btw can’t internet connections through the house be setup similar to telephone connections?
so you have a main phone and extensions - likewise router/modem and switches?
also is it possible to re-purpose a telephone connection setup in a house to a network connection setup by switching connector from rj11 to rj45?
Appreciate the insights.
so router/modem in living room and from living room independent connections to each bedroom?
The approach to running cables does depend on the method of construction.
I have a modern house in which only the external walls are ‘solid’ and even these have a studwork (wooden frame and plasterboard covering) with 2cm gap behind. Most internal walls are studwork (wooden frame and plasterboard, 7cm internal gap ), and the non-load bearing ‘walls’ are often offset between the floors. The floors are large sheets of chipboard which lose their structural integrity when cut, unlike foorboards.
The studwork construction has advantages for running cables in the walls as there is no need to ‘channel’ out plaster and rebate solid walls for the sockets, however the ‘keyhole’ surgery (i.e. cutouts) approach to the wall & ceiling plasterboard means it is impractical to run conduit, unless one wants to have 2m+ high cutouts in the walls with consequent reparations.
Given that I am using fibre optic and Cat 6a this should not need replacing in my ‘lifetime’ in the house. The long runs I have installed between the floors have parallel ethernet wiring, where the duplication is labelled but unconnected.
Note:- ALL the electrical cable runs, from the original new-build, are inside conduit behind the plasterboard walls, but not in the ceiling runs.
Hi, telephone connections are usually just twisted pair x 2, with 3 wires only connected. You need 8, cat cable is 4 x twisted pair. Plus telephone wire is really thin, I don’t think you’d be able to terminate it easily. So highly unlikely you can repurpose unless they’ve used a different kind of cable.
Yes that’s how I would do it. If it’s out of sight then you needn’t be super tidy but in a room you could have very neat wall plates. Plus most routers have a 4 way switch incorporated so that would cut down on what’s visible. Though I think everyone would suggest you use a separate switch if you can. (And 4 “spider legs” might not be enough for your house, depends on how many rooms you’d like to be network connected. I have 5 rooms wired with 2 more to do at some point).
The spider body is where your telephone socket is, your router next to it, and then a switch.
Any idea if this is the way telephones are configured in a house - with separate lines running from the main phone to the extensions?
No telephone is usually master socket -> socket 1 -> socket 2, so wired in series.
(I’ve just redone mine with a single extension connected out the back of the master socket and run down into the lounge, then back up to the loft again so I can run a 2nd extension socket at some point in the future … which might be never!)
You can ‘daisy-chain’ switches together from one room to the next, or you can connect each one in a radial pattern back to the switch near (or integrated into) your router. Either way is fine, and the connected devices will all find each other. I would just do whatever makes the cable runs between switches easiest.
where i currently live, my modem/router is wired to a coax outlet on the wall in the living room.
likewise there are coax outlets in the bedrooms.
would it be possible for me to hookup a switch to the coax outlet in the bedroom to access the router/modem?
appreciate the clarification.
If your house is already wired with coax then you have Ethernet over coax aka Moca.
More for US homes I think.
I admire your creativity, but you’ve received good guidance here already.
Just set up your cabling as advised here, which is totally standard. Don’t make it more difficult on yourself than it need be.
You can upto 100mbps - although not recommend unless you know what you are doing but it should work in most cases over short distances.
Ethernet twisted pair wiring is based on Telephone twisted pair wiring.
However I really recommend Cat5e at least for ethernet, telephone wiring is typically Cat 3.
yes typically if professionally wired, the extensions will be wired from the master phone consumer box/socket
yes that would work - although I recommend a central switch or switchpots on your router and fanning out hub and spoke style- its more efficient that way as well as reliable - as per my earlier diagram.
Yes if you install the wiring - the installer or yourself will terminate the wiring. If you do it practice, practice, practice, and then use an ethernet cable checker
The conduit/trunking can be any sort of enclosure which you can draw cables through. In my house I have a mixture of metal and plastic trunking.
I really wouldn’t recommend this these days with the modern efficient mesh wifi systems effectively superseding the need for these if you can’t use ethernet.
MoCA emulates the very early ethernet deployments which were on Coax. They were fine when very few systems used the network at the same time - these days your home network is very different. Essentially MoCA is half duplex, that is only one item on the complete coax infrastcuture can talk at anyone time which has a massive hit on efficiency with the more hosts you have. Naim streamers when connected by ethernet work best when full duplex ie using duplex segments and switches.
Thanks, it’s not something I would advocate, but given the OP has the coax infrastructure in place already and seems to have a low network requirement (if I’ve understood correctly) then it would seem to be the simplest solution.
I’ve crawled around in our loft space squeezing around the water tank and between the rafters and it’s a most unpleasant experience to get our house all wired up with cat cable, it’s not something I’d want to repeat in a hurry.
A local specialist can usually do it at modest cost. Cost is always relative . . . but relative to the cost of Naim hi fi, one can have skilled folks come and do this pretty reasonably in many areas.
so 6a is preferred over cat 7 or cat 8?
Isn’t latest (technology) the best?
Not necessarily - its best to use the right technology for the task required. Cat 7 and 8 is really intended for other applications than what we are really using including non ethernet use. Cat 7 only got recently certified for use in ethernet applications.
Sure if you can get for the same price - or just about the same price - as 6A then go for it on the basis of why not? it doesn’t cost me any more.