Cat 5e in new house? Should I run it and how?

[canton_kid]

I'll be starting a long term project of building a new house soon. Not sure how yet though

Should I bother runinng Cat5 se cable throughout all the house for the network durring construction?
Sizzilin deals has a link to geeks $38 1000ft cable kit again. Figure It's cheap enough, but worth the bother? SHould I order a kit or two for later?

If I plan a Network hub in a certain location, like center of house, then run a cable from there to every room I'm thinking I could just carry in a system, plug it in and go. Now if I want 2 or 3 systems in one room sometime I figure I could network them with a local hub in the room and uplink that to the main system, would that be correct? Just plug that rooms cable into the uplink port? Or do I need twisted/nontwisted for an up link? If I need a differnt connection like twisted, I figured I could do that with a cable from the network walljack to the hub/switch.

Now I'm pretty shure of course that will work ok, main questions are should !? Should the wire be shielded or is non-shielded ok? Is there any effect on the wire or network ran over head in the ceiling or under the floor, is it the same or any differnce. How far should it be from electrical wiring, or does it matter. Etc... Ect... If a mouse chews it or a nail hits it and it shorts, will it just not work or will it fry something?

Also I am thinking two different things on building this house since I want it to be large and decent but cheap!!!!
I may either poor a concrete slab and build up from that and it will be a smaller wood house. Or I may buy some junk trailer houses in which case the house will be a large wood framed, but metal frame under and metal sideing, and maybe roofed in metal too.

I can get some pretty large older trailers about 12x70 and up in poor shape cheap. About $1000 -$1500 each. Though I wouldn't want to live in these as is, they aren't that aweful bad. Need floors fixed and some wiring mostly. Maybe some plumbing too. But I am thinking they are solid and already built other than the floors, so that might be a fast start and a cheap way to start.
With cost of materials and labour it is not profitable for them to fix these to sell, but with my labour and and the extra parts I'll have it is cheap for me to make a house out of
This is probably what I will do, since I only need plumbing in the main part and 2nd 3rd bath, I will have lots of extra parts. Also when ripping out walls I'll have extra parts. Might not even need to buy much for remodleing if I am carefull taking un-needed down walls.
So if I did the trailer bit, where would be the best place to run wire? Switch in center of trailer and cables in ceiling/walls/ or under neath near the frame?

[Lmandrake]

Given the amount of threads I have seen on the net about problems with wireless netoworks, its probably worth it. The only downside would be extra work, and if you are building, that really isn't so bad.

Your idea for local hubs should work just fine. The only downside would be having your modem/router in a central location away from your prime computer and that is only a downside if you need to reboot your modem. Most routers can be rebooted remotely from a PC. I only say this because I sometimes need to restart my modem to get the speed from DSL I am supposed to get. (Don't ask me why).

I don't think you need worry about the cable being chewed through or about electrical lines. I just would maintain a bit of distance between the lines and your network cable. The geeks kits is good, but if starting from scratch, you will probably want to put in wall jacks. These are pricier than I would expect from what I have seen, they run around $5 with the wall plate and you should get a punch-down tool if you are putting more than a couple in.

Of course, if nobody is using CAT 5 in three years - which seems extremely unlikely - your effort will be for nothing.

[FlyingPenguin]

Yes, worth doing. Wireless has it's problems - especially in a metropolitan city, and cable will always be faster if you're interested in file and printer sharing.

I would agree that if you want to do it right, you'll want to use electrical boxes and wall plates. You can get RJ-45 jacks and wall plates at Home Depot.

Strickly speaking you don't need the punch down tool if you don't intend to do this for a living. The Home depot jacks come with a small plastic tool that does the job. A professional punch down tool is easier but you can get by without it.

[canton_kid]

My ISP may be getting the highspeed wireless service going soon, if so that will be to the router for the antenna/modem. But I figure my main box will be near the hub anyway. If not, well depending what all systems are connected to the net it would be the same promblem I geuss.

I was sort of thinking wireless, but then if I have a geust for a week or mini lan party they might not have wireless, but if they do any lans or multie player gaming at home they are almost sure to have a 10/100 lan card. Also not too expensive to have a couple extra's laying around just in case. Heck many system boards have em built in now too.

Yes Fp,
Speed is an issue too between some of the systems. Glad you mentioned it, kinda sliped to the back of my mind. I'll most likely want to do video capture to one system and the DVD authoring and burning on another. SO that's alot of big file transfers right there over time! Plus ghost backups of the systems, I'll probably put them on a server! Last one was about 30gigs, though I plan to cut them down by re-aranging my systems.

Another thought, if I need to run several cables side by side, will that cause any problems/data corruptions? I'm sure you can't splice a cat 5 cable like a phone line or electrical line, so if I need to run 3 rooms in a row I'll need 3 cables. Will it hurt to run them together? Depending where I run them I was sort of thinking maybe putting them in a pipe. Something like cheap PVC water pipe. I've got some junk thin wall stuff I can use and that would help protect the wires if I ran them under a house. Keep the critters out of them We do have an ocasional cat or coon under the trailer. I dought I have to worry much about the Opossums much though.

This kit listed under sizzlin deals here shows it come with tester/crimper tool/100 RJ45 jacks and 1000 foot of cat5 se cable. That was the kit I was thinking to buy. The wall jacks and what ever else I need later.Geeks lan kit
I thought to begin with I read the cable was un-shielded, but that was the RJ45 connetors it said unshielded
My bad eyes

[FlyingPenguin]

Your router and switch should be in one location and you should run all cables back to there. keep in mind that if necessary you could but a hub or switch in a room with only one cable goign to it if there was more than one computer in that room (you should uses switches and not hubs though).

