I need to run cat5e wire in our new house….soon! Can someone give me a quick primer on this. Here are my basic questions:
1. Is each wall plate a homerun?
2. How do electrical wires affect the cat5e?
3. What am I likely to screw up?
4. What about Coaxial cable? Can I run it with the cat5e?
A few comments: Structural wiring is overkill for us and We just aren’t interested in having a smart house. The 4 datalines in the cat5e cable are more than enough (at least I think there are 4 datalines in there!). If we ever get high speed internet, we’ll most likely use wireless technology to transmit the signal. I already have the wireless technology in my new laptop since our office building has wirelss and wireless is now available in hotels, coffee shops, etc. etc. etc. Maybe there’s something I’m overlooking, but I think 1 cat5e cable to each room and 1 Coax cable will be plenty.
Your thoughts are most appreciated. Thanks!
Paula
Replies
All cat5 and coax should be run back to a central location and any spliters placed there.(makes problems easy to fix) Cat5 would end up pluged into a router or hub to ensure the correct signal ends up at the correct PC. If you can keep the cat5 and coax away from the household wiring. Cat5 connot be "piggy backed" like the wireless systems.
You are talking about TELEPHONE WIRING and not CAT5 NETWORK WIRING. Is that correct.
You don't need Cat5E or even Cat5 for phone wiring, you can use whatever is readily avialable. Will you don't need to run phone wiring home run I would still do it that way, easier to maintain and make any changes needed. You get a punch down block where you make all of the connections.
I would run at least a couple of extra coax cables to whereever the main TV is going to be. You might want to beable to distribute satelite or many DVD player to other rooms.
Yes, you can run coax and telephone wiring (and network wiring) togethere. Don't run then parallel to power wiring within a couple feet more than you have too. But you can say run AC on stud and then tv/phone on the next stud to go down a wall.
And I opened this thread hoping for a good discussion on finish bulldozers.
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remodeler
Cat5 is for computer networks (4 twisted pairs).
Cat4 is for phone lines (3 twisted pairs).
All are home runs to your network router or phone junction box.
If possible Cat5 should be run at 90 degrees to electrical wiring and away from flouescent fixtures. (there is whole science to cabling)
Phone, cable and Cat5 can be run together.
Leviton has a good system for running these wires. YOU GET TO BUY NEW TOOLS! You'll need a wire crimper for making male ends and you'll need a push down tool for connecting those smalllll wires to femail connector. A tester is great also. mine sends 1,2 3,4,5,6,7,8 signals into one end of the wire and then detects them as they come out the other end. You know all your wires are in the right place.
My advice is put in both phone and Cat5 cable at the same time. you don't have to use it, but if you ever start using high speed modem, you'll wonder how you got along without it.
Marv
Most phone wiring is CAT 3.
Although, I just used CAT 5e in my house for both phone and data - why bother buying a second roll of the cheaper stuff for the phone; plus, it it there for whatever I might need it for in the future.
CAT5e is 4 twisted pairs, but you need all 4 pairs for 1 single data connection.
4 pairs do give you 4 telephone lines, however.
CEA guidelines are 2 CAT5's and 2 coax to each room, althoug I didn't see the need for running more than one coax to each room. Each of my rooms has one wallplate with 1 RJ-45 data jack, 1 RJ-11 phone jack, and 1 F-connector coax jack. These are Leviton Quickports, a pretty nice system as another poster commented on.
Each of these is home-run'd back to a central panel. One CAT5e goes from the panel to the telephone NID box on the side of the house (up to 4 phone lines). I ran a few coax lines from the panel to the outside of the house for TV and satellite. And a couple of extra coax runs to room with the big TV as well.
I ran the data lines even though I have wireless. Wireless is super convenient, but still relatively slow and a little flakey. It's OK for web-browsing, but if I want to do something like put all 200 CD's we have on the PC's hard disk, and use something like those new Philips UPnP-equipped stereos to access them anywhere in the house, I want a fast and reliable wired connection.
"Cat5 is for computer networks (4 twisted pairs).
Cat4 is for phone lines (3 twisted pairs)."
No, Cat# has nothing to do with the number of pairs.
The cat ratings has to do with the capacity, inductance, and how well they maintan the specs.
I am looking at a catalog with some Belden cables in it.
They have cat 1 (which is more than enough for telelphone usage) in 2 pair, 6 pair, and 25 pair.
They have cat 3 in 2 pair
And Cat 5 in 2 pair and 4 pair.
A lot of people will run 4 pair cat 5 for telelphone use just because that is what they are already using.
Many of the new (business) digital phone systems will require CAT5 or equivalent. I'd run it for home use, cost isn't that much more, because I don't think we are far from seeing a digital phone technology to the doorstep, and dropping the current analog system (look at how fast the cellular network has gone from analog to digital). Cheaper now to pull it in, than to have to restring your house in ten years.
My house, I put two plates in each room, i.e. in bedrooms, one behind bed, one across room in most logical place for a desk to be located. To each plate, I ran a single CAT5 jack for telephone (USOC 3 pr) (ran 4pr cable, used 3pr), and 2 CAT5 lan cables.
Wireless is good, but has security issues (most folks don't change the SSID for starters, or the default login and passwords). Programs such as netstumbler and netbrute are easily availble for finding and cracking a wireless system. Also has interference issues, since runs at 2.4Ghz, I have seen some problems recently in over-teched houses, where many devices (or neighbors) work in the 2.4G range. i.e. garage door, telephones, security systems, wireless cameras, etc, and such interference is hard to trace, and impossible to fix or workaround. Also wired is much faster than wireless (but either is faster than a high-speed internet connection).
All wires to all boxes should be home runs, back to punchdown panels appropriate for their usage (telephone or data). There are some pretty nice all-in-one homerun boxes out there, modular in design. I think even at HD, but they are pricey.
It's ok to run parallel to power lines, I keep a minimum of 6" separation, more is safer. You can cross power lines in closer proximity if you cross at 90degrees. Don't put extreme pulling force on the cables when pulling in. A kink can ruin a cable run, or inject interference (via signal reflection). Same for sharp bends. I consider a radius of 6x the cable diameter to be the minimum bend. (i.e. the cable is about 5mm diameter, you should not have a bend radius greater than 30mm).
You can group Coax phone and data together. Just keep it away from the sine-wave interference of high-voltage wires. And don't bundle too tightly together, this can contribute to cross-talk.
On the data wires, run to a patch panel, but only connect those lines from the patch panel to the hub that you will be using on a regular basis.
1. Is each wall plate a homerun?
No. It takes 4 plates to make a homerun. And you can only make a homerun on the plate over which you swung the bat.
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