Basement Remodel - What Wire Should I Install?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Buck Turgidson
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Buck Turgidson

I am getting ready to open up my finish basement walls and do a remodel. I
was planning to just run CAT-5 (I prefer wired over wireless). Is there
something else I need besides CAT-5? Should I use CAT-6?

Is there any other technologies or other things I should consider? Please
be realistic. I am on a tight budget, and am not an early adopter. But at
the same time, I don't want to miss something.

Thanks for any replies.
 
Buck said:
I am getting ready to open up my finish basement walls and do a remodel. I
was planning to just run CAT-5 (I prefer wired over wireless). Is there
something else I need besides CAT-5? Should I use CAT-6?

Is there any other technologies or other things I should consider? Please
be realistic. I am on a tight budget, and am not an early adopter. But at
the same time, I don't want to miss something.

Thanks for any replies.
Click to expand...
Assuming you use a router, put it in a very strategic place, needing
the shortest possible wiring to all points of use.
I have seen 100mb ethernet drop to 10 mb when another extension
cord(cat5) was added. Try to keep cords to 10-12m(12-15 yards)
if possible, and try to make a connection with 1 cable without breaks
in it.
Any connector in between, or soldering, will hurt connection quality.
Also make gentle curves, when your cabling has to negotiate a
corner.
I agree with you about your revulsion about wireless.
It never hurts anything but your wallet, if you choose better quality wiring.
 
If you don't have the cable yet, for a new installation I
would use CAT6, but frankly, unless the environment is very
bad or the cable runs very long, CAT5e should do fine even
for gigabit ethernet. CAT5 (no e) will be fine for 100Mb,
but it makes the most sense to permanently wire for the
highest bandwidth possible until the price becomes excessive
(you don't say anything about needing fiber optic so the
expense of it seems prohibitive).



The difference in cost of CAT6 over CAT5e is pretty small,
more important in the price difference would be how much
time you spent shopping for a good deal on either. Random
spot pricing.

Assuming you use a router, put it in a very strategic place, needing
the shortest possible wiring to all points of use.
I have seen 100mb ethernet drop to 10 mb when another extension
cord(cat5) was added. Try to keep cords to 10-12m(12-15 yards)
if possible, and try to make a connection with 1 cable without breaks
in it.
Click to expand...

You had a problem completely unrelated to cable length. I
have several 20 yard plus installations of CAT5e achieving
over 400Mbps on GbE, let alone a typical 70Mbps on 100Mb
(over same wiring, before the market allowed affordable
upgrade to gigabit NICs and switches). So do many
businesses.

If by "extension" you mean that you used a passive coupler
inbetween two pieces of cable, the quality of that coupler
might make the difference. Definitely the cable should not
have breaks in it, except of course for legitimate purposes
such as an active ethernet repeater, hub, or switch, etc.
If you had ran that cable alongside another (power) cable in
parallel for any distance, that too may degrade performance.

The better reason to strategically location the router (or a
switch, then taking only one run of cable to the router
which is elsewhere), is that it makes the wiring easier,
taking less time and money.
 
Buck Turgidson wrote:

I am getting ready to open up my finish basement walls and do a remodel.
I
was planning to just run CAT-5 (I prefer wired over wireless). Is
there
something else I need besides CAT-5? Should I use CAT-6?
Click to expand...
Is there any other technologies or other things I should consider?
Please
be realistic. I am on a tight budget, and am not an early adopter.
But at
the same time, I don't want to miss something.
Click to expand...
Thanks for any replies.
Click to expand...


Just use CAT5E cable. That is the most realistic you can get. You are not
going to miss much simply because other home owners are only catching up
with CAT3 at best. Whoever makes equipment for residential use is not
going to ignore the fact that there is just no base whatsoever of
installed CAT6 and therefore support for CAT5E cabling is guaranteed for
years and years to come. Sure you might miss out on 10Gb/s Ethernet. Even
then though, depending on how big your house is, it might work. Even if it
does not, I'd say 1Gb/s that's supported by CAT5E by standard is more that
you need between now and your next large renovation.

