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DPChallenge Forums >> General Discussion >> Wiring my house for phone and Ethernet - need help
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 03/14/2009 07:55:22 PM · #1
Were renovating our house, and it's been gutted to the studs. Next up is wiring. We want to have an Ethernet plug everywhere we have a phone plug because we'll have fiber optic service to the house.

My contractor says he'll lay "Cat5" cable everywhere. Is that right?

Is it the case that at the wall, the electrician will take phone wires and attach them to the back of a phone jack, and attach Ethernet wires from the same cable to the back of an Ethernet jack?

Thanks!
 03/14/2009 08:03:17 PM · #2
cat5e or cat6 for gigabit ..
though with phone you can do a loop
with Ethernet it has to be point to point or a separate wire for each drop
so you hve to know where your switch (hub/firewall..) willbe located to start with
 03/14/2009 08:03:27 PM · #3
Jeff,

That's correct. There are enough wires in the Cat 5 to support what the contractor has stated. I have a really good friend that does this for a living. If you PM me I could give him a call if you have any technical questions. (Sidenote: We are in Fredericksburg, VA)

You will only have Fiber to the house, not to the wall plugs.
 03/14/2009 08:06:21 PM · #4
Ethernet jacks (RJ-45) are similar to phone jacks (RJ-11) but twice as many wires. Phone cable is not the same thing though I have seen some phone wire used as a Ethernet patch cable one time. (I doubt the person who insisted it was "CAT 3 ethernet" was really a trained IT person)

Cat 5 cable will go up to 100 Megabits per second, but Cat 6 cable will handle Gigabit speeds, and at this point in time, I would suggest going for the CAT 6 if there is not a huge price difference.

ETA: I may not have understood the original question. Are they going to use the ethernet cable for the phone as well? There are unused wires, so I guess there is no reason that can't be done.

Message edited by author 2009-03-14 20:07:56.
 03/14/2009 08:09:15 PM · #5
I wired my own home when it was being constructed with Cat5 wire about 5 years ago. You run one wire for each line, as I remember it there are 8 small wires in the cable coming to the wall box, some of the wires carry the phone signal, others the dsl signal. So, if in a box in the wall you have a phone and an ethernet plug, there will be two wires coming from your central box into the wall box.
When I did this the instructions were very specific about keeping wires twisted and not pulling them apart because of creating interference. If you try to run the internet signal and the phone signal from one cat5 wire coming into the wall box you are going to have to pull all the wires in the cable apart and from what I understood that was not good.

Message edited by author 2009-03-14 20:11:49.
 03/14/2009 08:21:14 PM · #6
The price difference between cat 5 and cat 6 is minimal compared to the cost of stringing anything at all, and given the added bandwidth it provides and the increase in streaming media we consume these days. Go with the 5% higher cost and double your throughput. I would only pull to spots where you are going to possibly put wireless hubs though, running cat anything to the whole house is very rare these days.

Your phone pulls ought not to be added into your network cables, they ought to be a dicrete run and can be run on a loop. Each network line runs to a single terminal and the panel ought to be run from your utility area, near you main circut breaker.

Message edited by author 2009-03-14 20:29:55.
 03/14/2009 08:59:50 PM · #7
If you can swing it... Run some pipes and run everything thru a central point. I ran cat5e everywhere a few years ago but cat6 would be a better choice today. Cat5 is fine for phones and since you only need 2 wires of the bunch, you get a few lines and some spares with a single cat5 drop.

Edit: Personally I would not share the same wire set with phone & network but it's possible as you have enough wires.

Message edited by author 2009-03-14 21:01:42.
 03/14/2009 10:22:00 PM · #8
Thanks very much for the info! Just got back from Home Depot, where there happened to be a book on wiring your own home. Quick glance at a few pages and I learned a lot. Reading this thread, I learned even more.

I agree that running cat6 is worth the price, but it's about a 50% increase, not 5%. 500ft. of cat6 was $88 and 500 ft. of cat 5 was $55 (approx. - didn't write it down).

I get that the fiber optic line ends at a network box, probably in the basement.

So let me be sure I understand a few more definitions.

"loop" means there can be a single pair of wires that runs from where the service enters the house, from one room to the next, and back to the service entry point, so it's a single circuit. Essentially, cutting the line in one place kills all phones. Put another way, it's a series circuit.

