Kitz Forum
Broadband Related => Telephony Wiring + Equipment => Topic started by: Weaver on August 17, 2018, 07:14:10 AM
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I am thinking of running ethernet properly, but I don't want to do a not of damage to woodwork everywhere, because our house is entirely done with wood panelling, in 2001-2003, in the traditional highland style.
I just so wish that I had put ducting in back then when I was doing it all. I don't know what on earth I was doing and why I did not do this.
Is there such a thing as genuinely attractive surface-mounted ducting that could take ethernet cables, chunky ones?
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What do you want to run ethernet for exactly, a WAP upstairs? Maybe given the flexibility in location you could choose somewhere most suitable for dropping a wire, an ethernet cable of the right colour in a crevice could be quite unobtrusive.
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Something like this...?
https://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Main_Index/Aerials_Index/Dline_30_15_All/index.html
I think I have seen it in B&Q too, though can’t find it on their website. Might have had different profiles too.
Worth confessing that whilst I have never tried that brand, other self-adhesive trunking has not worked for me, quickly falling off the wall. Alternatively, I’d be worried it stuck so hard as to damage the wood if you ever have to remove it.
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I've used that ducting linked above and I did buy it from B&Q a couple of years ago. I ran it around the bottom of skirting board and blends in very well. Easy to use and fit too. I managed to run 1 ethernet and 1 speaker cable in each one.
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Weaver, if you are running Ethernet cable, what category cable will you run?
I was going to pop up a new post to see if I should just run cat6 as I'm in a position to nearly start pulling cables in my house.
I have a lot of creaking floor boards and need new carpets so I'll be running under the floorboards as the carpets get lifted and the floorboards get resecured.
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As discussed, I ought to run fibre optics really for future proof ness to a small switch, but I don't know what I am doing so would have to get a bit of serious handholding. Otherwise it would be one or two cat7 cables for future proofing and if I can I would like to put string through so that I could pull a different cable through one day.
I need to check whether or not the space inside this ducting is generous so I could pull thick cat7 and chunky plug through. I have no idea about the size, big is good.
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Don't bother with thick and awkward CAT7 cables. Standard CAT5e can do 10Gbps (10GBase T) links up to 45m, which is a very long way inside a home :)
CAT5e is easy to hide as it comes in all colours and can be stapled easily if required.
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I just use CAT7 everywhere despite its awkwardness because of rf interference immunity and maybe rf crap coming from the mains :( You are right about CAT5e and I am just paranoid. I should really just lean about fibre and be done with it I think.
If I can work out how to get it out of the house then I would like to run some to three or four other small buildings and actually 100m might be not enough so definitely fibre optics then. If I put a WAP in the stable say then I can get hold of janet if I need help but she has no 3G in a particular spot. But it is a big load of hassle, real pain. Have to get the cable to a suitable point where it can leave the house, the hardest bit, then plastic tough blue pipe laid across to other buildings, just a bit of a pain after that.
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If you need to have something that will keep you going for the next 30 to 40 years install CAT7 - otherwise you you are wasting time and effort.
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I just use CAT7 everywhere despite its awkwardness because of rf interference immunity and maybe rf crap coming from the mains :( You are right about CAT5e and I am just paranoid. I should really just lean about fibre and be done with it I think.
If you had enough RF in the house to mess up ethernet signals on CAT5e I doubt any other devices would work and the more pressing concern would be not getting cooked by it.
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Perhaps the time has come to consider an all optical LAN. :-\
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@johnson True. I think one would only be concerned about rf if an ethernet cable was touching some interference source such as dirty mains or something. I am just being paranoid, as I say.
But I was asking about the physical business of ducting, cable choice is off topic. If I put pull string in and I get it right, then I could always pull new cable through some day. A dress rehearsal would be necessary to prove it.
We could have a chat about optic fibre in another thread because that would be very helpful indeed.
@Burrakkucat - Indeed, and some self education required.
