I am in the process of building a new home and I feel that is would be a great time to wire it up RIGHT. I want to use Cat 5 for the the computers and routers but I am confused about running cat 5 for telephione. The plug for cat 5 is larger than a phone line outlet, so how does tha work. I read the article in FHB and it makes alot of sense. Justcurious if someone can help me out. thanks
Replies
Last time I did this, we used double phone plugs thingys throughout the house.
Standard receptacle box, with a faceplate for 2 phone lines. Top phone plug was line 1, and the bottom was for line 2. Ran everything back to a punchdown block.
Slicker 'n snot on a doorknob.
Bumpersticker: Horn broken. Watch for finger.
One Cat 5 cable is used for data and a separate Cat5 cable run for telephone.
The connectors for data have 8 pins in them and the connectors for the phone typically have 6 (could be 4 or 2 as well) , thus leaving the brown pair of wire unused. Two pair of the 4 for data are actually not used either but all four pair are connected.
I just rewired my entire house pulling out all the old "bell" wire and home running it all to a central point. I pulled two cables to each point regardless of the current and/or foreseeable future use.
I used the Leviton quickport jacks. made the connections very simple as they have the color codes on the sides. I will also be able to run new RG6 coax easily to the same box later without replacing the ports for the phone or data.
If you run two cables try to get two different jacket colors. I had the same color and ended up wrapping a piece of blue electrical on the phone cable to tell them apart.
Bill
I terminated all the phone cables to a punch down block as well and must agree that it is slick. I mounted the block in my attic.
I terminated the data lines towards the top of a central coat closet. I also ran the cable for the cable modem to the same location (also to a Leviton Quickport connector, type F). I then put in a 110v outlet for power and a small shelf. My cable modem and 8 port router are both on the shelf at the top of this closet out of the way. I bought a bunch of 12 inch Cat5 patch cords to connect the router to the various port in the wall to keep the wires under control.
My wife can plug the laptop in pretty much anywhere in the house (I blew off the bathrooms) and get internet and print to the printer in the office. Wireless would accomplish the same thing but I am not comfortable with the security yet.
Wish we did it years ago.
By the way the Cat 5 data outlets have two color codes on them, one for 568A and 568B standards. One is more typically a commercial application and one residential from what I have seen. I does not matter which you use as long as you are consistent. When I started I didn't quite know which to use and picked the 568A so I stuck with it.
Bill
You'll probably be running what is now known as cat 5E, the E is for enhanced. The RJ45 jacks will work fine with a standard 110 phone plug. With 110 the wires are (left to right) 1234, 2 and 3 are line 1 and 1 and 4 are line 2. With RJ45 the wires are 12345678. Therefore, 4 and 5 will be line 1, 3 and 6 are line two. The color coding for phone pairs is normally, 1 - blue, 2 - orange, 3 - green, 4 - brown.
If you intend to maintain the integrity of a CAT5 phone line installation then you should make all of the phone runs individual. This is commonly referred to as a home run. It sounds like you know the networking side.
You may also want to take a look at multi purpose cable. It contains cat5, phone, fibre and cable all in a single package.
I agree w/ no one (Har, Har, Har) in the Post above. I too, do Home Runs for each RJ45 jack location. It is my understanding that you do not have to use separate runs for data and voice. I don't and never had a noise problem even when trying. The problem of crossover noise was solved with CAT 5(E) by twisting each pair of wires within the bundle at at different schedule. I would not combine the same lines for computer and tel. They use the same pins in the wiring configuration and it also eliminates redundancy in your wiring scheme.
Use the 568A wiring scheme. It is the most typical.
The Lutron quick ports are great. An eight pin port will accomodate an 8 and 6 pin modular plug as a 6 pin port will accomodate a 6, 4 and 2 pin modular plug. You can buy a crimping tool (cool!) to terminate CAT 5(E) with an Ethernet coupling (10 base T, 8 pin module in which you wire 4 pins - 1, 2, 3, 6). Get a Lutron Cat. for the info. Maybe it's available on the web too.
