Cat6 or Wireless

[Sysman]

Make sure you tag every cable at both ends to allow you to patch it properly, might seem a bit redundant if you're planning to plug them all in and never remove them but you never know what you might want to do in future that requires, say, extra QOS on a specific port.

Definitely. Cables and their connectors do fail and having them clearly labelled makes troubleshooting soooo much easier.

Also test them all before the floorboards are put back.

I'd also recommend laying a few extra cables that you don't need yet. These will come in super handy for any future troubleshooting you need to do and you'll have expansion capability built in.

Hmm, don't know if you want to go here at this point, but for a bit more future proofing Cat 6A cable can do 10GBe up to 100 metres, whereas with plain Cat 6 you are looking at 55 metres in a crosstalk free environment. I'd certainly price Cat 6A up before buying plain Cat 6.

[craig1]

Once you get into streaming music and videos around the place, backing up to a central server and all that kind of stuff, the broadband connection does not constitute most of your traffic.

The other flaw in your statement is that IEEE 802.11ac to give it its proper name is that any legacy kit a lot of current kit won't have it.
From the same Wiki:

• "Quantenna released the first 802.11ac chipset for retail Wi-Fi routers and consumer electronics on November 15, 2011". Others didn't come until 2012.
• On June 7, 2012, it was reported that ASUS had unveiled its ROG G75VX gaming notebook, which will be the first consumer-oriented notebook to be fully compliant with 802.11ac[17] (albeit in its "draft 2.0" version).
  
  Hewlett-Packard as of December 2013 incorporates 802.11ac compliance in laptop computers.[18]
  
  Apple announced in June 2013 that the new MacBook Air features 802.11ac wireless networking capabilities,[19][20] later announcing in October 2013 that the MacBook Pro and Mac Pro also featured 802.11ac.

If admin says 3K is too much for the wiring, the boat load of new kit necessary to get everything speaking 802.11ac isn't a viable option.

The other point is that manufacturers want to jump the gun, putting out kit based on draft specs way before they're ready for production use. I was on the IEEE Standards Association reviewer panel for some of the 802.11 stuff from 2000 to 2005 and I was getting working drafts of standards at the same time as manufacturers were releasing kit based on it. The manufacturers then put pressure on to get the standard issued based on that draft even if it has some pretty major flaws or performance limiting issues.

Any 802.11ac kit designed before issue in January 2014, or more realistically before the Working Group approved it in Nov 2013, was done on unapproved drafts. It took to full draft 7 to get it to the threshold where it was acceptable for approval, there were some pretty major amendments to the draft between v1.0 in mid 2011 and v7.0 in Oct 2013. Any 802.11ac kit designed before the end of 2012 will have been designed on some very early drafts and probably have incompatibility issues that will dog the kit for its entire life with many hardware issues that cannot be resolved by a later firmware patch. That ASOS kit in the quote based on draft 2.0 is likely to have large incompatibilities with any other kit or software that was designed by another manufacturer. Any kit designed in 2013 but before November 2013 is likely to be far more robust but you still take the risk that it's going to have incompatibilities across brands.

[stek]

I've been down the Homeplug route but now since all the wireless kit in the house is Apple and I think AC (not sure what iPhone 5 is) i have two Apple Extremes, one in the house and one in the shed/data centre where all the kit is, and have had zero problems, not measured the speed but it's fast enough not to be an issue.

Copying a HD mkv movie is a minute or two.

Homeplugs useless for me, forever dropping out and needing resetting.

[vetran]

Cable isn't going out of fashion any time soon, with contention & interference on wireless its still the best for throughput. Remember businesses are all flood wired with CatX grade cable, when something new comes out someone will make one with a normal network interface, wireless may follow sooner or later.

Cable is also more difficult to hack than wireless or mains. Paranoid I know.

We have a wireless AP in the lounge and one upstairs which gives acceptable wireless throughout the house for Kindles, kids netbooks and phones but the HTPC, servers , home automation servers & PCs are all hard wired. Not something I have regretted, you can stream throughout the house without a stutter.

repeat the point about labelling the cable, quite strongly.

These are quite handy :

Self Adhesive Wire Markers | Maplin

you can get better ones but one of these should be enough for one house.



This is the only punch down tool you should use, Krone branded if you can get them (I have 2 30 years old and they are still fairly sharp) :

Toolstation > Electrical > Data & Telecoms > Heavy Duty Punch Down Tool


one of these is very handy:

Toolstation > Electrical > Data & Telecoms > LAN Tester

[darrylmg]

I've got an old house with thick walls.
I've just spent a whole day (I'm on the bench) setting up a wireless repeater to get better wifi coverage at the other end of my house.
Whilst it does work, it was a complete pain and I found out all the little caveats regarding security, performance etc.

If you can do cable and you can do cat 6, then do it.
It's way better and simpler than messing about with wireless.

[vetran]

oh and don't forget to add some slack in the walls in case you have to remake the connections / change the faceplates. 6 inches should be enough, if its tight it can get stretched & failed.

[doodab]

oh and don't forget to add some slack in the walls in case you have to remake the connections / change the faceplates. 6 inches should be enough, if its tight it can get stretched & failed.

One useful practice is to leave a couple of meters slack per cable and tie it up out of the way. That way if you ever need the slack you can just take the ties off and you have it.

[vetran]

One useful practice is to leave a couple of meters slack per cable and tie it up out of the way. That way if you ever need the slack you can just take the ties off and you have it.

in zone 0 or in an area you can get away with it yes, but on solid walls I push back a few inches in the wall as well. Seen people put it in just long enough then someone trips / pulls on the loom somewhere and the socket stops working.

[NickNick]

Bit of a bump I realise but I'm just starting down this route at the moment in a new house. It needed re-wiring and so I've asked the electrician to run cat-6 alongside at the same time, something he's done before.

What I'm after now are some plug sockets that have ethernet ports built in so that I don't have to have separate plates all over the place for them. A bit of google-fu only brings up powerline solutions to that. Does anyone have any clues? Does such a thing actually exist for the home market?

[Unix]

Bit of a bump I realise but I'm just starting down this route at the moment in a new house. It needed re-wiring and so I've asked the electrician to run cat-6 alongside at the same time, something he's done before.

What I'm after now are some plug sockets that have ethernet ports built in so that I don't have to have separate plates all over the place for them. A bit of google-fu only brings up powerline solutions to that. Does anyone have any clues? Does such a thing actually exist for the home market?

Won't the power cable cause interference if you run it next to the Ethernet cable?