My Wired Home

Since my last post, I have left my 2 bedroom apartment and achieved part of the American dream; becoming a first time home buyer. With 4 bedrooms and 3 baths, this offers myself and my wife a lot more space, privacy, and sense of stability. Now what would be the first thing that a "packet junkie" such as myself would want to do in a new home? Wire it!

So I sat down and planned the install and how I wanted to go about doing it and whether or not I wanted to pay someone else to do it as this would be my first time performing this kind of work. Most jobs in the networking field will never require you to install cabling or ports as that's usually left to the electrician or other speciality contractors, but I figured this would be a fun DIY project and a good learning experience. 

Safety first, so supplies included:

• Flashlight and headband mounted light
• Dust mask
• Work Gloves

Some of the tools needed, included:

• 12V Drill (an 18+V would have been much better and faster)
• Paddle Bits (for drilling the holes in the 2x4s)
• Steel Fishing Tape
• Fiber Optic Cable Pulling Rod (Better for getting through insulation)
• Stud Finder
• Wire Cutters (Optional)
• Punch-Down Tool
• Ethernet Crimping Kit 
• Electrical Tape
• Strong Box Cutter or Drywall Saw
• Leveler/Ruler
• Assortment of screwdrivers, etc.

Supplies needed included

• Bulk Ethernet Cable (I went with 1000' CAT6)
• Ethernet Keystone Jacks
• Keystone Wall Plates
• Low-Voltage Old Work Boxes
• Patch Panel (Optional)
• RJ45 Connectors (If not using Patch Panel)
• Cable Pass Through Wall Plate

CAT5E or CAT6

It doesn't really matter which you choose as CAT5E will offer more than enough performance for most home installs. I chose CAT6 because you never know... 10GbE could be household any day now! Anyway, the only thing to make sure of is that IF you're going to go with CAT6 cable, make sure you use CAT6 for all other physical cabling components. This includes using CAT6 spec keystones, patch-panels, couplers, RJ45 connectors, etc. Using CAT5E at any point on CAT6 cabling will virtually turn your install into a CAT5E install as the physical components can only perform at that spec. 

The Process

The process itself can be a lot more complicated than it looks. The first thing to do is to decide reasonable locations for where you want to locate your jacks. I used a stud finder to make sure that I was correctly locating the jack in between the wooden studs inside of the wall. Interior walls are best as dropping cables down exterior walls are much more time consuming and difficult due to the angle of the roof, but far from impossible. 

Once you decide where you want your jacks, you have to figure out where and how you want to get your cabling through the wall. In my case, I have an attic, whereas others may have a crawlspace, etc. Traversing the attic required careful footing a good balance as walking on the beams above the ceiling is mandatory unless you want to fall through your ceiling. It was sometimes tricky as insulation skewed a lot of visibility.

Snowy looking insulation.

One of the hardest things to do was to figure out where I was in the attic. That required a lot of tapping and a few "Marco Polo" games between me and my wife (with her outside of the attic). From there, it was a matter of finding where in the room I wanted to locate the port. The fact that most areas I chose to place ports were near existing electrical or cable outlets made deciding where to drill holes a lot easier, as in the attic, you can see where electrical or coax cables go down in the same manner you intend to drop your Ethernet lines. I tragically decided to attempt running my first cable through the same hole as an existing coax line. The cable quickly got stuck and caused a lot more chaos than it was worth, so I decided to stick to drilling dedicated holes for Ethernet. 

3/4in hole in 2x4 above wall.

 

Above each wall in most homes is a 2x4 (many times two double-stacked). I drilled 3/4in holes using paddle bits in case I wanted to run multiple lines to the same jack. One of the next things I did was test running a fiber-optic rod or steel fishing tape down first before attempting to fish cable. This helped me to figure out that there was no fire-block or additional obstruction preventing the cable from being dropped. Afterwards, I simply used either the steel fishing tape or fiber-optic rod with the Ethernet cable bound to either using electrical tape to drop the cable into the wall. The steel fishing tape works well, but tends to curve when facing thick insulation whereas the fiber-optic rod can just stab through. 

