Home wiring cat6.

I don't know who else to ask other than you fine folks. I have searched on google, but honestly not really found an answer to my question.

Who do I pay to run cat 6 to the rooms upstairs? Wireless is spotty and others in the house play games. We currently run a cable loosely up the stairs that I tripped over and almost broke my neck so I think it's time I do something about the situation.

I wouldn't know how to do it and I don't have a drill. Would I pay an electrician to do this or is it something openreach would do? Would it be expensive?

You could ask your local electricians whether it is something they could do. If there is a local computer shop they might know of someone.

Also Security Alarm technicians are very good at cable routing and have all the tools for fishing cable if need be.

Local CCTV installers.

In reply to a post by slowmo87:

I wouldn't know how to do it and I don't have a drill. Would I pay an electrician to do this or is it something

Good thing you don't have a drill! Get an electrician to route the cable safely if the preferred routing requires drilling through walls or ceilings and upstairs floorboards.

And don't really bother with Cat6, Cat5e is perfectly adequate for 1Gbps

Is the cable you have already (the one that tried to kill you) the cat6 cable you want installed. Are you purchasing the cable yourself or are you leaving the cable type to the installer.
The reason I ask is there are a few different types. If you are purchasing the cable and would like to know more about the different types reply and I will explain them.

Possibly its just a very long adsl cable filtered at the master socket running to a router upstairs?

Thinking outside the box. You could run the cable externally from inside the house, up the outside wall into the roofspace to a switch and drop cables down to each bedroom. ?
Just a thought

In reply to a post by MHC:

And don't really bother with Cat6, Cat5e is perfectly adequate for 1Gbps

Well technically Cat5e is perfectly adequate for 2.5Gbps at the full distance of 100, and on short distances for 5Gbps. However in a domestic environment Cat6 will future proof you for 10Gbps. You get 55m at 10Gbps on Cat6 provided it is not heavily bundled. So unless you have a very large house or bundle it inappropriately (in a commercial install you would typically have bundles the size of your arm of cable in the patching racks), Cat6 is more than adequate for 10Gbps ethernet.

Consequently, it would be IMHO nuts to go to the expense and hassle of having ethernet cable run and save a few quid by using Cat5e over Cat6. Don�t spoil the ship for a ha�porth of tar as they say,

Personally I like to use LSZH cable for a few extra quid. It comes with a purple jacket which makes it instantly distinguishable under the floor etc. from other cables.

It's interesting as probably 15-20 years ago our offices were all kitted out with Cat5e. Mostly it is still running at 100Mbps because there is no need for more than that for the bulk of users. Where there is a higher need 1Gbps is more than adequate even now. The fact this cabling has lasted so long and is still not running anywhere near capacity would suggest most home aren't liklely to need more than 1Gbps for a long time - only techies (who know the cabling anyway) are likely to push the boundaries of 1Gbps.

I'm struggling to think why the average domestic user would ever need 10Gbps and rarely use as much as 1Gbps - other than for speed test purposes

In reply to a post by Adduxi:

Thinking outside the box. You could run the cable externally from inside the house, up the outside wall into the roofspace to a switch and drop cables down to each bedroom. ?
Just a thought

Switch would probably require a mains power socket - perhaps another job for an electrician?

A quote springs to mind about nobody ever needing more than 650K base memory

In reply to a post by longedge:

A quote springs to mind about nobody ever needing more than 650K base memory

Must be inflation, I thought it was no more than 640K base memory.

Mind you I recall in around 1966-67 talking to our computer designers and engineers and being told that our mainframe memory was around £1 / byte. A tad cheaper these days.

Backing up large photoshop files, backing up home videos created on smartphones that record at 4K, editing such content. Now that internal disks are SSD they are faster than 1Gbps.

My old SATA drives were 3Gbps connected!

I don't know about the £1 a byte but recall that the 1MB Ampex (?) core box "add-on" for our 360/65 in the late 60s cost a mint and was bought with a special grant from the SRC. Hand made wires and ferrite cores in a big box. Prior to that our 360 had just 512KB.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

Backing up large photoshop files, backing up home videos created on smartphones that record at 4K, editing such content. Now that internal disks are SSD they are faster than 1Gbps.