Ha! I just remembered! There is a site made by Steve DeRose, but I can't get to it. It tells me I am not allowed access from this server. Huh? It used to work. (If anyone out there has access to Brown Univ's computer network system maybe you can contact Steve and find out why.) Do a search for Steve DeRose. He has the best guide for CAT 5 wiring I know of. A single page guide is http://www.pcmobilehelp.com/support/Cat5WiringDiagram.htm. This will show you how to configure the pins in a modular jack.
The patching/ circuit boards available at HD are good too, however the coupling/ splitters for coax, which come with them, are not good for digital service. Maybe they have upgraded.
Use RG6U coax cable. If you can spring the extra $30 - $40 use the Thomas Betts compresion couplings (or similar) and tool rather than the HDepot type/ available crimping tool and couplings. Compression couplings are a hec of a lot stronger too. (FHB did an article about these a few months ago. Can't remember which issue.) They (TB) also have a stripping tool for about $30 too. A good investment if you do a lot of this. The $10 ones go dull very quickly.
Keep in mind when running coax: One Main coax cable can be split and serve UP TO three (3) units, ie: 2 TV's and one modem, or 3 TV's, or 3 modems. The number of computers each modem serves is a function of the router and not the cable service. The upshot is, if you plan on having more than a single main can serve, ask the cable co. to bring in a second or even third line. This should not cost you any more by them. Note: You only need ONE cable modem if you use a router. Most Cable Co.s would prefer you to use a separate modem and therefore ISP address for each computer (cha-ching) but your router will take care of this and provide a firewall to boot without the monthly charge $$.
Install the Tel Point of Entry and the CATV Point of Entry at the same location. This is where you should install the tel circuit board, cable modem (provided by your cable co.), and router.
Concider using bundled wire, ie: each line/ "wire" has one coaxRG6U line, and two CAT5 lines, even a fiber optic line if you want. This makes pulling the wires much easier. One pull instead of three.
Now you're off to the races.
If I lived anywhere where I thought fiber might make it to my door someday...I'd make sure to run those fibers too. As others have said, the prepackaged multiwire in one would be really nice.
The multimode fiber will be good I think for quite some time...and I fear Cat5e will be "obsolete" fairly soon.
Were I live, there's no cable...and won't be. On the plus side, no need to worry about security for wireless!
Instead of also running fiber, I've given up entirely on guessing the future. My policy is that there are boxes with stubs of conduit running either down to the crawl space or up to the attic wherever.... In the future, I'll be able to pull in whatever it is that they invent, when I decide to.
-- J.S.
This is probably the best advice. Although, the problem I always have is that the wiring is always in the wrong wall or the wrong place on the wall.
DonH
Edited 1/11/2003 11:10:02 PM ET by DonH
Edited 1/13/2003 12:35:19 AM ET by DonH
"The multimode fiber will be good I think for quite some time...and I fear Cat5e will be "obsolete" fairly soon."
Can't say I agree with that assessment. Generally, the large installed base of Cat5/Cat5e twisted pair (TP), combined with technological advances that make even 1000Mbps practical over such infrastructure pretty much guarantees it will be around and mainline for some time.
The small number of folks with enough bux to install and terminate fiber to every room will mean that fiber will continue to be niche, very high-end, and never mass market. Hence it seems unlikely that Sony, Phillips, etc will ever develop mass market devices. (I pick them since it seems like video is the only thing that might even remotely have a chance of requiring more bandwidth that can be provided by TP.) This means that no-one will ever produce content for such devices..... This doesn't mean we won't all have HDTV some day. It just means that the HDTV that does make it to mass market will run over TP, not fiber.
Generally, even in the enterprise, fiber has gotten very little traction in LAN applications. It does dominate the long haul backbone networks, but that is because of the long range that are achievable without any repeaters and the fact that the network operators need to look ahead to many 10's of gigabits per second.