Good luck!


--

Best Regards,
Dmitri Abaimov, RCDD
http://www.cabling-design.com/
Home Cabling Guide, Cabling Forum, color codes, pinouts and other useful
resources for premises cabling users and pros



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Buck Turgidson said:
I am getting ready to open up my finish basement walls and do a remodel.
I was planning to just run CAT-5 (I prefer wired over wireless). Is there
something else I need besides CAT-5? Should I use CAT-6?

Is there any other technologies or other things I should consider? Please
be realistic. I am on a tight budget, and am not an early adopter. But
at the same time, I don't want to miss something.

Thanks for any replies.
Click to expand...
I'd use CAT-6 if the price difference was minimal, otherwise I'd go with
CAT-5.

You might want to check out flexible plastic tubing and matching plastic
outlet boxes at your local home center. They are cheap and allow you to
later change your wiring for something different, like fiber, in the future
with out having to open the walls again.

Oh and if you don't use the plastic conduit don't staple the cables tight to
anything as a staple crimp may cause a decrease in the cable's reliability,
assuming you don't break a wire or two in the cable.
 
Buck said:
I am getting ready to open up my finish basement walls and do a remodel. I
was planning to just run CAT-5 (I prefer wired over wireless). Is there
something else I need besides CAT-5? Should I use CAT-6?

Is there any other technologies or other things I should consider? Please
be realistic. I am on a tight budget, and am not an early adopter. But at
the same time, I don't want to miss something.

Thanks for any replies.
Click to expand...

I installed CAT-5E + standard telephone to each of my drops except for
the office space upstairs which got an extra CAT-5E to support the
networked color laser. Everything home-runs to a downstairs closet where
the cabling, including the phone, runs into a CAT-5E patch panel. The
DSL modem, router, switch, and a spare network printer live in the
closet along with a small UPS to protect the equipment.

If I were doing the job now rather than seven years back I would skip
the phone wiring and replace that with extra CAT wiring since phone
works just fine over that. If the price difference was tolerable I'd use
CAT-6 rather than CAT-5E but my two gigabit-capable machines work pretty
well over the older cable since they are able to fall back to a mutually
agreed speed if the cabling isn't up to standard. Since I've been
fighting with installing a HDTV, antenna, and DirecTV PVR over the past
couple of weeks I'd certainly consider running at least one RG-6 drop to
each room while I was at it with several going to wherever the main TV
area was going to be. It is a bear doing all of that after the fact. The
only other sort of cabling that might be considered is fiber and frankly
I can't see much use for it. Besides, the price is high and special
termination equipment and training are needed to install it.

No matter what sort of CAT wiring you use, it is important to install it
correctly. I won't go into that since there are any number of
instructional sites that describe the process. I bought a 1,000 foot
spool of cable at an auction along with the patch and they wasn't too
expensive but RJ-45 faceplates are pretty pricey no matter where I look.
It wouldn't hurt to leave the cables unterminated in boxes behind blank
panels in rooms where they aren't going to be used immediately to save
some money. Just don't bend the cables to a tight radius while doing it
since that can cause severe problems. Even using boxes is optional in
work like this but I think it makes for neater work. Low-voltage plastic
old-work boxes that have no backs are great for this sort of install and
are quite cheap at the nearest borg.
 
If I were doing the job now rather than seven years back I would skip
the phone wiring and replace that with extra CAT wiring since phone
works just fine over that. If the price difference was tolerable I'd use
CAT-6 rather than CAT-5E but my two gigabit-capable machines work pretty
well over the older cable since they are able to fall back to a mutually
agreed speed if the cabling isn't up to standard.
Click to expand...

Interesting, what type of gear is this that falls back?
Most GbE equipment doesn't fall back, it just resends
packets that are lost.

