Installing Cat cabling round the house

[KIT786]

Wasn't sure if I should make a new topic or ask in the PC Suppliers thread, but we are planning to re-plaster some of the walls around the house in the summer and I thought might be an idea to install cat6 (or 5e) cabling into the walls and put some ethernet ports in some of the rooms. So I was wondering is anyone here has done it and the best place to buy the required stuff in bulk.

I'm guessing I'll need the following:

Couple of reams of CAT6/5e (not sure what to use yet, but was thinking cat6 to long term "future-proof" the project)
RJ45 Keystone Jacks
Brackets/Faceplates
and possibly trucking to feed the cabling through, but should be able to get that at decent price from BnQ.

Have I missed anything, and any advice on what to do/not do?

Cheers!

[charlesr]

When I did it, I got stardard circular tubes for feeding through. The tubes go into standard electricity back boxes with a network socket on the front.

I only did from the TV area to the router though (up one wall, under the floorboards and back down another wall).

[smouty]

You can find the parts in b&q or homebase these days. When I installed mine a good few years back I used parts from clarity.it - http://www.clarity.it/xcart/home.php?cat=259

They are probably not the cheapest but have stood the test of time.
Cat5e will be fine for gigabit unless the price for cat6 isn't that much more.
Run in more than you think you'll need as there will always be something else.

[25.05.2005]

Did this in a school recently.

It's a good idea mate, especially for people who plan to stream HD on your home network to various devices in the house, such as a smart TV.

I honestly find the best prices are on ebay.

[KIT786]

Completely forgot bout ebay lol. How much did it cost you when you had yours done smouty, and how many rooms did it cover? I have around 8 rooms, and am planning on having 2ports in 5 of the rooms and 4ports in the other 3.

When doing it at school 25.05.2005, did you have to factor cost into it? Your figures would probably be more accurate seeing as it was more recent. I had approximated it would cost upto ?600 max not including a switch.

[smouty]

I installed it shortly after moving house when broadband became available so it was a decade ago
I had spare cable from a project at work but that isn't normally expensive ?/m if you buy a 300m roll.
I ran the cable(s) to all rooms from two points where I have the router and a switch downstairs so the topology looks like this.



I'm guessing it would have cost less than ?100 so with cable maybe ?200.
I could use existing cable routes though so no major work was required.

[Adrock]

I'd say Cat6 would be better because it means you'll be able to, in the future when the stuff gets cheaper, do interesting things like HDMI over IP for definite.

As for installation, conduit in the wall would be best for a rewirable installation but you're talking about at least 25mm or so to chase out of the wall. Which is rather deep and if, like me, you have concrete floors downstairs you'll end up chasing from the ceiling down, causing yourself lots of headache.

Cat6 is a bigger cable and a lot less happy being bent around tight corners so that might be something you have to take into account. For basic gigabit ethernet Cat5e is more than sufficient and will be cheaper than Cat6. Also be wary of buying from eBay and cheap alternatives, at work we once had a counterfeit Cat5e drum we used throughout a job and ended up having to rewire it all. The cores would just snap if you pulled them.