Does anyone know of anyone who has ever used the multi-mode fiber installed within their home? And BTW, I don't mean the TOSlink stuff between the CD/DVD player and the Amp.
I am putting my own money where my mouth is, and will run no fiber in the new place I am building. In fact, I am going further and not installing any coax to any of the rooms (only to the location for the satellite tuner). Even the video will be distributed over Cat5 (although using some proprietary technology rather than IP packets).
DonH
Edited 1/13/2003 1:24:12 AM ET by DonH
This is not a challenge, just a question. It seems like generations of computing and telecommunications technology keep getting shorter and shorter. Are you saying that generations of LAN technology - or specifically, LAN cabling technology - are getting longer?
Very good question.
First, for infrastructure stuff (roads, gasoline distribution, electrical distribution, telephone wires, home wiring), the inertia of the installed base tends to limit innovation in that area. Innovation in this context tends to focus on making better use of that infrastructure, or in small incremental, but backward compatible changes.
The Analog Modem->ISDN->DSL transition is a good example. The sunk capital cost of all that copper on the poles and in the ground can be reused without total replacement at each stage of technological evolution. Now one might think that the deployment of cable TV is a counter example. In fact, it is not. Cable does not replace copper phone lines, but rather offers additional functionality. Conversly, fiber in the home does nothing that can not be done by Cat5 or coax. As a side note, I feel the infrastructure spending for cable happened mostly because of non-technology trends happening at the time that pushed investment in the totally new infrastructure (i.e., the invention of the junk bond industry, and the desire by content providers to charge for content). But that is a much longer story.....
But it does bring me to my next point. A specific technology does not become widely adopted in isolation. This only happens in the context of other technologies and other business and social trends. So if the mass market starts widespread installation of fiber it is because there is some mass market application that requires it that can't be run over existing home infrastructure. But how can an application that requires fiber ever receive the investment to become mass market? And why should content providers invest in providing content for such an application.
Which gets me to my final point. Even Cat5 may not make the above cut. This is why I think that wireless (once certain technological issues get worked out) is, in fact, the way that most in-house data and AV will eventually be distributed. Coax will probably continue to dominate the video distribution application until that happens. (With Cat5 being mostly for geeks like me.)
Sorry for getting long winded, but since my position is a bit different that many mainline HA experts, I feel it needed a bit more backing. There is a fair bit more to support this position, but it is probably not of interest to this forum.
DonH
Edited 1/11/2003 11:09:41 PM ET by DonH
"Even the video will be distributed over Cat5 (although using some proprietary technology rather than IP packets)."
I'm intrigued. I saw on the Leviton web site some QuickPort RCA jacks with IDC connections on the rear. I thought it seems too easy, there has got to be more to it than some cat5e with a jack on each end. What other technology is involved? For example: if I wanted to play a DVD on the family room player what would it take to get the picture and sound to the other TVs in the house?
Bill
We pull a lot of LAN for our communications group. SOP for the past eight years is to pull siamese pairs. May be a little more expensive, put you get two LAN drops in at each location for the cost/time of one pull. Why hasn't this caught on in residential?
Dave
Dave,
re using "siamese pairs"
Is that really easier than just pulling two to three normal cables at once? (My SOP at home)
Agree about running multiples to each location, but I was never a fan of bundled cables. E.g., the HA catalogs will try to sell you this humongous cable with 2xCat5, 2xRG6 and even 2xFiber in on bundle. (And Frankie suggested this)
I personally think they are a pain to pull and very inflexible (both in configuration flexibility and bend radius).
DonH
Edited 1/13/2003 1:18:07 AM ET by DonH
Edited 1/13/2003 1:20:47 AM ET by DonH
O.K. I admit.... copper is whats out there and so thats what were adapting right now. Fibre will be the norm as the tide turns but that will take some time. If I had my choice it would be fibre with converters which at some point I would discard. Well, that is if the technology doesn't change to RF or something else within the next two weeks.
