Strucured Wiring and Gigabit Ethernet & Other Questions

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capreppy

[H]ard|DCer of the Month - April 2009
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I just wrapped up 4 hours in the design center for the house my wife and I are building.

90 minutes of it was with the electronics saleswoman.

16 CAT5e drops throughout the house (CAT6 isn't an option)
All of them terminating in a 42" Cabinet (can't remember what she called it as this is not my area of expertise) to be hidden in the closet of my home office.
The cabinet can house a switch and AT&T DSL Modem.

I would like to know the following:
- Can I use Gigabit Switches (main cabinet and another smaller one [Netgear GS108 that I already have] in the server rack going into my home office)
- Can I get decent speeds/bandwidth throughout the house?
- Suggestion on a switch to handle the traffic?
- Thinking a 24 port gigabit switch

- I plan to add 2 WAPs off of 2 of the network drops for those areas where there won't be a hard wired connection
- Suggestions on WAPs?
- N or stick with G?

I would rather spend the money now up front and get it done correctly then spend more money later. My wife and I both run our businesses out of our home so a good network infrastructure is important. Currently she is on WiFi and the signal to her office isn't great and she is always complaining about the connection dropping or terrible bandwidth
 
They don't offer CAT6 as an option. I really wanted CAT6, but no way to get them to budge.

I've already asked the builder if I could do the wiring myself, but for many reasons, they do not allow it. I'm sure it has a lot to do with the fact that they aren't making any money on it.

I already have the GS108 so I'm good on the smaller switch. The price on the 24port switch is very nice. I've bookmarked the link as I won't be purchasing anything for a couple of weeks until I put down all the deposit money that will be required.

Suggestions on an N Class WAP? I was looking at the Netgear WN802T & Netgear WNDAP350. For home use, which would be better? For information, we have a couple of iPhones that use G and not N.
 
capreppy said:
They don't offer CAT6 as an option. I really wanted CAT6, but no way to get them to budge.

I've already asked the builder if I could do the wiring myself, but for many reasons, they do not allow it. I'm sure it has a lot to do with the fact that they aren't making any money on it.

I already have the GS108 so I'm good on the smaller switch. The price on the 24port switch is very nice. I've bookmarked the link as I won't be purchasing anything for a couple of weeks until I put down all the deposit money that will be required.

Suggestions on an N Class WAP? I was looking at the Netgear WN802T & Netgear WNDAP350. For home use, which would be better? For information, we have a couple of iPhones that use G and not N.
Click to expand...


I check and make sure your wireless computer support wireless N if they older computers ;)
 
Both of the above routers also do G which all of the laptops and phones are able to do.

My thought is the WNDAP350 does dual band (G & N on separate bands). Rather than going to weakest link which happens to be G. Am I understanding dual band correctly?

I currently have a Netgear Dual Band DSL Modem/Router (bought when my AT&T 3Wire modem took a dump exactly 5 days after the warranty went out).
 
Reasonable suggestions above. I prefer HP switches, but those Netgear's are pretty good and a bit less expensive.

My thought is the WNDAP350 does dual band (G & N on separate bands). Rather than going to weakest link which happens to be G. Am I understanding dual band correctly?
Click to expand...
As long as you set up the 2.4GHz radio for 11g only and the 5GHz radio for 11n only, then yeah I think you get it. Then use 5GHz for all your 11n capable devices. Be careful in purchasing though, 'dual band' doesn't always mean 'dual radio', sometimes it's either/or and sometimes it's both at the same time.
 
It looks as if the WNDAP350 is a dual band/radio WAP.
 
That sucks that you cant do the wiring, that is something that would weigh very heavily for me. Not only for communications, but for the alarm, audio, home automation.. etc. that I rather do myself. Know how it is done, where it is, and save a bunch of money doing it.

I just installed my home alarm, and it does suck doing it on a 40+ old 1 story slab.. I dream of doing it with nothing but frame.
 
Part of it is time. I work 40 to 60 hours a week on the road. I would have at most a couple of day window to do all of it. Pretty confident, I couldn't complete in that time frame.

The alarm system will be handled by our current alarm company as we still have a couple of year left on our contract. We're already looking into what our options are there.

They are doing several audio packages for us. Again expensive, but I'm paying for convenience :(
 
Look at On-q Lagrand, and Leviton, they both offer cat6 gear for structured media
 
I know how to get them to budge. "I want Cat6 in my house or I will be finding a different builder!" Seriously, this would haunt me for the entire ownership of said house.
 
Unfortunately the builder, the plan, & the lot has already been chosen and earnest money deposited.

Short of throwing away several thousand in earnest, I don't have many options here. I have asked to speak to a manager at the company to see what my options are in this regard. I have to believe there is someway around this. We'll see next week. I doubt I will get anywhere on this till at least Monday.
 
MikeTrike said:
Any specific reason for Cat6? Cat5e is gigabit friendly :)
Click to expand...

Can CAT5e handle Gigabit Speeds? From what I read, it is limited to 350mb and not full Gigabit.

If it can handle Gigabit speeds then I have nothing to worry about?
 
CAT5e can handle Gigabit just fine, however CAT6 is the new hotness. The price difference between the cabling price is minimal. Hell, go buy the spools for the builder and say, "run this cable instead bitch!" It terminates the same way, etc. I would tell them that it is your money, your new house, your new CAT6 in the wall that needs to be run.