My old SATA drives were 3Gbps connected!

The bit you missed was 'average home user'.

Neither you nor I can be tarred with that brush

In reply to a post by cheshire_man:

Mind you I recall in around 1966-67 talking to our computer designers and engineers and being told that our mainframe memory was around £1 / byte. A tad cheaper these days.

Don't you mean 'core' not memory

Very true! Although things have changed over time. Lots of people seem to now keep gigs of photos and video.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

Very true! Although things have changed over time. Lots of people seem to now keep gigs of photos and video.

Indeed very true. Plus as FTTP starts becoming the norm, I'm not sure people will be pleased in the very near future that either the internet speed or local network speed has a bottleneck because of a 1gig internet connection taking all the bandwidth.

I've already seen this take place with those that are having FTTP already

I would say a home NAS is the main reason for wanting more than 1Gbps today. Think 10 years from now when you have a home NAS with 20TB of SSD in it and you want to either back something up to it, or using it like a local disk. 1Gbps ethenet is not going to cut the mustard, and neither is 2.5Gbps. At that point you will be cursing and swearing you cheaped out on Cat5e.

I do admit I am rather scared by my father who constantly used to say that will do we will be moving in a couple of years. Some 40 years later my mother is still living in the same house.

Most people don't have a home NAS. Most don't store that level of content - this is an edge case required by a relatively small number of people. I no longer have local storage - my videos/photos are stored in the cloud (and yes, for me it is good enough and with fast Internet access I can upload and download fast enough for my needs).

In today's multimedia world, storage is key. This is either local or remote, most people these days have it.

This is where as internet speeds increase, so will the desire to be able to access media quicker and more of it.

There does seem to be this view that a person who is from a technical background is few and far between. This is not the case anymore. It's becoming the norm.

In reply to a post by ian72:

Most people don't have a home NAS. Most don't store that level of content - this is an edge case required by a relatively small number of people. I no longer have local storage - my videos/photos are stored in the cloud (and yes, for me it is good enough and with fast Internet access I can upload and download fast enough for my needs).

With GDPR and concerns over ownership of data in public cloud, many of my friends have moved from say (Google Photos) to a home NAS. Others are using MS OneDrive, but that gives 1TB (if you have Office 365) and then what.

I'd be interested in stats - those whom have good broadband with uplink (e.g. VM) are more likely to upload lots of content to cloud services than those on ADSL or very slow uplink FTTC/VDSL.

In reply to a post by jabuzzard:

I would say a home NAS is the main reason for wanting more than 1Gbps today. Think 10 years from now when you have a home NAS with 20TB of SSD in it and you want to either back something up to it, or using it like a local disk. 1Gbps ethenet is not going to cut the mustard, and neither is 2.5Gbps. At that point you will be cursing and swearing you cheaped out on Cat5e.

I do admit I am rather scared by my father who constantly used to say that will do we will be moving in a couple of years. Some 40 years later my mother is still living in the same house.

I know you're talking ten years from now, but if you want to make a home properly future proof, why bother with ethernet? Have fibre optic runs installed instead.

How many 'domestic' devices are likely to support 10Gb ethernet interfaces in ten years? What about NAS units? At the moment it's a vanishingly small number. Yes, that will change, but I'm not convinced that 10Gb is going to have any relevance for an average home user any time soon.

Most home user devices are connected wirelessly and you rather lose the advantage of having 10Gb ethernet if you have to move files across the airwaves.

Even if you have devices hardwired, it's not always the wire speed that limits the rate at which a backup completes but the rate at which the backup software process the files.

The average home user doesn't have any installed network wiring and has wi-fi from their ISP's supplied router. Even 100Mbps hard wired ethernet would be an improvement for many.

I agree

You may have a need for 1Gb to your wireless repeater if in a big house / teens / twenties in a granny flat but most devices for normal use are now WiFi and rarely get connected by wire. Also it is not uploading / backing up that is time dependant but downloading and how often do you download multi Gb of photos in a hurry. Video tends to only need play rate plus 20/50% so why cable 'normal' domestic houses for anything above 1gb. (Home workers are a different class entirely!)