So why do you think fiber will be the norm?
DonH
Don, I keep seeing fibre getting closer and closer to my front door. AT&T Broadband has brought it nearly all the way and SBC will probably follow suit. I agree that due to the miles and miles of copper that has already been invested in, it will probably be a while before we see anybody converting but if I was building my house today I would pull multi strand fibre along with Cat 5E just so its there when I can finally use it.
I think one of the reasons we are not seeing it in more new homes today is because there is still a pretty wide separation between builders and information technology. One of the other reasons its not showing up yet is because of the lack of generally available fibre ready terminal devices (TV, Stereo, Phones, etc.). We've had fibre computer networking equipment for several years now.
I suppose its just an argumentive point right now. We'll just have to wait and see what the future brings.
"I keep seeing fibre getting closer and closer to my front door."
But they run that fiber to meet their requirements not yours. Fiber is great for the infrastructure folks. Long distance between repeaters, and lots of bandwidth for neighborhood-level aggregation. Generally, few of these guys propose to run fiber to each individual house (at least not anyone with a viable business plan). Once you get to the house, the short runs within the building mean that standard Cat5e is more than enough to handle any content technologies in the pipeline. Even wireless has enough tricks in the pipeline to handle any content technology in the pipeline (although the convergence may still be a few years away). There is really nothing in the non-carrier product pipeline being proposed around fiber these days. If anything, most of the next-generation mindshare is going toward wireless and RG6 handles most of the near-term video transport requirements.
(BTW, this is all based on 23 years of experience designing next-generation network technology on the carrier, enterprise and consumer end of things. I have been around long enough for the "next generation" stuff I have worked on to become 2-3 generations obsolete :-), so I tend to take the long view. On the other hand, I once thought both fiber to the desktop and LEO satellites were a good idea, so what do I know...)
But if it buys you peace-of-mind, hey.... I will probably invest for my peace-of-mind in Cat6 if anything (although even that does not stand up to close technical scrutiny).
DonH
Edited 1/13/2003 5:25:27 PM ET by DonH
Edited 1/13/2003 5:31:37 PM ET by DonH
Edited 1/13/2003 6:34:31 PM ET by DonH
I'm the guy I guess who started the whole fiber thing...
Is Gigabit Ethernet running on Cat5e these days? I guess it probably is. In my work, I always design in fiber at the physical level so I need not worry about the length (up to 1000' feet anyways, then I can switch to single mode) and more importantly, I need not worry about EMI or ground loops.
OK, at the consumer level, these issues basically disappear for the most part. And I agree, 5e will be good for quite some time, especially for any "normal" needs.
But, considering how easy it is to pull things when the studs are open...
Of course, the conduit is best.
For me in my house, I did not run fiber either, not even the 1000' down to the street, but then again, cable doesn't run by me either. So, by the time fiber arrived, RF will have long surpassed.
Actually, I kind of wish that fiber were coming along. I am building in an area with occasional thunderstorms in a big open valley, and would love to have the additional lighting protection it gives.
DonH
Fiber may be a norm someday but not soon. There are TOO MANY variations in the material diameter as well as the sheathing not to mention the connector ends for this to go big time in the marketplace. Try to order connector sets if you think I'm exaggerating.
Cat 5 & e will carry the e-mail for a bunch of years. RG6 covers the entirety of TV and cable signals. If you are worried then go and run some smurf tube for future applications.
I recently wired my place with 2 cat5e's and 1 RG6 per drop. 2 drops in each room where the phone or TV or Computer would likely land. All run back to my datacom box in the utility room in the basement.
Coleman Wire http://www.colemancable.com/ "voice & data" then "home run cables" makes a bundled cable that has multiple (two CAT5e's & the rg6's) in a PVC jacket. It came after I started running my stuff. It may be hard to bend but it couldn't have been more time consuming than stapling all of those cables back to the datacom box. (PS one disadvantage of I joists is you need to look on both sides before you staple a cable in place.)
