Moving to new house and have received a quote from our trusty wiring company to set up home theatre wiring and in wall/ceiling speakers, etc. Also got a quote to run cat5 to each of our two offices. Now I'm wondering if I need to bother with wiring the offices. This is an older house and we'll have cable service. There will be a modem, our AE base station, etc. Obviously it will be cheaper to leave out the cat 5 stuff. What's the benefit for casual web surfing, occasional networking between macs and, of course, wireless printing? Unfortunately, the quote does not break out the costs of each aspect of the project. (Of course I plan to ask.)

Forgot to mention that we do steam movies.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/06/2012 07:46AM by MartyStickle.

reliability.

its hard to give advice without knowing the price but its usually a good idea to set up a good wired network.

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If they're running wire already, then the cost difference *should* be mostly materials. And since you're paying for it:

Always 'futureproof' wiring runs:
Use Cat6 (gigabit, baby)
Make sure they leave at least one or two 'pull strings' so you can pull other stuff later (fiber, carbon/diamond fiber for terabit holographic 4D feelies, etc..)
Make sure they terminate everything in a common 'cable closet' where you can station your network switches, cable distribution box, mac Mini server, etc..

I find having an ethernet backbone in any structure to be critical. Wifi won't get through some things like mirrors, metal ducts, large appliances, metal lath behind plaster walls, hard stone fireplaces and fascia, operating microwave ovens and cordless phones, etc... You'll end up running Cat5 because somewhere you'll have a signal problem.

But.. if you don't want to run ANY wiring, then go ahead and do a wireless survey of the house. Set up a base station in what you think is an appropriate area and walk the house with whichever is your least wireless capable device (Powerbook G4 or iPhone 4.. both have sucky wifi antennae). Make sure you have enough signal all through the house to use it. If you don't, you can at least run Cat5 to the other end of the house and put in two base stations.

I would run wire to each room, which is what I did several years ago before wi-fi became popular. Our two iMacs are on the wired network and the iPhones, iPads, and laptops are on wi-fi. We have a large one story house, 90 feet from end to end, and the wi-fi signal is weak in one end of the house so the mixed system works out pretty well.

If you're going to have them pull Cat, do Cat6 and have them pull two runs to each location. The cost difference should only be the cabling. You could also have them pull a string with the bundle so that you can always pull more.

If this is a two story home, at least have two Cat6 runs pulled between the basement and attic. You could always run the Cat6 into a closet, install a switch, run wiring up into the attic and down to rooms as needed. Or you could use one of the cables to feed something like an Airport Express to extend your wireless network.

If I were building or remodeling, I would definitely pull Cat6.

I neglected to mention that I ran two Cat5e cables to each room, one for phones and one for ethernet. I used a Leviton Structured Media panel and ran the cables to the various rooms, including the garage, in a star pattern from the middle of the house.

I'd at least run cat 6 to key areas. You may not need it for the usual computer access, but you may want security cams or household utility monitoring.

Our house came with Cat5e already run from the media/wiring closet to each bedroom. It's been great. I also installed another router on the wired line in our bedroom to extend the wireless signal.

I then put a switch in another closet behind our main HDTV to get Cat5 to our BluRay player/media streamer/Wii. Much better quality when streaming .MKV files than going with WiFi.

Yes you guys are right as usual. Wire it will be. I'll talk to them about cat6 instead of 5.

All the affected rooms are either below the attic or above basement so it should be easy.

Marty,

Something to consider... Expense. If you're going to open the walls or it will be very easy to run the cable, then definitely hardwire the house. As Cbelt said, if you're running cable anyway, it'll be primarily just the expense of the materials. Go for Cat 6. The difference in price between cat 5 and cat 6 is minimal and it future proofs the wiring for a good long time.

But, if hardwiring is out of the question, you can try wireless or powerline networking. Wireless can work very well overall. You may run into some minor issues due things described by cbelt but wireless should work well. Powerline networking may be viable as long as the origin and destination powerline networking boxes are on the same circuit.

I'm in a situation that is similar to yours. My wife and I are moving and we have to decide how to wire the new apartment. Hardwire is out of the question due to both location, time and expense. So, we're going to go wireless or powerline. My first choice is powerline because of speed. It's faster than wireless and will make a difference for sending backups to our family backup server. But, we don't know if the outlets in the room we've designated as our office are on the same circuit as at least one outlet in the living room which will be the location of the server. (The backup server doubles as a media server).

If powerline networking does the job, great. If not, we'll go wireless.

Robert

I would have said wired all the way 5 years ago.

But our new residence doesn't have it, and I've gone all wireless. It's superb. We have tons of wifi gear in the house, and streaming from the iMac in the basement to an apple tv on the top flow over wifi still lets everyone else surf the web, go to netflix, etc.

Frankly, I'd save the installation $$ and spend it on home network hardware like ATVs, a time machine wireless backup device, etc.

If you really want to future proof - have pipes run (think 1" PVC). Then pull the wire through it. That way when Cat 8 comes out or you want Thunderbolt everywhere, you just easily snake it through. The cost is more but you set for years.

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You can tell a lot about a woman by her hands...
- For example, if they are wrapped around your throat she's probably slightly upset.

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Ombligo
If you really want to future proof - have pipes run (think 1" PVC).

If you go this route, I would suggest the use of EMT over PVC.

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RIP, Greg the DogSitter. You are missed.

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sekker
I would have said wired all the way 5 years ago.

I agree. Especially with the number of WiFi only devices (cell phones, handheld video game systems, tablets, media boxes, and even some laptops). Ethernet seems great until half your devices aren't using it anyway.