Renovating/Modernising a house – prioritising work

gwernybwch

Jaynne wrote: »

if you are already having electrical work this is probably minor as your electrician is already pulling wires so there is just the extra cost of terminating the cables which shouldn't be much maybe £30 per port max.

Thanks for the post Jaynne; very useful.
One query - is there any issues with regard to running network cables next to electrical cables (as there is running TV aerial cables close to electrical cables)?

Which might be a suggestion for the OP: If you do need to rewire your house, it might be useful to give consideration to the number of TV / satelite points that you have in the house.

sancho

An electrician to terminate the cables? I could probably teach my 2 year old to use a punchdown tool, and I've only used it for a couple of 'jobs'

I would recommend getting gigabit switch, If It's ever used for streaming high bitrate movies you'll be pleased you did.


So there you go op, don't worry about paint and all that nonsense, just make sure you have a gigabit enabled network point in every room

jozbo

great useful advice on that thanks!

Jaynne

gwernybwch wrote: »

Thanks for the post Jaynne; very useful.
One query - is there any issues with regard to running network cables next to electrical cables (as there is running TV aerial cables close to electrical cables)?

Which might be a suggestion for the OP: If you do need to rewire your house, it might be useful to give consideration to the number of TV / satelite points that you have in the house.

In theory yes 6" separation is recommended in practice in small wall chases for this sort of thing you'd get away with running it in the same chase. If you had the easy option to separate them, for instance if you're making a stud wall so its just as easy to pull them a little apart I would wholly recommend that.

This isn't going to be a high performance/traffic network so you can get away with things you wouldn't do in a commercial install. Analogue TV is a whole different ballgame in terms of suceseptibility to interference, digital doesn't seem much better which will be due to the fact that they're far weaker signals what with them being broadcast miles away.

robatwork

You could install STP instead of UTP if it's going near other cabling (S = shielded). Bit more expensive....

anotherginger

I'm totally confused by this network talk, but it's something I would be keen to do in my next property.

At the minute we have Virgin broadband coming in through the wall behind the TV. If I wanted wired internet throughout, would I then need to run a wire from the router to the patch panel, and this would then split that into however many connections?

In simple terms, would this mean I would have a socket behind my tv as an 'input' from the router, this would then be wired to input into the patch? I don't understand where the switch comes in. Could everything just be run from one port on the router?

robatwork

Almost.

The patch panel doesn't join anything together - picture it as a big hand holding a bunch of cables.

You need a switch near the patch panel to join everything - everything plugs into the switch.

So yes, you have 1 cable coming from your router into the wall. Then one from the patch panel into the switch from this. And likewise, one cable from everywhere else you have a networked device in the house (PC, laptop, Xbox etc) into the switch. As someone said earlier, best to put the patch panel somewhere hidden but you will need power there as that is the same place you will put the switch.

There are other ways to do it, but this is the most straighforward and tidiest. Think of it like a bike wheel - everything comes out from 1 point which will be the switch (hub), including your virgin router.

Jaynne

Robatwork has it to a T, a patch panel is basically like a big bank of sockets that all the cables from around the house plug into but it doesn't connect one cable to another that's the job of the switch. The alternative would be to have a big bunch of cables come out of the wall and straight into the switch. Technically there's nothing wrong with this but it gets messy fast (imagine the rats nest of cables behind a PC x10) and its easier to damage a cable because they're all loose.

Once you have your wall sockets, patch panel and switch in place you can connect your broadband router up to a wall socket, TV to another one and a PC to another one and the switch will take care of connecting them all together. Until you get into the very very expensive switches they don't need any setting up you just plug cables into them and they work.