I wouldn't put up with that quite honestly and as others have said, yeah......CAT5e going into the new house would haunt me.
 
capreppy said:
Can CAT5e handle Gigabit Speeds? From what I read, it is limited to 350mb and not full Gigabit.

If it can handle Gigabit speeds then I have nothing to worry about?
Click to expand...

Pretty much, I run gig all day on nothing but Cat5e

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_5_cable

However if you're thinking 5-10 years out, Cat6 is not a bad option if you think you need more than 1000 Mbps (1 Gbps) speeds in your home.
 
I'll be in this house for a while. If we have a kid, we'll be staying till they are out of high school before we move to our retirement home.

I had not thought about buying the CAT6 cable myself and then having them just use it instead. Anyone in DFW know of a good place to buy CAT6 in bulk? I'll be going this route if I can't get them to use CAT6. The new house is only 5 miles from our current place so it wouldn't be that much effort to bring it over to them.
 
Cat 5e should do gigabit perfectly fine for gigabit. It's rated for 350MHz, which I'll let someone else who knows their stuff better elaborate on.

I wouldn't sweat it too much, unless you're desperately in need of 10Gb over copper, which I'm guessing isn't the case.

Two suggestions based on what I would do if wiring a house of my own:
1) Depending on the size of your house, plan a couple drops in convenient places for adding more wireless access points. A network drop and an outlet in the top of a closet with a shelf makes for a nice out of the way AP.
2) Think about putting in a quality router, particularly if you're going to be handling lots of traffic and/or a big pipe (I know a lot of new developments are getting FiOS and the like). Something along the lines of a pfsense box, rather than relying on consumer routers, and just hook up access points for wireless as needed. Given that you already have a rack going in for the structured wiring, maybe look into a nice rackmount Atom box - there are some good looking prebuilt Supermicro ones that are very well suited for this sort of application, relatively cheap, low power, fanless. This is something that you can save for later of course, but if you're more concerned about doing it once and not having to redo stuff later, it's a good idea for a couple hundred extra dollars.
 
The Hunter said:
Cat 5e should do gigabit perfectly fine for gigabit. It's rated for 350MHz, which I'll let someone else who knows their stuff better elaborate on.
Click to expand...
Most Cat5e cable these days touts 350MHz performance, however the actual Cat5e specification only requires cable be characterized to 100MHz, and that characterization is enough to guarantee proper performance.

As far as GigE is concerned, 1000base-T was designed to operate to its full specification on Cat5e cable. It'll work fine. If you run it on Cat6 (or better) cable you might be able to push the cable length limits a bit further or otherwise operate out-of-spec, but I'm sure that doesn't matter in your situation.

Still, in new construction I'd say go with future-proofing and Cat6 or Cat6a. It doesn't cost much more, and it means you don't need to rewire in 5-10 years when 10Gbit becomes prevalent. Small additional investment now will save you a lot of energy and money trying to redo it later - doing structured cabling in houses is a pain in the ass once the drywall is up.

Don't really have any suggestions on dealing with your contractor though. Find out who their sub-contractor is and try to convince him directly?
 
I'll do some research on a pfsense box. I've heard of it, but don't really know much about it.

It sounds as if in a worse case scenario (no I don't want it to happen, but need to prepare myself regardless), the CAT5e will handle what I need. As for future proofing, CAT6 is the way to go if I can get past the barriers in front of me.
 
I wonder why the will not budge on it, the only thing I can think of they either have a shit load of cat5e in their warehouse and they want to charge you top dollar for it. Why else would they care what type of cable is needed, considering if they are purchasing direct from vendors for the projects, as long as the vendor has it they can get it, and still charge you whatever price they want.

You might be stuck with buying the cat5e package, and they trying to drop off the cat 6 when they are wiring your home to have them use that. I doubt they will not charge you for the cat5e...
 
It's honestly not a huge issue from a 1gb/sec standpoint. But I would want Cat6 to feel good about a new build (esp if you might be in the house for ~20 yrs).

I would tell them. This is my property, my house. Run this cable (hand to them) or I'm calling the cops and throwing you out!
 
I'll find out more on Monday. The Sales Person doesn't work weekends nor does the design center.

I've got an email to both of them with questions. Unfortunately the emails were sent after 8pm on Friday, so I get to fume on this topic for the weekend.

Calling the cops, as much fun as that might be, isn't an option. The house isn't legally mine till we close on financing and that won't happen till after the build.
 
Find out who is actually running the cable and talk to them. I did that on the house i had built. But honestly, I wouldn't worry about it being Cat5e.
 
Bribe them with food or beer. If a customer did that I would run any kind of wire they wanted :)
 
Still waiting for a response from the sales girl.

Problem with bribing is timing. I'd have to be there the day they do the wiring. I have an idea when they'll do it, but will have to go over daily to see where they are on the build.
 
gigabit is fine over cat5e, i wouldn't get all crazy over it, but for some reason why are you getting a 42u rack for very little things?
 
it isn't a 42U rack. it is a 42" wiring enclosure. It is going into a closet in my home office so out of sight.

CAT5e is the only option, so I'm not going to fuss over it if it can't be changed.
 
marley1 said:
gigabit is fine over cat5e, i wouldn't get all crazy over it, but for some reason why are you getting a 42u rack for very little things?
Click to expand...

That's what I'm wondering also. Maybe the audio packages he is getting also have some gear that would be racked in there. Such as an amp or something.

Edit: Well that was resolved. --^
 
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