Replacing network Cabling

[Mbond]

Long time lurker, first time poster:

 

I am replacing bundled cabling at our house, all of it is CAT5 and I have found it to be SPLICED together in multiple places so it’s time to go. 
 

My problem is that it is sealed in a rubber coated bundle with two Coax cables and another cat5 cable, all of which is tacked to the wall. 

Any advice on getting this stuff out easily to replace it without destroying all our walls and ceilings?
 

Here is a picture of where it all comes into the Leviton box on the garage:

 

Thank you in advance everyone!

[kb5zue]

Judging from the picture, I am guessing the house is 20-30 years old minimum.  Also from the pic I figure the cable(s) are run vertically up thru the walls into the attic provided the house is not a two-story house.  If that is the way, the your only possible way would be to crawl up into the attic and pull the cables up thru the walls into the attic and then toss them downstairs and out the nearest window.  The problem that I see though is the possiblility the cables are affixed some way to the studs in the wall.  If that's the case, pulling them up would be somewhat of a real job, unless you are really strong or have a neighbor that lifts weights for a living.

 

There is an advantage to cables being routed in this manner.  Attach the new cable to the end of the old cable before pulling the old cable up thru the wall.  That way you can use the old cable to pull the new cable.  The only trick to that though is fishing the new cable down thru the wall at the business end ie; the box out in the garage.

 

Of course, to keep up with the times and to remove any problems about pulling the cables out or fishing the new cables in, you could go with setting up the house with your own WiFi.  Setting up a WiFi system is LOTS easier than the job that you are currently looking at.  And if you have a big house, or a multi-level house, there are WiFi extenders and stuff to create an even larger network to include such buildings.

 

Good Luck, let us know what you decide.

 

[Mbond]

@kb5zue Thank you for your reply! You are spot on that the house is about 20 years old. Unfortunately there is a full floor above this and then the attic. At this point I’m trying to decide if I should open walls to trace these and pull them OR run new cables in either the very spacious crawl space between levels or up to the attic and down into the existing wall outlets.
 

As for the Wi-Fi option, we already have UniFi 6 in-walls in three places and a couple U6 pros for wifi based off mapping done through the wifi man utility. As for why I’m wanting to replace cabling instead of hobbling together a wifi system; I’m wanting to replace all this current cabling  to have 10Gbe+ cabling for local networking like our AD, Plex server, NAS, and remote access to the compute power/stability of our home machines while working with large datasets. We previously had a wifi mesh system but the latency and unreliability due to our concrete walls and distance between rooms was too much to deal with regularly. 

[kb5zue]

13 hours ago, Mbond said:

@kb5zue Thank you for your reply! You are spot on that the house is about 20 years old. Unfortunately there is a full floor above this and then the attic. At this point I’m trying to decide if I should open walls to trace these and pull them OR run new cables in either the very spacious crawl space between levels or up to the attic and down into the existing wall outlets.
 

As for the Wi-Fi option, we already have UniFi 6 in-walls in three places and a couple U6 pros for wifi based off mapping done through the wifi man utility. As for why I’m wanting to replace cabling instead of hobbling together a wifi system; I’m wanting to replace all this current cabling  to have 10Gbe+ cabling for local networking like our AD, Plex server, NAS, and remote access to the compute power/stability of our home machines while working with large datasets. We previously had a wifi mesh system but the latency and unreliability due to our concrete walls and distance between rooms was too much to deal with regularly. 

Ouch, that hurts.  Opening the walls in order to pull cables will not only be difficult will probably cost a ton of money to have the walls repaired after you do your cable pulls unless you can do the wall repairs yourself.  If there is anything at the top of the list of things not to do, it is plastering and painting walls.  You said that you had a spacious amount of crawl space between floors so does that mean there is actually enough room to move around?  If so, then I would most likely take that route in order to pull cables from the bottom floor up to that space and then to where ever you need them to go.  If you do have that space in the middle between floors then I probably would also use that space to pull cables down from the floor above sort of making the crawl space the defact main route for your cables.  No matter what way you do go however, it isn't going to be a lot of fun.  Running cable can be very tedious.  When I was stationed in Zaragoza Spain the unit I was in did not have internet at all.  It was back in the day prior to internet, but they did have dial-up and fax.  I was lucky enough to run phone cords all over hells half acre, definitely not a lot of fun.

 

For some stupid reason I am still leaning towards some sort of over-the-air networking in order to avoid suffering the pain of having to crawl all around in that space between floors but I have to admit my knowledge in that area is very short.  The house that my family and I live in was wired for cable television when we bought it 26 years ago and not long after we bought it I ran cat5 cable all over the place, living room, bedrooms, etc., thru the attic and it was a royal pain but a couple of years ago we went entirely with a Netgear mesh wifi system so I just left all the cables in the wall and left them their.  This system works good for us in our house as we have 2100 square feet of living space.  The system came with a base unit (in my office), it is the only piece connected to any cable.  It also has a slave unit in the game room where my son uses it for him Xbox5 and another slave unit in the wifes office for her iMac Pro.

 

Running speedtest on the system shows that we get 900+mb download with about 60mb upload speeds.  Sorry, don't have any sort of server but I'm working on getting the parts to put something together.  I want something shared to put my 400+ dvd movie collection on.  Forgot to mention, our television is connected to the home network and I currently share the movie drive on my desktop to the television so I can watch them on the big screen.

 

No matter what you do, it is going to cost money.  That is just the way things work in the world of technology.  Especially when it either involves improving or upgrading your current system or just outright creating something new.  Sadly with the way the electronics industry goes, there is always something new coming down the road so you can never really stay on top of things for long.  Always something to upgrade.

 

I can sympathize with your wanting to go the cable route for the stability that 10Gb cable offers but I really have to try and look down the road to try and get a picture of what may be coming.  Sure, 10Gb is really nice but.....   how long will it be before something else comes available?  Looking at the overall picture, sooner or later, everything will go "over the air" if you know what I mean.  Take Linus for example, if I remember right, there is a video of his setting up internet access to his house out in the boonies somewhere.  Again, if I remember right, he had to set up some sort of satellite link up system to get the internet signal to his house across a lake or river.  Been a while since I watched the video.  You do know the astronauts on the ISS have internet access, right?  Hey, if they can get internet 240 miles straight up, I think there is a way that you can get internet throughout your house to satisfy your need for speed.

 

No matter what road you take, just make sure that you have it planned out on a piece of paper first.  That way you don't get lost in the middle of the project like I do.  Thank God for paper and colored pencils, different room, different color.

 

Wish I was there to help with your project, sounds like it would be a lot of fun to work on.  Take care and let me know what road you decide to take.