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Author Topic: How to wire a new house for TV and Internet.  (Read 3078 times)

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Geek-9pm

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How to wire a new house for TV and Internet.
« on: August 12, 2018, 02:42:49 PM »
How do you  to wire a new house for TV and Internet.  ???

My brother is building a new house himself. He is at the point where he wants to wire the house for TV and Internet in each major room. (Not to be in garage or bathrooms.)  So it may take four cable drops. He wants to drop for the attic, not the crawl space. Here is California the crawl space is often just 18 inches.  :o

So the question is this' Should he go with Coax? or UTP ?'
Coax would be RG6 and UTP would be CAT6. Either It is for  for in-wall installation.

Well, there is such a thing as a Diplexerthat can put both TV and Ethernet over a Coax cable for a short distance. Here are some posts on other sites.

[A diplexer is frequency multiplex - Wikipedia]

AT&T with Direct TV

https://forums.att.com/t5/U-verse-TV-Installation/COAX-to-Ethernet/m-p/5102720#M4605

https://www.snbforums.com/threads/directv-broadband-deca-ethernet-to-coax-adapter-third-generation.44385/

Comcast & Xfinity.

https://forums.xfinity.com/t5/Internet-Archive/Networking-with-coax-and-ethernet-Will-this-thought-process/td-p/2254275

https://forums.xfinity.com/t5/Internet-Archive/Coaxial-to-Ethernet-Is-it-possible/td-p/2968125

You Tube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00J4WeVRrVA


But I am thinking that is not the way to do it.
Maybe wireless everything?
Or maybe just drop both kinds of cable to each major room?

I am not sure.v   :-\
What would you say?
« Last Edit: August 12, 2018, 02:54:20 PM by Geek-9pm »

Mark.



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Re: How to wire a new house for TV and Internet.
« Reply #1 on: August 12, 2018, 04:30:37 PM »
drop both.
that way he will always have options.

camerongray



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Re: How to wire a new house for TV and Internet.
« Reply #2 on: August 12, 2018, 05:32:27 PM »
I recently did this to my new flat (apartment) (although mine was a retrofit to an existing building which was a fair bit more difficult than installing it in a new built) - I made a YouTube video documenting the installation process: https://youtu.be/uGRYfVdAja4 and showing the finished result: https://youtu.be/5p1s5XSjBP8.  The videos are obviously fairly specific to my installation although the general hardware used and layout should apply elsewhere.

Here's an album of my adventures ripping holes in my walls/ceilings to install the cabling: https://photos.app.goo.gl/mAHnuspTJYNojU1T9

Generally what you'd want to do is run all of your cables back to a central point in the building and terminate them at a patch panel, this central point is where you would have your network switch and other distribution hardware.  For networking you want to run standard twisted pair cable, for most situations I'd go with CAT6, higher ratings such as CAT6A would be worthwhile only if you plan on running 10gbit networking over it however this cable is much more expensive, bulkier and harder to run so I tend to stick with CAT6 which can still technically do 10gbit over shorter lengths.  The only bit of advice I'd give is to make sure that whatever cable you buy is pure copper, some unscrupulous sellers (particularly the extremely cheap cable on eBay and Amazon) use copper clad aluminium which is a much cheaper, lower quality cable.

I'd recommend dropping multiple CAT6 cables to each room in sensible locations near to where devices may be located.  I'd always put in more jacks than you need as it's relatively cheap to do and it's better having ones you don't use rather than lacking ones that you do.  For example, you'd probably want 2-4 ports behind each TV to allow for smart TVs, set top boxes and games consoles.  I'd also run cables for use with wireless access points in sensible, central locations.  In my case I mounted the access point on the ceiling in the hallway.

The CAT6 cable can also be used for things other than networking, with special hardware you can send HDMI video signals over it which could be useful.  It's also suitable for use with analogue telephones so don't bother running those separately, just run more CAT6 as it's more useful.  Then, at the central location, rather than connecting the telephone ports to a network switch, you would link them up to your incoming phone line.

As for coax, I'm not familiar with the Cable TV networks in the US although you're probably going to want to run at least one to each location where you plan on having a TV.  I'd forget about using the coax for any sort of networking, the hardware that exists to do this is expensive and only really designed for use in environments where coax is already in place and the user doesn't want to run new cables, there's no reason to use them where installing actual CAT6 is an option.

Geek-9pm

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Re: How to wire a new house for TV and Internet.
« Reply #3 on: August 12, 2018, 05:39:17 PM »
10 Gigabit Ethernet ???
Wow! With that I could do anything!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10_Gigabit_Ethernet
Quote
.... Unlike previous Ethernet standards, 10 Gigabit Ethernet defines only full-duplex point-to-point links which are generally connected by network switches ...