I think future NAS are more likely to have a 5g interface for high bandwidth access over short distances.

In reply to a post by kitcat:

I agree

You may have a need for 1Gb to your wireless repeater if in a big house / teens / twenties in a granny flat but most devices for normal use are now WiFi and rarely get connected by wire. Also it is not uploading / backing up that is time dependant but downloading and how often do you download multi Gb of photos in a hurry. Video tends to only need play rate plus 20/50% so why cable 'normal' domestic houses for anything above 1gb. (Home workers are a different class entirely!)

I think future NAS are more likely to have a 5g interface for high bandwidth access over short distances.

Apart from phones and laptops, most other devices should be wired for the best experience (including game consoles)

Unless wireless can achieve high bandwidth over long distances and more solid objects (thick walls) then I doubt you will ever see wireless included on NAS devices. The point of having a NAS is usage over long distances, if you wanted short distances then a USB drive would be a sensible choice.

10 years ago very very few people had a home NAS, you had to roll your own. Now their are a plethora of companies Netgear, Western Digital, Qnap, Synology, selling the hardware at reasonable prices. It's only going to get cheaper and more widespread if you ask me.

And you will always have the once bitten, twice shy people who have lost something important in the past and who run NAS and Cloud in tandem just in case . . .

Absolutely true.

You really need to be a poweruser to even think "oh i need a network in my home"

You don't really have to be a "power user", just a tiny bit aware, The level of aware such that you dont use terms like WIFI when you mean your broadband.

We have SKY, the TV an Xbox and a Unifi Mesh WIfi device hooked up to a Switch in our living room, networked to the upstairs box room where theres another switch connected to a second Unifi Mesh, My PC the printer and the Broadband router.

I'm not a 'power user' i dont think, I just didn't want patchy weak wifi around the house and a cabled connection to decent WIFI kit beats flakey powerline or cheap 'boosters' all day everyday.

Given the fttp newbuild policy from Openreach, house builders should be installing suitable conduit in their houses as standard, at least from where the ONT is installed to where the entertainment system will be and then upstairs.

Costs and time at first fix would be trivial, if its just empty conduit.

Excuse the slight Hijacking

Hey funkydan,
I'm in a similar situation except I want to run 2 cables externally,1 to my study 25-30mtrs and 1 to my Son's bedroom 8-10mtrs...guesstimations on the distance at the moment
I was going to attempt this myself(god knows why as I'm not the "handiest") but have no idea on the cabling apart from I want cat6 so any knowledge/advice you can share on cables,do's and don'ts of running them would be great.

Nicky.

I've run a cable (Cat6) around the outside of the house from living room to "office". A friend of mine had already done it, his advice was to make sure I used outdoor suitable cable. He'd used some generic stuff he'd bought from Amazon and in the sun the outside covering had become brittle and broke apart. He then had to replace it all.

Hiya,

I'm Not funkydan but,

When you say externally do you mean outside the house rather than externally clipped to the wall/skirtingboard?

Are you in a single or two story house,

You cany buy Exterior grade CAT6 if its going outside, waterproof and UV resistant, its not much different in price really in such short amounts.

If you buy pre terminated cables you'll,
A. Need a bigger hole to pass the plugs through.
B. To accept you'll likely have a coil of cable left at one end or the other.

If you buy unterminated cable its easy to pull through as the connectors dont snag on anything and everything but you'll then have to terminate the ends yourself.

If you're drilling through the outside wall remember the neatest hole is usually the side you're drilling from, irs the exiting drill bit that usually causes chipping or splintering, But drilling from the outside in is much trickier to get right.

Ideally if you're drilling through the external wall a slight angle would be perfect ie lower on the outside than inside, and if you're running vertically your cable should really have a loop so water running down the wall doesnt track along the cable into your hoose.

I think ive made it sound way more complicated than it is, but better than someone drilling through their ringmain or water pipes.

If you're drilling through plasterboard etc then if you're not sure where pipes or mains cables are, use a drill but just by hand to make yor initial hole and take a look through, to be honest if the exit/entry point isn't ina very obvious place you're much easier all round cutting a bigger hole and putting a single recessed wall box in.

