CAT5e - The e is for everywhere
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 26, 2005 11:51 PM EST- Posted in
- Anand
Vinney and I flew down to NC over the weekend, and have been enjoying a steady mix of work, house stuff and relaxation down here. Of course, everyone blames us, the Connecticut "natives" now, for bringing cold weather down here. The days before we arrived, temperatures were in the 80s, it was sunny, all was good. Then apparently we gate checked a bag full of CT temperatures and now Raleigh is actually colder than CT.
Progress is actually happening on the house; it still doesn't look much different than the last time we were down, but hopefully by the end of this year we'll be walking into a house that starts looking like one. The front will hopefully be done bricking in about another week or so, and that'll mean that the outside of the house will be mostly complete aside from the landscaping and other finishes. The inside has a long way to go, with drywall still being about a month or so away from going up.
We walked through the house yesterday with the guy that'll be handling all of the Ethernet wiring throughout the house. Most rooms will have at least one Ethernet port, with the office and game room obviously getting a lot more. We stuck with CAT5e for the house and all of the wiring will be going to a closet in the basement, where I'll be tossing in a Gigabit switch for the house.
My goal was to have access to video, audio, cameras, door bell, lighting, heating and cooling where ever I had a TV in the house. Unfortunately, such an integrated system is only available at ridiculously high prices, and/or with very poorly done interfaces and mediocre quality in areas of audio or video sharing. Since the system I'm looking for doesn't yet exist, I wanted to make sure that the wiring is there should it eventually happen. So we've got additional CAT5e running everywhere from lighting switches, to potential camera locations, so whenever my ideal system comes into existence, hopefully it'll be retrofittable.
I brought down a handful of Intel's 65nm chips and put together the article published earlier this week. I was pleasantly surprised with the overclocking success of Presler, and I hope to look into performance of dual core at 4.25GHz when I get back to CT. I'm also working on our first notebook roundup in a while, but with a slightly different focus than what you might be used to. I'll announce specifics as I get further along on the roundup.
We unfortunately leave NC tomorrow, but we are going to see Jon Stewart in CT this weekend, so it's not all bad.
Progress is actually happening on the house; it still doesn't look much different than the last time we were down, but hopefully by the end of this year we'll be walking into a house that starts looking like one. The front will hopefully be done bricking in about another week or so, and that'll mean that the outside of the house will be mostly complete aside from the landscaping and other finishes. The inside has a long way to go, with drywall still being about a month or so away from going up.
We walked through the house yesterday with the guy that'll be handling all of the Ethernet wiring throughout the house. Most rooms will have at least one Ethernet port, with the office and game room obviously getting a lot more. We stuck with CAT5e for the house and all of the wiring will be going to a closet in the basement, where I'll be tossing in a Gigabit switch for the house.
My goal was to have access to video, audio, cameras, door bell, lighting, heating and cooling where ever I had a TV in the house. Unfortunately, such an integrated system is only available at ridiculously high prices, and/or with very poorly done interfaces and mediocre quality in areas of audio or video sharing. Since the system I'm looking for doesn't yet exist, I wanted to make sure that the wiring is there should it eventually happen. So we've got additional CAT5e running everywhere from lighting switches, to potential camera locations, so whenever my ideal system comes into existence, hopefully it'll be retrofittable.
I brought down a handful of Intel's 65nm chips and put together the article published earlier this week. I was pleasantly surprised with the overclocking success of Presler, and I hope to look into performance of dual core at 4.25GHz when I get back to CT. I'm also working on our first notebook roundup in a while, but with a slightly different focus than what you might be used to. I'll announce specifics as I get further along on the roundup.
We unfortunately leave NC tomorrow, but we are going to see Jon Stewart in CT this weekend, so it's not all bad.
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illuminati - Monday, November 14, 2005 - link
Make sure you run two RG-6 wires to your main TV location (wherever you would have your entertainment center) in order to have the incoming satellite/cable signal and then you will be able to use the other cable for the output of the decoded signal to route back down to your basement closet for distribution throughout the rest of the house.I forgot to do this when wiring my house, and got lucky that the wall for my main TV set was still barely accessible from my basement... so I was able to run a second RG-6 line when I got my satelite installed.
blckgrffn - Friday, November 4, 2005 - link
:(Also, while the pipe system works great (my parents put one in and it was a godsend when I got old enough to appreciate the potential) Anand is wiring to EVERY lightswitch, etc. That would be alot of pipe ;)
GoatHerderEd - Tuesday, November 1, 2005 - link
Why dont you just run pips from the rooms to the basement, that way you can just feed whatever wire you need when ever you want. Just have the ends of the pipe stop in the wall, and put a plate near it.oTAL - Friday, November 4, 2005 - link
That's more or less the system I have at my home. It works pretty well. It's not enough to run pipes though. You need a "guide cable" going through the pipe that makes EXTREMELY easier to put in the cables you want. (You just tie it on one end and pull on the other :)I have some sort of plastic, flexible pipes. Not really sure about the material. Maybe you should look into that possibility...
sn1lloc - Monday, October 31, 2005 - link
where at in nc were you guysobeseotron - Monday, October 31, 2005 - link
If you're going to wait for a while to actually implement such a system I might suggest you just forego the expense altogether. Wireless is only going to get better as time goes on, and the bandwidth requirements to stream content, even HD content are not that huge relative even to current wireless technology much less whatever might be available a few years on. I'm not suggesting 802.11G is sufficient for what you want to do, just that it won't be long before something is.Marlin1975 - Saturday, October 29, 2005 - link
Why not cat6? The price is not that huge and down the line you never know what you will need.sungster - Saturday, October 29, 2005 - link
cat 6 is about 40% more expensive. cat 5e should be sufficient for this jobKristopherKubicki - Sunday, October 30, 2005 - link
I said that too when I wired my house with 10baseT. LOL. Go with the best stuff available or the stuff they use in office blocks. It seems expensive now, but when youre putting down several hundred on building a new house anyway, you're definitely going to appreciate it later. There is also a huge resale advantage as well.Kristopher
Marlin1975 - Sunday, October 30, 2005 - link
Agreed.Its much easier to run wire when there is no wall ;) So run the best NOW so later if you are there 5+ years you are still good.