Cat6 Home install

[taggart6]

I'm looking to install a cat6 network in my new house and wanted to know if anyone had some online resources I could take alook at. My plan is to have my Zero node in a cubby under the stairs and run 2 cat6 lines to every bedroom next to a power outlet.

[Timman_24]

Resources as in guides or places to buy? I purchased the majority of my gear from Monoprice. Do not shop for ethernet cabling locally, they gouge the hell out of it. As for my recommendation, I'd go with a 16 port gigabit switch. If you will be fiddling with it a lot, then I'd put a patch panel in too. If you have a basement (even a good crawl space), going with floor mounted keystone boxes would be much easier than fishing it through the walls. Depending on how the cabling was done in you house, it may not be easy to fish the ethernet throughout the house. The standard way to run power is to drill holes in the studs and run them through the studs. It can be very hard to run a new wire through those holes as some are completely filled with wires already or it is too difficult to line up the cable with multiple holes.

Its really cheaper than most people think to do an entire house. I did a wifi-bridge and ethernet wiring in two buildings for under $1000 and that included switches, routers, and antenna. Are you planning to add a NAS as well?

[James]

Resources as in guides or places to buy? I purchased the majority of my gear from Monoprice. Do not shop for ethernet cabling locally, they gouge the hell out of it. As for my recommendation, I'd go with a 16 port gigabit switch. If you will be fiddling with it a lot, then I'd put a patch panel in too. If you have a basement (even a good crawl space), going with floor mounted keystone boxes would be much easier than fishing it through the walls. Depending on how the cabling was done in you house, it may not be easy to fish the ethernet throughout the house. The standard way to run power is to drill holes in the studs and run them through the studs. It can be very hard to run a new wire through those holes as some are completely filled with wires already or it is too difficult to line up the cable with multiple holes.

Its really cheaper than most people think to do an entire house. I did a wifi-bridge and ethernet wiring in two buildings for under $1000 and that included switches, routers, and antenna. Are you planning to add a NAS as well?

Go with a patch panel for sure for your termination point. It makes things easier. (in my opinion)

As for the walls, if you have a basement you are golden, It's actually quite easy to put the normal 12-16" high "box" in the wall, just run your cables up through the wall (a good 1/2" or 3/4" paddle bit helps) to the opening you cut for the box. (unless you are doing actual boxes, but I'm talking about the low voltage "frame" boxes that are used for installing after the fact).

I wired my house when I moved in. Every room has a plate on each wall with a CAT6 and a coax link. The spot where I mounted my wireless router has 2 jacks, (one links back to the cable modem, the other to the switch). Tooke me a total of about 10 hours of work spread over a few weekends. For the downstairs, I came up from the basement into the walls. For the upstairs, I used a piece of 2.5" grey ePVC as a "trunk line" and then treated the attic as a mirror of the basement. All the wires ran up through the trunk from the basement to the attic, then to the walls and down inside them to the normal box. The biggest pain is exterior walls with the insulation, other than that it is a breeze. I have everything in my house wired to a 24-port patch panel. I'm using a 16-port switch and I've only got about 12 of the ports active currently. I used Cat 6a cable from Monoprice and RG6 coax from home depot (believe it or not, it was a wash with monoprice on that). I ended up using 1 1000' box (with plenty of left over) and 2 500' spools of RG6 (not much left over due to redundant homeruns back to the cable connection outside the house).

So tl;dr version. Go for it. Use a patch panel. It's easier than you think with only a few frustrating points. Buy from monoprice.

*Edit: I will say I used leviton jacks and jackplates for the wall ports. Not for any special reason, other than that I had a wholesale warehouse (Accutech) next to my job that I bought from at a discount.