"point-to-point" means that if I have 5 rooms, there will be 5 cables, each one running from the network box to a single room. Cutting a single line affects only that room. Put another way, it's a parallel circuit.

Phones can run on a loop, but Ethernet must be point-to-point.

There seems to be a difference of opinion on whether it's okay to use some of the wires in cat5 or cat6 for phone, vs. running an entirely different cable for phone (which would be cat 3?).

Cat 6 is like cat 5, in that a single covered cable actually contains multiple pairs of wires, but it can carry much faster data speeds.

I think I get that for minimal cost, I'd run cat 6 only from the network box to wherever I want to set up a wireless router, but are there other services now in existence for which I'd want to have cat 6 in every bedroom, the office, the kitchen, etc?

Oh, and Ethernet plugs are wider than phone plugs. Is there a reason for that? At Home Depot, all I saw were plugs labeled "cat 5" or "cat 6," not "phone" vs. "data."

And does cable TV move through a house on cat5, cat 6, etc., or is it a whole separate circuit?

Thanks again!

Message edited by author 2009-03-14 22:24:10.
 03/15/2009 12:24:47 AM · #9
Jeff, your contractor should provide one drop per room for telephone, cable, and Ethernet. There should NEVER be a looping for any low voltage cabling ever it slows the signal down.

If you are having fiber brought into your home you'll need a digiboard to terminate the fiber on and redistribute the signal out to the house via the Category 6e cabling that is installed in your home.

Here is a "small" install that I did last year but there is no fiber hook-up for this house but you'll get the idea. I have some 25 Government buildings and several hundred homes and smaller businesses that I do cabling in and maintain. I have been certified for Ethernet, fiber optic, telephone, and cable for over 15 years. In one government building alone I wired 1800 Ethernet and telephone cables all separately run back to a LAN room the size of a small house. If you have any questions at all and would like to contact me either by PM, e-mail, or even if you want to call me on the phone just let me know and I will do all I can to help.

< this one shows the outside of the house panel

< this one shows you all the seperate run to each room for all three cables and their termination points

< and this one just gets you in a little closer to see the laying in of the cable.

I hope this helps and like I said if you need me just let me know :)

All the best to you and yours.

MAX!
 03/16/2009 01:26:33 PM · #10
You cable moves on a totally separate type wire....coaxial cable. You can see the coaxial cable in the middle picture above. It is round and black.

Message edited by author 2009-03-16 13:27:28.
 03/16/2009 01:50:00 PM · #11
You can run the phone through the ethernet wiring, but not ethernet over phone lines. So if you want to be flexible you use ethernet cabling for everything, but it is a bit more expensive, as the ethernet cables have better shielding than the phone lines. You should not use some of the wires within a single cable for phone and the others for ethernet at the same time, in my opinion. Use a dedicated cable for each.

In the basement you would then have a patch panel that connects the wall outlets (typical ones have two sockets, and you could use them either for computers or phones) to the cables, as shown in the middle picture below (it's not a typical patch panel I now from server rooms, but what you see there is basically one). There you plug in either the phone system or the ethernet network switch, and connect from the rooms to whatever you plugged in in the basement.

It basically depends on what you want to have in each room, and if you sketch that out your contractor should be able to make you the offer that really fits what you need.
 03/16/2009 02:44:43 PM · #12
If I might offer a suggestion, you should consider dual or multi faceted face plates. I did this in my office at home (after the fact of course) and had to run additional cable.

It is much easier to do at the onset and it will enable you to link up two or more PC's in your office.

Ray
 03/16/2009 03:02:40 PM · #13
Originally posted by levyj413:

"loop" means there can be a single pair of wires that runs from where the service enters the house, from one room to the next, and back to the service entry point, so it's a single circuit. Essentially, cutting the line in one place kills all phones. Put another way, it's a series circuit.


Actually if you loop the phone wires back to the origin a single cut will have no effect on any phone. Unless of course the cut shorts out the line. Then all service is gone. I've never wired a house as a loop because it's so easy to disconnect separate strands and determine which run contains a problem. (I'm not a professional telco person but I did stay at a Holiday Inn last week)

I like the idea of running conduit so you can upgrade the network cable in the future. One day there may actually be a modem at your computer with a fiber connection.

Message edited by author 2009-03-16 15:04:28.
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