Ethernet fished through.

 
Afterwards, it was time to hit the floor level and cut a hole in the wall and hopefully find the dropped Ethernet. I used a box cutter and drywall saw to cut a hole in the wall. I use a leveler to make sure that everything is even and straight.

Ethernet successfully pulled.

 
Once the Ethernet is pulled through, from there I used a low voltage old work box (orange frame) to mount the wall plate. Of course, the Ethernet needs to be punched down to the keystone jack first. 

Lining pairs up to keystone terminals.

Ethernet terminated to keystone.

I then terminated the Ethernet to the keystone jacks and cut any excess. Don't worry, most come with a color diagram to guide you. From there, it was a simple matter of installing the keystone to the wall plate and mounting it to the wall.

Not too bad for my first Ethernet install.

I tried to keep Ethernet jacks next to power and coax ports simply because it is much more convenient and practical when setting up entertainment (TV, gaming consoles, cable box, etc) locations. Practicality was one of the central themes during my planning. I didn't want to install Ethernet ports everywhere simply because I could. In my opinion, that really makes the home look tacky. So I stuck to the idea of installing the ports in practical locations where they would be used.

In some locations, I wanted to install multiple ports. For example, in my living room, I have my Smart TV, PS4, Xbox 360, and other network capable devices. In those areas, I ran multiple cables that terminated at two or four port jacks, testing Ethernet connectivity and quality in between each run.

4 cables in 3/4in hole.

4-Port Wall Plate

Running the cables out to the ports was only half the job. The other half was to terminate the cables back to my network equipment. I decided to turn one of the rooms in my house into our office where I would of course house my rack. I also decided to use a patch panel for more flexibility. The location where all network cables would terminate of course required a wider hole in the 2x4 to support all cables in the home being terminated at the rack. I also installed a cable pass-through wall jack to allow all cables to come through.

Cable pass-through wall plate

After I got all cables fed through to the rack, it was time to terminate to the patch panel and cut any excess.

Me using a punch-down tool for the first time!

Terminating to the patch panel.

I terminated everything to the patch panel using a punch-down tool in low-impact mode. The panel I purchased has 24 ports (more than enough for a home). I only used 10 ports as that's how many cables I ran totally throughout my home. The panel also comes color coded as you can see. From there, I ran 5ft CAT6 patch cables to my lab switches (2x 48-port Catalyst 3750s). 

Patch panel labels consistent with wall-port labels

Cables connect back to 3750 switches

After terminating everything to the patch panel and connecting back to my switches, I then ran several tests, checking for physical issues (connectivity, input errors, speed/duplex problems, CRC errors, etc.). Everything checked out great. I completed my project having run a total of 10 cables to 6 wall ports; 4x single port jacks (1), 1x dual port jack (2), and 1x quad port jack (4). So with that said:

Why do this?

For a number of reasons, but two more notable than others. The first is that I like the idea of an Ethernet connected home. The second is that I prefer a faster, more stable wired connection for certain applications (PSN, Netflix, etc.) over a more variable wireless connection. I definitely still use wireless in my home, but it's great having both. 


How much?

The price of performing this can vary greatly depending on what you are trying to accomplish and what you already have. As a matter of fact, most of the unexpected costs I ran into was for tools that I did not previously own. So this project did also yield the advantage of me building up my home tool-set. I did not keep meticulous records of what I spent but I would say that it was well over $700. 

Was this project useful?

Definitely. What I learned here will help me as I plan to take on two projects later that will utilize the scalability of this project. I plan to install ceiling mounted wireless access-points later this year or next year and an IP-based home security system. My wife also wants the latter as this is our first home and she is interested in home security as well.

Let me know about your experience wiring your home with Ethernet or if you have any questions about my install, feel free to ask.