No matter what sort of CAT wiring you use, it is important to install it
correctly. I won't go into that since there are any number of
instructional sites that describe the process. I bought a 1,000 foot
spool of cable at an auction along with the patch and they wasn't too
expensive but RJ-45 faceplates are pretty pricey no matter where I look.
Click to expand...

http://www.microbarn.com/products.aspx?rid=167
 
kony said:
Interesting, what type of gear is this that falls back?
Most GbE equipment doesn't fall back, it just resends
packets that are lost.



http://www.microbarn.com/products.aspx?rid=167
Click to expand...

My understanding was that the standard was to fall back incrementally in
speed. Of course it wouldn't be the first time I misunderstood a spec
read in passing. I guess it could just be retransmission taking place.
To be honest I've never actually run a formal test to see what sort of
speed I'm getting between my pair of gigabit-capable devices. I just
know that it is now possible to do minor editing of large media files
in-place on the server while with 100Base-T I had to copy the files from
the server, edit in my office, and then copy them back afterward.

Those are good prices on the wiring accessories. Is the quality good?
I've been paying three to four times as much for plates and snap-ins at
my local commercial supplier. Of course I've pretty much completed all
of my wiring (gawd, I hope it is completed!) and the lower prices don't
really mean much now.

I spent hours a few nights ago trying to find a single broken conductor
in the run that comes out behind my entertainment center. And it would
be the orange wire so that it wouldn't even work with 100Base-T which
was all that I needed there. And I don't have a proper cable tester so
it was down to grounding conductors at one end and using an ohmmeter at
the other end to trace the problem.
 
My understanding was that the standard was to fall back incrementally in
speed. Of course it wouldn't be the first time I misunderstood a spec
read in passing. I guess it could just be retransmission taking place.
To be honest I've never actually run a formal test to see what sort of
speed I'm getting between my pair of gigabit-capable devices. I just
know that it is now possible to do minor editing of large media files
in-place on the server while with 100Base-T I had to copy the files from
the server, edit in my office, and then copy them back afterward.
Click to expand...

I suppose it's possible that a proprietary conversation
between two of same make could do this, but it is not a
standard to fallback for ethernet, AFAIK, while that does
happen with wifi.


Those are good prices on the wiring accessories. Is the quality good?
I've been paying three to four times as much for plates and snap-ins at
my local commercial supplier. Of course I've pretty much completed all
of my wiring (gawd, I hope it is completed!) and the lower prices don't
really mean much now.
Click to expand...

I would assume the quality is passible, since they're
keystone, though I haven't bought any of those linked.


I spent hours a few nights ago trying to find a single broken conductor
in the run that comes out behind my entertainment center. And it would
be the orange wire so that it wouldn't even work with 100Base-T which
was all that I needed there. And I don't have a proper cable tester so
it was down to grounding conductors at one end and using an ohmmeter at
the other end to trace the problem.
Click to expand...

Why did you need to find the broken conductor instead of
just joining a new replacement cable to the old one and
pulling it through?
 
kony said:
Why did you need to find the broken conductor instead of
just joining a new replacement cable to the old one and
pulling it through?
Click to expand...

Sadly, it wouldn't be nearly so simple. Between the patch panel closet
in the basement and the wall behind the entertainment center upstairs
involves at least four 90-degree bends, all of them inside finished
walls and ceiling. Although the CAT-5E has a somewhat slippery jacket it
would never have budged under these conditions. Had it been necessary to
run a new cable it would have meant some creative spelunking through at
least the finished ceiling in the basement and still the central beam in
the house would have been in the way and required cutting out some drywall.

I found that the fault was entirely due to my own clumsiness but luckily
it was confined to the last couple of inches of cable where I had, while
stripping the jacket, somehow nicked the orange wire enough to open the
conductor but leave the majority of the insulation intact to conceal the
break. Had the location been more user-friendly I might have seen it
immediately but as it was I was just about standing on my head while
holding a flashlight in my mouth to see properly. Live and learn I
guess. From this fiasco I've learned that termination and testing should
be done immediately if walls and ceilings will be closed up after the
wiring is installed. I've also learned that nice big conduits with pull
tapes should be run during new construction but that will never help me
at my age.
 
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