[Closed] Ethernet wiring my house, seperate cable for each outlet?

Separate cable(s) to each outlet from your hub / router - you can't daisy-chain them.

Separate cable for each one. You might as well do multiple drops in some rooms while you are doing it.

Anywhere you later decide that you want more than one device off a single cable, you'll need to use a switch, which costs money, uses power and takes up space. Design that out as much as you can at this stage.

I DIY'd ours when we had the builders in taking the house to pieces for other stuff. It was really satisfying (and, to my surprise, all works).

ok thanks, yes that's why i'm asking savoyad, tho i'm the builder : )

We've run separate cables from each room back to the understairs cupboard (as they follow the mains cables through various holes in walls etc, so easiest way to run them all to where the fuse box is). There we have a switch which connects them all up. The cable modem is in the living room near where Virgin drilled the hole for it in the front wall. That just connects to the switch on one of the ports.

I've also run CAT-5 to the shed and workshop, using outdoor grade cable so they have their own Wifi routers which all connect back to the house.

as they follow the mains cables through various holes in walls

Not ideal, but probably works in most domestic scenarios. Try and get a bit more separation between the cables though.

As above, it's endpoint-to-endpoint. However you could do one-to-many if you added a switch at the remote end.

Something like this as a random example, there are many many many others.

As bentandbroken says they shouldn’t run alongside mains cables, it’s the same for telephone cables. It’s to prevent the theoretical risk of induced current in the Ethernet cable I believe. IIRC you can get cable which is rated for running alongside mains cable if it’s the easiest or best way of doing it.

My advise (network engineer), if its possible, for every one you where planning to run, run 4.

We built our current house and I put at least 4 to each room, more in most.

Gives you loads of flexibility later on.

As bentandbroken says they shouldn’t run alongside mains cables, it’s the same for telephone cables. It’s to prevent the theoretical risk of induced current in the Ethernet cable I believe. IIRC you can get cable which is rated for running alongside mains cable if it’s the easiest or best way of doing it.

Correct. You should avoid lengthy parallel runs of power and network cabling, in a structured cabling solution you'd either have a two-channel conduit keeping power and data a couple of inches apart or run STP (shielded cable). But for domestic purposes it's highly unlikely to ever be an issue.

I did our house a couple of years ago as despite it being basically made of paper WiFi signal is terrible for some reason.

I just dragged it under the floor, it’s a mess but functional, it runs alongside power cables in a couple of places as it was the only way to do it easily.
I mostly did it for my Sonos system but took a couple of extra cables to various places and have a switch in the lounge where one cable goes to a second wireless access point and one to a switch for Sonos, Apple TV etc.

I’m not an expert so someone will hopefully give you proper info but if you’re buying switches make sure they’re the type that doesn’t drop to the slowest speed of whatever is plugged in. I had an issue a while ago that I had something plugged in that wasn’t gigabit and it slowed everything down to 100mps(?)

How much stuff are you connecting to the internet.

I wanted Ethernet in the garage for video conferencing (it's my.office) and zwift.

Looked at cabling it but it was a hassle due to distance.

And at the far corner of the house frommthe router for the smart TV.

Ethernet over power has done that without issue. Reliable 30 mb(same as at the router in the house) at the garage outlets and they are on entirely different circuits and even on different breaker boxes yet it works well.

Different if your building a house perhaps but retrofitting it seems mad in a residential situation where surface mounted conduits are unlikely.

I did our house a couple of years ago as despite it being basically made of paper WiFi signal is terrible for some reason.

Foil backed plasterboard? There is one wall in my house done in it and I've had to run a Ethernet over power adapter to my bedroom despite there being an Airport  Extreme on the other side of the plasterboard wall.

Just ethernet over power.. I really dont see the point of running cat5/6 cables unless you have a very specific purpose where you know you'll benefit from the max speed.. If its just connectivity EOP.

I've got a 4 port switch which works fine. I'd use a switch as it reduces running cables all over the place, especially as they all converge at your router, and doesn't limit your number of connections to the number you have in the back of your router. Not sure if it affects speed but no noticeable deterioration at all in my case...perfectly fine for streaming ultra HD content to multiple devices simultaneously.

Make sure what you install is proper CAT5/6.

If your getting it from eBay make sure it’s not CCA

I did a big part of my house in it using stuff that was sold as CAT5e (just with CCA right at the end of the description, a bit like selling stuff as 853 then sticking 4130 at the end of the description)

it then when I went to terminate it found that it was CCA(copper coated aluminium). CCA does not meet CAT5E standards so gives all sorts of problems, more prone to faults,PoE not advisable etc

As the other guys have said run more than you think you will need, you can terminate up to four cables in a single 1gang face plate ,

If your doing it as part of a full rewire/house project consider running a few runs up to the loft at the same time as that will make adding IP CCTV at a later date a doddle

it’s best if you can run everything back to a single point such as under the stairs then put a patch panel and a switch(consider PoE if you think you might want IP cameras or multiple wifi points.) there That will give you the most flexibility with the install.

Get a auto trimming punch down tool and a cat 5 tester will make the job a lot easier.

It’s to prevent the theoretical risk of induced current in the Ethernet cable I believe. IIRC you can get cable which is rated for running alongside mains cable if it’s the easiest or best way of doing it.

CAT-5 is twisted pair with the signal taken differentially between the pair so pretty much immune, by design, to induced voltage from another cable*.

The Part-P regs things for not using the same conduit is about damage to the conduit and the risk of the Telecoms cable becoming live, which the end points aren't rated for.

* At work we wanted to induce errors on a CAT-5 cable for testing purposes, it was virtually impossible to do it, via induction, without untwisting the cores. In the end we untwisted them and then wrapped them round a motor and ran that to induce errors on the cores.

Have you considered a Power line network thingy? Not as good as dedicated Ethernet but much simpler and presumably better than WiFi.

* At work we wanted to induce errors on a CAT-5 cable for testing purposes, it was virtually impossible to do it, via induction, without untwisting the cores. In the end we untwisted them and then wrapped them round a motor and ran that to induce errors on the cores

You need to use dimmers, we did have issues with cat5 signals when running them alongside socapex though even then it took some serious banging up and down on the lighting desk faders. We were just testing to see if we could find a potential problem. I only mentioned it as if you can do everything within the regs then better to do so.

Remember Ethernet only needs 1 pair and one spare wires so if you only have one wire you can split it easily enough.

Remember Ethernet only needs 1 pair and one spare wires so if you only have one wire you can split it easily enough.

That's telephones you're thinking of. Two signal wires, bell wire and ground, unless you are using an old phone you can ditch the bell wire and ground.

10 and 100base T use two pairs of four whilst gigabit uses all of them.

right, plenty of answers there, only some of which i needed : )

another question:

i've got a big bundle of cable which is 10 core, 1mm section looks like.
assuming it's not too big for the plugs, any reason not to use it?
the colours will be wrong, all the wires seem to be fine, and it'll all be out of sight

i take it i can’t do like eletric sockets and continue on from one outlet to ad a second after

You could if you used 10Base5 instead of this new-fangled 10Base-T stuff. It would be a bit flakey and crash every time you introduced a new device, mind.

The only cable I'd be burying in the walls of my house is stuff labelled Cat5E or Cat6 from a known and trusted supplier.

If you use random stuff it will cause no end of headaches down the road and you'll just have wasted the time and effort of fitting it in the first place.

it's not getting buried in the walls, but yes, good point : )