Bend radius of cat 6 is roughly 1 inch so avoid lovely tight 90 degree bends.

You dont say what age or type of construction your house is, but it can have a big impact on the challenges or not of doing this and depending, could be easier running it inside.

Why would anyone buy preterminated Cat5e/6 cables to put infrastructure wiring in place? Patch leads yes but not permanent fixed cabling.

In reply to a post by Swac3:

Costs and time at first fix would be trivial, if its just empty conduit.

Not te way they look at it though ... say a couple of hours for each house and that would be £100 time and materials.

A major housebuilder does 10-20,000 houses, so te overall cost which would be miniscule to each purchaser relative to the house prices, would be £1-2 million for te builder which they would grab. Every pound they can save, they do ...

I'm struggling to think why the average domestic user would ever need 10Gbps and rarely use as much as 1Gbps - other than for speed test purposes

I've always thought that this was useful/necessary to be able to run Windows updates faster...

Well i'd agree to that sure

I should have just said

normies don't think about making a network usually.

In reply to a post by epyon:

normies don't think about making a network usually.

Not sure who "normies" are, but some new property owners do consider having some form of LAN. I saw a very competent electrician install Cat6 and RJ45 sockets together with a property rewire the other day (he even relocated the NTE5!)

In reply to a post by John_Gray:

I'm struggling to think why the average domestic user would ever need 10Gbps and rarely use as much as 1Gbps - other than for speed test purposes

I've always thought that this was useful/necessary to be able to run Windows updates faster...

In my experience, Windows updates updates better when there's no internet access whatsoever

T.V. aerial installers are very conversant with running cables both exterior and interior.

Thanks for replying,

Yeah I mean outside and was thinking unterminated if crimping is fairly easy to do.The only thing I�d read regarding the type of cable was to avoid CCA??
I live in 100yr,2 storey semi so has thick walls but I�ve got a plumber friend who will hopefully do any drilling for me so mainly just the type of cable and how to crimp etc is what I�m looking into.

I'm not an expert. I was looking at making patch cables and did more research regarding internal cable but read up a bit on external stuff.
As others have said use waterproof and UV resistant external cable.
As you have mentioned steer clear of CCA. Copper clad aluminium for those wondering what CCA means.100% copper is the industry standard.
Unshielded twisted pair (UTP) is cable without any shielding to guard against electromagnetic interference.
Shielded twisted pair (STP) or Foiled twisted pair (FTP) has an extra internal foil or mesh layer between the twisted pairs and the outer sheath to add an extra guard against electromagnetic interference..
Next we come to Stranded and Solid Core. Solid core has one single thicker strand of copper whereas stranded has multiple strands of copper. Solid core is mostly used in runsouts. Stranded core is typically used for patch cables.
Stranded has a higher tolerance to bend around corners where as solid core is not as flexible to being bent. If you bend single core past it's tolerance the copper core will snap rendering the cable useless. That being said you should not bend either through 90 degree turns. It's best to curve it like you see in plumbing pipes.
Try not to run it near sources of electromagnetic interference. Infact if you can, keep it away from anything electrical.
Add drip bends to where the cable exits or enters cavities on the external wall. A drip bend is just making a U shape so any rain water runs down the cable and drips off rather than rain water creeping along the cable and entering the wall cavity.
Hope all that helps.

In reply to a post by funkydan:

Add drip bends to where the cable exits or enters cavities on the external wall. A drip bend is just making a U shape so any rain water runs down the cable and drips off rather than rain water creeping along the cable and entering the wall cavity.

Excellent advice - often ignored by installers

Rather than crimping an end on to it terminate it with a RJ45 socket. Then you can use a patch lead from the socket to the device. Sockets generally use standard punch down connections and good punch tools are quite cheap (less than £10). When I did mine I bought the sockets and back boxes from screwfix direct, I think I got the punch tool from Amazon. As it was just me living in the house I didn't even bother screwing the back boxes to the wall, just left them on the floor.

