Well, that did not work

i wanted to get rid of some of the hubs and boxes in my living room, try and tidy it up, so i thought I would bring the router, thermostat hub and hue hub up here, leaving the modem downstairs.
Connected it all together and while Wireless worked, nothing else would connect via Lan, silly me, just realised i would need two ethernet cables going downstairs, one for the Wan and one for the normal Ethernet connections. so i left the router downstairs with the modem, but at least I can get rid of the switch. TV, Blueray and VoIP is connected to a switch by the TV, cable comes from there to router, another cable from router to NAS in cupboard under the stairs and then a long cable from router up here, to another switch, which has my printer, computer, Hue hub and thermostat hub connected.
So from five different devices in that space, down to two.

i still need to sort things out, maybe will be better if I go for Zzoomm as they have two hubs and will run the cables outside from downstairs to upstairs.

You did well Adrian.

At our place my better half can’t stand *any* cables on show at all, so everything has to be hidden. Can’t say I blame her really; it’s very easy to go from one or two boxes to a whole bunch and a rats nest of cabling!!

When we re-did the house I flood wired with Cat6A + RG6 quad-shield coax copper to every room (and corridors for wifi access points). The house was back to a bare shell so it was a once in a lifetime opportunity to do it once. I ran all cabling back to a 19” rack under the stairs. All the copper is on patch panels. There is an extractor with discrete ventilation coming into the space for airflow, but vitally (for my marriage it means all the “IT junk” lives in one place out of sight and silent.

Utilities come in under the driveway rather than up the side of the house and run into the utility room cupboard. There is a duct for Openreach, Virgin and a spare. There are four Cat6A cables back to the rack, together with a quad-shield RG6 coax and a bunch of singlemode fibre. From the roof our satellite and antenna connections are combined using a FibreIRS headend and comes down to the rack via fibre. We use 2 out the 4 cores of fibre for this. It could run on one. From there I split it much like GPON (same splitter tech) and convert from fibre to coax and the mixed service for satellite, DTV and radio I patch out to the coax points as needed. There a couple of single mode fibre links to my study/office but otherwise all is on copper.

If this was my house then yes I would certainly get the cables down walls and that sort of thing, but it is not my house, it is rented, but there is plenty of trunking around, the problem is mains voltages go through them.

The problem now is that these boxes I removed from downstairs are now up here in the computer room sat on the back of the computer desk.

If I go to live with the other half, she is saying about buying a house closer to town, if that happened, then yes we would certainly have the Ethernet cables buried, also smart sockets, not plugs and smart light switches, so fewer hubs.


My main problem is that I have never, fitted a RJ54 connector, they make it look so easy in videos.

I got things to sort out in the spring, need to have a good sort out, so much junk in this room, old PATA cables, PIC cards, never going to be used again.

RJ45s don’t take that long to get the hang of. It’s good to get yourself a 110 type punch down tool. I also find a cable stripper/scorer, and a pair of small snips handy but other folks are happy to use a (sharp) Stanley knife. This is my method

1. Score the sheath of the cable around 5cm / 2 inches from the end. Don’t cut all the way through. Bend the sheath around the score so that it breaks away, exposing the pairs.
2. Pull the four pair bundles away from each other like the petals of a flower / blades of a propeller. Don’t pull the individual colour pairs apart yet. Trim the pair separator back and any clear wrapper, etc.
3. Check the colour coding on the jack (they will be coded for both standard termination position 568A and 568B. You can use either, but the important thing is to be consistent and use the same at both ends. The jack will have engravings/stickers to show where the individual conductor should go for each scheme.
4. Feed the pairs into the jack. Some use a double stack approach / pair separator paths on the jack (usually Cat6 / 6a). Snug the cable in so that the sheath is nicely up to the rear of the jack leaving a minimal amount of exposed cable.
5. Carefully split each colour pair apart at this point, not untwisting any more than needed and seat the wire on the IDC in the jack. The trick is not to untwist more than what you need, so between the IDC and the rest of the cable it is still twisted or not untwisted more than about 1/2” (10-12mm) or so. Use the pinch down tool with the trimmer facing towards the outside of the jack and firmly but carefully punch down the wire into the IDC. Repeat for all the other wires.
6. Inspect all the punch downs and make sure the wire is well seated with each. An extra punch down may be needed, but don’t go crazy.
7. Trim off any excess wire at the outside side of the IDC, and secure the connection with the caps that come with the jack.
8. Position the jack into the keystone or faceplate.
9. Run at least a continuity/pair position test (cheap tester off eBay or Amazon will do fine). At this point in a commercial install (if they’re doing it properly) the installers would run a full performance test on all the cabling in the job using a proper cabling test tool like a Fluke DSX up to a given standard to meet all the install specs. It’s surprisingly the number of fails or partial passes that often require a re-termination at one or sometimes both ends. Happens to everyone.