Leviton and Square D have homeowner datacom boxes commonly available. Hoffman has "Telephone boxes" as well as datacom products that are similar to those and better than the stuff on the web.
My dream is to have the router in the datacom box and feed all of the network from there. (one less box on the desktop.)
> Fibre will be the norm
Maybe some day, but I don't think there's much evidence to suggest that such a day is close enough to pull glass in a house now. Improvements to copper (twisted pair) technology continue to be driven by powerful market forces, with very limited drivers for fiber technology that would be suited to the typical home.
I would pull 5e rather than 5. If you want to hedge your bet, pull 5e in conduit.
I'm doing my house right now. I'm pulling 5e with chases between the basement and the attic to make rewiring easier in future.
Pete
There are a couple of different ways to do it. First, the off the shelf stuff...
Using baluns is one:
http://www.smarthome.com/7805.html
http://www.smarthome.com/7805S.html
These next guys are a bit fancier, but pretty cool and probably what I will use initially:
http://www.wireless-experts.com/products/images/pdf/new/CATSart1.PDF
Ultimately, I would like to build/buy a "Open TiVO" out of a linux box and a MPEG2 compression card to stream video over IP around the house, but not sure when that will happen. There are some folks working on products and open source stuff like that already, but I can't find the URLs right now. Can track it down tomorrow if you are interested.
IMHO all AV will eventually be converted in to packets and shipped around Cat5, wireless or whatever. This is pretty much trivial to do with audio today. Video is not too far behind.
DonH
Don,
Thanks I'll check the sites out.
Bill
Years ago at NAB I saw a company that was running RS-170A over thousands of feet of twisted pair -- old phone lines, not CAT anything. Their target market was security, but the picture was broadcast quality, as good as TV news.
-- J.S.
I just used a plug in a new house that had connections for phone and cable in the same box. I put one in every room. I have two phone lines, one for computer and one to talk. In the office I put an adapter in the socket for the phone, that allows me to use both lines at the same time. The advantage of cable in every room is ability to hook up several computers or t.v.
I kind of hijacked your thread on the fiber thing, so to make it up, I will try to provide some additional useful advice.
You might want to invest in a good structured wiring cabinet. (Just make sure you put only real, honest-to-God copper in it. None of this effete glass stuff.) Lets you run all your wire to one place, and patch them in to the right service as you determine/change the use. Over the years, this will make things much neater. I started my HA wiring in my Portland house (retrofit) without one, and it started to become a real mess. Installed one of the Leviton structured systems (the one on sale at HD) and things have stayed under control in the intervening years. Probably will use a cabinet designed by Elk in my Montana house (both the below links stock it) containing Cat5 patch panels from Leviton and a Caddx alarm system.
Here are a few links to distributors of distribution panels to get you started:
SmartHome is not always the cheapest, but they do have a good selection and are oriented toward the DIY'er: http://www.smarthome.com/distribution.html
Bass Home Electronics is also very DIY-friendly, and the owner provides excellent support (and is a frequent valuable, if occasionally controversial ,contributor to some of the HA newsgroups): http://www.basshome.com (look under Home Automation and Structured Wiring).
Worthington Distribution is another, but I have had trouble with them, and don't keep their link around any more. But lots of other folks like them and they can be inexpensive.
Finally, an excellent book on structured wiring is "Structured Wiring Design Manual" by Robert Bucceri (ISBN 0-9700057-1-7). SmartHome carries it among others.
DonH
Side note - Found this when searching for a link for the above book on Amazon: "Home Networking-Structured Wiring Systems--U.S. Markets, Technologies and Opportunities: 1999-2003 Analysis and Forecasts [DOWNLOAD: PDF]" Only cost $4,900. :-)
Edited 1/13/2003 7:19:47 PM ET by DonH