus speeds are only geting faster. Wifi won't be able to keep up. My NAS is also in that room, it is big and noise and another advantage having it in the furnace room.

I recommend this, 2 runs to each room. ISP has tv services, QOS control is best having the tv on one line and internet on another.

Main tv locations I ran 6, smart tv (wall mount, 1 line goes to it), xbox one, android box, PS4, Home theater receiver is 4 right there. Yes I could install a switch behind the TV but it is already a mess back there.

what is your budget like? co-worker ran a bunch of lines in his 70's house. Back then there was no such thing as internet. He installed all unifi equipment and installed 2 AP upstairs, 2 downstairs and 1 in his garage. House AP are in closets using POE switch.

Jarsky · March 20, 2019

Genreally i've always done more than 1 run of CAT cable to a point, incase one goes bad then you have a spare.

If I take my old home as an example, from the networking closet (with my switch, router, servers, nas, etc..) I installed a patch panel, and ran 2 cat6 to every bedroom, and 2 to the lounge. In the lounge I had another switch mounted to the back of the theater cabinet for the Xbox, PS4, TV, HTPC, Receiver, etc...to plug into.

95 Taco · March 21, 2019

The house is small (1200 Sq ft) so with the new router (installed today temporarily where the modem is) I have great 5 Ghz coverage throughout the house, I had considered running a spare cable for an AP but I won't need it using a non-ISP router,

Budget is tight, I'm doing all the work myself and work at a big box store so I got a discount on the Cat 6 cable and crimp kit, amazon seems to be the place to go for inexpensive keystone jacks (I won't be connecting/disconnecting from them often so they should be fine) and I would like to not use more than about 400' of cable, I bought 500' but would like extra to make patch cables for this house as well as my parents house.

I think I'm going to end up running 2 lines from the router to the office and then running a line between the outlet above the office to a spare port in the office so I can simply plug a patch cable into the switch if I need ethernet above the office.

Since I'm running a line to the other upstairs room I might as well run 2 also, I don't see a use for it currently but if I'm doing the work already it's pretty easy to double it up.

As for wiring other rooms I don't have access to the living room/main TV area to run cabling through the wall because of the house design, the best I can do is run a line off of the switch In the office alongside the baseboard, tuck it into the storage space under the stairs and then pop it out behind the TV to either plug in directly or put another switch, not super clean but better than nothing. I personally don't see a need right now for that unless I end up building/buying a NAS to use as an audio server as my sound bar offers a service to connect to a home media server.

Thinking about it I may end up with a second switch in the attic if I want to run ethernet security cameras, but for now I think the 4 ports on the router will be just enough.

Thanks for the help and advice guys, I hope to have everything completed (including drywall work) by the end of next month, I'm already excited to have the better speeds and coverage just from the new router in a less than optimal position.