Probably reads harder than what it actually is. It’s easier and faster with practise, but definitely a job you can do yourself as long as you’re reasonably careful.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

My main problem is that I have never, fitted a RJ54 connector, they make it look so easy in videos.

Buy a bag of 100 connectors and allow yourself a few metres of cable to practice on... Most people get the hang of it before they're halfway through the bag.

One thing to watch out for is matching the connector to the type of cable - solid or stranded core, Cat5, Cat6 etc. all have a 'correct' type. It's definitely possible to get away with using the wrong one in a pinch, and it will probably pass gigabit, but the correct item is easier to terminate as well as less likely to throw up issues when you move to multi-gigabit.

The alternative is to use a socket on the end of the cable and then use standard off the shelf patch cables from there. Sockets are usually pretty easy to cable up and avoids the need for the tools for terminating cables.

I'd agree and the method I summarised above (unless it wasn't obvious) is for permanent/fixed solid-core cabling being terminated onto jacks/sockets.

Stranded cables really should only be used for patch and fly-leads with plugs. With the performance demands of Cat6/cat6a this is best left to the factory - even then they aren't always brilliant - hate to say it but especially if they are coming by the ton out of no-name factors in the far east. Field terminated plugs, are something that folks do, but its not a good idea/a bit frowned upon.

All the structured cabling standards whether they are European or American in origin all specify no more than 90 metres of fixed (solid core) cabling + a maximum of 10 metres of stranded leads (patch /fly-leads). Although the ordinary person on the street will be completely oblivious to all this (and quite a few 'professional' structured cabling installers) and fudge their way through. But there is a right way of going about 'data cabling'.

In reply to a post by ian72:

The alternative is to use a socket on the end of the cable and then use standard off the shelf patch cables from there. Sockets are usually pretty easy to cable up and avoids the need for the tools for terminating cables.

An excellent point, structured cabling from patch panels to 'sockets' is almost always the easier and better long-term choice than solid core cable direct to 'plug' end.

If you are running cable to ceiling mounted access points I prefer to use a field plug, though I do use a specialist plug that is toolless and rated for Cat6a. They cost about £6 each from CPC (product code CS29693) Different in comercial spaces with dropped ceilings, but in domestic settings you can't beat a bit of Cat6a through the ceiling onto a plug behind the access point

In reply to a post by jabuzzard:

If you are running cable to ceiling mounted access points I prefer to use a field plug, though I do use a specialist plug that is toolless and rated for Cat6a. They cost about £6 each from CPC (product code CS29693) Different in comercial spaces with dropped ceilings, but in domestic settings you can't beat a bit of Cat6a through the ceiling onto a plug behind the access point

Completely agree, it's the way forward for a domestic setting. In my own house I have very cheap plugs on end of the cable - but when APs start to need more than single gigabit I'd look at better connections like the one you linked.

Well off-topic but I have no current need to upgrade the 802.11ac APs in my home, user numbers are low so in practical terms 250-300Mbit is always available and plenty for wireless tasks. Even if my laptop had to be replaced tomorrow, it would only likely have an 802.11ax card and gigabit per AP would be plenty.