You might find a simple kit like this would do for you, although there are many options to buy the bits individually as well. This is the punch tool I used. You can also buy the modules separately and the mounting boxes/plates.

There are several toolless sockets made by companies like Excel that are worth looking at they are high quality but you won't get them from Screwfix or Toolstation

Do yourself a favour and get a cheap Chinese punch down tool from eBay for £2 delivered, dispatched from the UK. Sure if you are a professional get something better, but for a bit of domestic DIY they are perfectly fine. The only downside of them is they always cut, which sometimes you don't want. You can spend more and get ones that don't cut too. I have one of each as the selective ones are more like £20 so it was cheaper to get one of each.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/221711551803

Note that if you have solid core cable you need specialist RJ45 plugs to get a reliable crimp as the normal ones are designed for stranded cable. Buy the time you have messed about with that you might as well have put in a socket. Again really cheap on eBay. I would note I would consider using Cat5e rated sockets even if I used Cat6 or better cable as they are quite a bit cheaper. The expense and hassle is running the cable and if you do need better in the future it is easy to swap out the faceplates compared to running new cable. I have only done it for runs to ceiling mounted WiFi access points. that are on structured cabling.

I would further note that the difference between a box of 305m Cat5e and Cat6 seems to be about £20. You need to be on a really tight budget to install Cat5e structured cabling in 2020.

after having a closer look outside I've decided "Fck that!" and I'll get someone to run the cable for me but I'd still prefer to buy the cable myself.

Which sites would people recommend for cables?

For internal cables:
Check your local Screwfix branch - they have Cat6 on clearance, 100m drums for £14 https://www.screwfix.com/p/nexans-cat-6-f-utp-lszh-e... Not incredibly cheap, but if you only need a shorter length then probably good value


For external: FS cables https://www.fscables.com/products/cat-6-external.htm... they will do it in lengths rather than full drums

In reply to a post by MHC:

For internal cables:
Check your local Screwfix branch - they have Cat6 on clearance, 100m drums for £14 https://www.screwfix.com/p/nexans-cat-6-f-utp-lszh-e... Not incredibly cheap, but if you only need a shorter length then probably good value

That is a screened cable, hard to bend and not compatible with many RJ45 plugs. (See reviews on Screwfix)

Who puts plugs on infrastructure cabling? Cowboys!

I�ve used kenable cable (cheaper direct on their UK website than from amazon).

They do 50/100 & 305m lengths of all variations.

In reply to a post by ian72:

As it was just me living in the house I didn't even bother screwing the back boxes to the wall, just left them on the floor.

Beware of copper fatigue - I hope you don't let them wobble about too much when plugging in and unplugging leads or perhaps when you are using a vacuum cleaner

Don't worry - my use of past tense was deliberate, I moved out last year...

In reply to a post by ian72:

Don't worry - my use of past tense was deliberate, I moved out last year...

Sorry I just pictured it in the present tense - I bet the use of sockets was infinitely preferable to using rj45 plugs though.

No one easily!

In reply to a post by MHC:

Who puts plugs on infrastructure cabling? Cowboys!

The French electricians I work with for starters. They use really stiff Cat6 F/UTP, put a bulky tool-free metal bodied RJ45 plug (a cheap unbranded one) on the end, and then stick it directly into the back of devices like the ONT, router and televisions. It really doesn't do the PCB mounted ethernet sockets any good.

If they use a socket they don't always bother to connect the screen and they either don't possess, or don't know how to use a cable tester to verify correct connections.

My mission, should I choose to accept it, is to redo it all properly with sockets and nice flexible stranded patch cables going into the devices.

In reply to a post by Nickyboy:

Which sites would people recommend for cables?

Have a search for excel cable. Excel have their own website but also sell on Amazon.
Shielded RJ45 plugs need to be grounded. As the RJ45 sockets on normal routers are not grounded they are useless.
There's loads of information on google and youtube on how to terminate the RJ45's on cat6 cable.

In reply to a post by dect:

There are several toolless sockets made by companies like Excel that are worth looking at they are high quality but you won't get them from Screwfix or Toolstation

I'd recommend the toolless sockets - much easier to work with