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I need to check whether or not the space inside this ducting is generous so I could pull thick cat7 and chunky plug through. I have no idea about the size, big is good.
To the best of my knowledge, the trunking to which I linked has a clip-on cover, so no need to pull the plugs through. As long as the cable fits, you just reattatch the cover. But do check that before ordering!
Echo other comments re adequacy of Cat 5e, or even just Cat 5. My home is wired with a mixture of cat 5 and 5e, generally carrying gigabit. Anytime I have checked re-tx stats on any of my ethernet devices, they have, with one exception, always been absolutely zero, even after weeks or months That exception was traced to hardware failure of a cheap Netgear switch, which manifested as data corruptions. Using Cat 7 (or even fibre) would not have fixed my broken switch, I’d still have got the corruptions. That said, Cat 7 will certainly do no harm. :)
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The moment I can get a decent switch, I will be doing 10G ethernet from building to building. Already a few WAPs need a backhaul that is more than 1Gb, so they have an interface that makes use of either one of the new intermediate sub 10G standards - 2.5 is it and 5Gb - or two 1Gb cables in the case of the Cisco 1850 iirc. This is because they can throw out 1.3 Gbps theoretically. I would think that some dual radio WAPs that can do 5GHz on both radios can chuck out a serious lot of stuff.
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The moment I can get a decent switch, I will be doing 10G ethernet from building to building.
Hoping this is not too personal a question but if not, what is the application that will be generating 10Gbps of traffic?
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@Sevenlayermuddle - now there you have got me. Simple answer is none, yet. But technology changes and new opportunities keep catching me out. So intentionally making it completely over the top as I don't want to have to redo things. No idea what things will be like in five years or so. So guilty as charged sir.
If I had to guess about the future, then my guess might be sync or some kind or backups across the LAN. Backups have been a nightmare all my life. Storage servers. I would like to park some kit in the wrong building because of fire.
When I had a terrible house fire in 2003 I would have lost all my main computers and all my data had it not been for the good fortune that they were not in the house at the time. I had moved everything to an office in Broadford then because of catastrophic building work renovating the entire house so that is why they were not there when the fire broke out. On the day of the fire, I was on the mainland with Janet recovering from surgery the day before. When I got out of hospital a week later, Janet had been to Broadford and had got my main server out of the office and out it in the back of the car, with a keyboard, mouse monitor etc. and she then drove the gubbins and patient down to my parents’ house in England with an overnight stop at a hotel in the moors in Westmoorland.
So I have learned that it is good to have your stuff in more than one building. Currently backups to the internet are great, but they are slow. If multiple machines are backing up to the internet at the same time then that is not good, the crapfulness of Apple's backup protocol design are revealed.
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Would you consider one of these? as they will be immune from electrical noise etc.
The cables could be pre terminated so would be just plug and play at up 10Gb speeds, up to 550m :)
https://www.apple.com/us_smb_484614/shop/product/HE553LL/A/promise-sanlink2-thunderbolt-2-to-8-gbps-fibre-channel-adapter
Robin
P.S. You can find similar products on Amazon for far less, that do the same without Apple's markup prices.
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Robin, that is a great tip. Since I am an Apple shop, then I definitely want to read up about these.
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Would you consider one of these? as they will be immune from electrical noise etc.
The cables could be pre terminated so would be just plug and play at up 10Gb speeds, up to 550m :)
https://www.apple.com/us_smb_484614/shop/product/HE553LL/A/promise-sanlink2-thunderbolt-2-to-8-gbps-fibre-channel-adapter
Just for clarity, that link points to the Fibre Channel, not the 10GE one. Looks like normal 10GE SFP+ ports so should support any sort of suitable cable.
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Good point... I did find out that those on the Apple site, were earlier versions, later ones have up to 10 (or more)Gb capacity, probably a bit over kill.
https://www.sonnettech.com/product/echoexpresssel_10gbeadapter.html
Robin
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The point is that Fibre Channel is almost exclusively used to network storage devices and HBAs, not for more conventional LANs. It's not Ethernet.