I’ve recently bought a new (but very old) house. Its a thatched cottage and it needs a lot of work. One of the first jobs is a complete rewire (wire wrapped fuses are sooo last decade).
With the floorboards up and power cables being chased every which way I’m taking the opportunity to pull through some data cabling for IP/Voice/Video distribution.
My problem is – how much should I put in? 4 runs per room? 6 by the TV position in the lounge just in case? What about security? IP CCTV, SIP gate intercoms? I’ve bought 4 boxes and I’m not sure if it will be enough….
No matter how much I do put in – I’m sure that at some point I’m going to wish I had done ‘just one more run’ to a location – so maybe a sensible middle ground would be better – four runs per room, realising that at some point I’ll likely have to pull more so making the routes as easy as possible and even leaving draw strings in place for when the time comes…
None.
You should not run any Cat5.
You should use Cat 6 or Cat 6a.
If you are doing video – even if it is only CCTV – and if you are running multiple
wires per room you will probably need 6A.
The improvements in the areas of noise and crosstalk are probably worth the initial expense alone. Combined with the data transfer speed advantage, the case for Cat 6 seems clear.
Of course, with proper deployment of a few 802.11n access points, you could probably alleviate the need to have 4 separate data ports in every room.
-Al
And the winner is Al! Good work – you’re absolutely right, there shouldn’t be any cat5 runs in my house at all as cat6 is the preference (and the only data cable I will install at work).
In fact though, since I was doing it in a rush on a Sunday, and the only place I could buy from was Toolstation or Screwfix locally, I went for cat5 – which will be fine for my existing requirements if not perfect for the future.
My plan – with the drawstrings left in place, is to pull through cat6 at a later stage when I can afford (and justify) doing so