Cat 5 can run along side other cables and other cat 5. Only thing you should avoid running it near is anything that produces a large magnetic field (flourescent light fixture balast transformers in particular).

It is also VERY important that you wire the cables according to the color code. Many people mistakenly assume it's okay to use any color wire in any order as long as the colors are the same on both ends. The wires are twisted in pairs inside the cable and YOU MUST maintain the proper pairing or you'll ruin the shielding of the wire, causing packet loss.

Standard CAT5 is not shielded (they do make shielded cable for special environments, but in a home it's not necessary). The pair twisting in the cable takes care of shielding.

You shouldn't splice wires but you can extend them with a coupler.

Code in most areas does not require CAT5 to be run in a conduit. Sure makes it nice if you want to pull an extra wire later, but it's not required. I would definately recommend conduit outside or if there's a chance critters might get to it under the house.

BTW: FYI while you build your house, there IS a difference between gray PVC for electric wiring and white PVC for water. NEVER use water PVC pipe for electric. It's not code.

The kit may or may not be a good deal for you. It's a MAJOR pain in the ass to crimp your own connectors. I never do it anymore unless it's necessary. 1 or 2 is annoying. Doing 10 or 12 will drive you nuts.

MOREOVER it's HARD to make a good crimped connector. Even the pros can't do it consistently. Nor will the tester be all that much help as you might think. It's VERY easy to make a bad crimp that's intermittent. The tester may check it out okay but when you move the wire a bit or conenct it to the computer, or maybe just temperature expansion will cause it to be intermittent. Pain in the ass to track down later.

I strongly recommend you use wall jacks or surface mount boxes in the rooms and a patch panel at the router/switch. Then purchase jumpers for connecting the computers to the wall jacks and switch to the patch panel. (jumpers and jacks are pretty reasonably priced in quantity - even at Home Depot, although you can do better mail order). If you do that you won't even need a crimper. Cable is pretty cheap - even at Home Depot.

The patch panel can be pricey but it's worth it. If you're brave you can use crimps on the switch ends instead of a patch panel.

[Lmandrake]

FP is right on what a pain it is to crimp your own connectors - I still make my own, but it is almost not worth the time and aggravation. Use the female jacks for terminating your house wiring and find a good low-cost supplier of patch cables. If I had any hair left, I would have pulled it all out with the aggravation I have had with crimping those male RJ45's.

[canton_kid]

Thanks guys.

I never looked into the cable at home depot. Kinda thought Cat 5 was fairly expensive normally. Course it was a computer shop but the last time I had a cable made it was about 50 cents a foot plus $1 or $2 for the RJ45 conectors on the ends. Total was like $15 for 25ft I think. SO, I got ripped eh.
Course their still selling the same $118 at wallmart monitors for $300 too.

I would probably paint the pipe if I used it. Codes are OK sometimes, but I like living here cause I don't have to put up with much of that stuff
Not much for zoning, restrictions, or code checkers
Most likely I'd paint the pipe blue for Cat5 and if I run 12v too. Helps to tell later what's low power or high power if I use gray for 120v and 240v.

One problem with codes is not everyone does things the same and shouldn't either. When I build the house I plan to either run 12v lines then or make it easy to run em latter. Since we lose power so much eventually the house will be either totaly batteries and inverter or at least half. I may use the power company for high power stuff like the fridge, washer/dryer, air compressers ect... Things I can live without for a few hours or even a day or two if I have too.

Gee I didn't know it was that hard to get those connectors crimped right. I've done phone line and figured it's about the same thing but more wires Geuss not
So if I ran wall jacks in each room and a patch pannel in the switch room, is crimping still gonna be a problem? Main thing is I would want to run all the cables at one time, I could connect them latter a room at a time here and there. Like the phone lines.
So if I don't need a crimper with the wall plates and a pannel how do those connect to the cables, screw terminals?

[wvjohn]

get good cable - i got some of that compgeek stuff and it was erratic - spend a little extra at lowes or wherever - wire is cheap compared to trying to figure out what the problem is and replacing it

[FlyingPenguin]

Belkin cable is very good. About $50 per 500 ft give or take.

The cable at Home Depot isn't bad - I bought a 1000 ft roll for $50. They have outdoor rated for 500ft for $50.

Home Depot usually sells jumpers for $3 or $4 and you might find them cheaper online somewhere.

I saw 7 foot patch cables at Big Lots for $3.

The wall plate jacks and patch panels use terminals that the wires press into - you need a punch down tool, but there's a plastic disposable tool that comes with the jacks Home Depot sells that's adequate for the job (the tool's rater expensive unless you plan to do this for a living).

[Absolut Talent]

while I skimmed this mostly....

i would have to agree....run some conduit or greensfield (the bendable conduit) now in the highly possible areas that you might run it

so then later if you do want to run cat5, then you can

[smb]

Definitely do it. Rubber Duckie did his. I think last year.

[zandor]

If you're building, definately wire the place. I wouldn't stop with just cat5. It'll never be cheaper or easier than during construction. I'd pull some fiber & coax too. I'd probably just leave the fiber unterminated in the walls for now.
I'd use good cable too. If you need a recommendation I'd suggest Belden. It's what we used to use @ my old job & the guy who did most of our cabling swore by it. There are lots of decent brands though.

[b-man1]

wire it as much as possible (cat5, coax, etc)....better for resale, if that matters to you.