Wiring ethernet across a 90s house

I'm gonna be moving into a house that was built in the mid- to late-90s and early on what I wanna do is get wired Ethernet installed to the upstairs bedrooms and lounge. What I was thinking of doing was getting a little cabinet built around the Openreach box where I could stick the router on top, wire it to a switch below inside the cabinet, and have that plug in to a bunch of wall sockets via patch cables. Is that a good idea, though? If so what cables are best to use, cat5e or cat6? I've seen elsewhere that sometimes Ethernet over fibre is used but presumably that'd need to have a powered media converter at each end of every connection which sounds like a right ballache.

How tricky is it for a builder to knock holes in walls and do this with a house of this kind of age? Or should a specialist networking company be brought in to do it? I'd like to have the cables run in the walls rather than around skirting board etc. and I'd rather the cables not go outside the house, just seems like they'd have less wear and tear if they're all indoors.

I'm also open to any other ideas for decent connectivity to the various rooms that I haven't considered. I'm guessing we're all agreed that Wifi isn't a great long-term solution?

Cat5e is way easier to run than Cat6 - but top speed is a limit although, 1Gbps is enough for domestic use and will be for years.

Run infrastructure cables from sockets at te remote location back to your switch location and terninate in a patch panel.

Depending on how many cables you can get different patch panel sizes and could consider using 2x 12 way 10" on a mounting bracket.

Yeah what I'm wondering is how tricky it'll be to run the infrastructure cables, particularly the interior walls (which presumably shouldn't have insulation between them). Do specialist companies have ways of doing this without totally destroying the walls?

You should be able to work out what walls are structural and which ones aren’t.

Structural walls will have no cavity and you’d need to chase a cable into the plaster, the same way as if doing an electrical rewire.

Non-structural walls are likely wooden stud, so there is likely a cavity but it’s not guaranteed to run floor to ceiling.

Do you have wooden floors with carpets in top? I would run cables under the floors with one place selected to connect downstairs to upstairs. Are there any places with a cupboard downstairs and directly above?

When buying cable, cat6 isn’t much more expensive so I’d plan for that. Ensure it is designed for permanent install - that normally means it is solid copper and not stranded copper or even worse, aluminium.

I’d say the hardest part is planning - you don’t want to realise in a years time you missed a location for Ethernet. I would ensure you have Ethernet in places you’d want a WiFi extender - perhaps even some ceiling drops for ceiling mounted access points.

In a lot of cases, in a home, the thickness of plaster on all your walls will be thicker than the cables so you can probably run horizontal and verticals without having to do any chasing into bricks etc. You don't need a specialist company providing you keep an eye on the builder or work person doing the drilling and running etc.

At present time I'd probably say Cat6 is a better bet than Cat5e now but MHC is completely correct that 1GigE will be fine for a very long time still.

The other alternative is invest in some high quality WiFi system and the difference may be reasonably negligable at that point.

It tends to be Smart TVs which like being wired in which I think is generally due to them cheaping out on CPU and WiFi chipsets/hardware in the TV - most other stuff is fine on WiFi.

Giving away one of my secrets here. Look at these https://www.screwfix.com/search?search=flat+bits&bra... they are flat bit borers with a threaded point, rather than a splined point. If you can get under a floor, you can get under a stud wall and use one of these to bore upwards. Obviously, you work out where the uprights are first. You might have to cut the shank down a bit and you can't use a power drill, but you use something like a tap wrench to hold the bit and press up enough to get the thread started. But once it is started, the thread drags the bit in while you turn. And that enables you to access a socket position.

I'd imagine if you're an experienced builder you can knock on a wall and tell whether it's hollow or not, but... I'm not lol. No idea which walls are hollow and which aren't.

Ceiling wifi APs? Nah I'm not gonna go to the extra effort of that, I'm fine with whole house wifi from one router. It's worked acceptably in my current house and if I want something good I need to go with wired. I'll be happy just to get ethernet ports to the bedrooms and lounge. Think it will be quite a challenge. I've seen it recommended not to get an electrician to do it, but... who, then? I'm freaking useless at this.

Electricians are great at running cables. That's what puts bread on their tables.
You might want to get an experienced person to make the connections at each end though.

I agree with others that Cat 6 is the more modern cable, but Cat 5E is so much easier to work with. Either of those will almost certainly do the job for the lifetime of a 1990s house.

And yes, it is a good idea to do this. One thing I would say - where you'd think of running a cable - run two at the same time. It's very little extra effort at the time. Gives you flexibility in the future.

Asssuming it's not timber framed, a 90s house is highly likely to have mainly stud partitions, particularly at first floor and structural block walls and partitions may well be finished with plasterboard on dabs. Internal structural partitions will be solid blockwork not cavity. You may get an adequate wifi signal but partitions they may be finished with foil faced plasterboard which can cause problems with wi-fi.

It might be easier to run a single Cat 6/7 cable to the first floor and place your switch in the top of a cupboard then distribute through the loft. Some might put the switch in the loft but they can get very hot and dusty. As somebody else has suggested run pairs of cables to double ethernet outlets. You could put a patch panel at your switch position to terminate unused cables.

I put my switches in a cab with fans in the loft and it has worked well for over 2 years so far. So, as long as you plan it right, it's a great way to hide the cabinet in the loft and distribute the cables downward to all rooms.