Any home networking wiring experts here?

[wadesworld]

Some thoughts...

Your four-pair wiring is definitely not rated for data since 70's-grade copper was 10+ years before high speed data communications over consumer-grade twisted pair was even seriously considered. (10BaseT wasn't standardized until 1990, before that Ethernet was Co-ax and AUI).

Wiring houses with physical lines is IMO a losing proposition unless you need NSA-level security, run commercial-grade gear like some of my friends with equipment racks or you have performance requirements beyond what wireless can deliver. As you noted, it's also a PITA running wire in most homes since there are few good places to run cables and you really need construction-graded cable (plenum-rated) to meet code anyway. Also, frankly, the number of devices that even include a physical network port is dropping steadily.

I'd start with a high quality wifi hub/router in a good spot in your home. Don't be cheap here, spend time doing research on quality and performance with your target set a notch or two above your current requirements. Then you can use wifi extenders to fill in any coverage gaps. Modern 802.11ac 5GHz Wifi will cruise at 300+Mbit/sec to each endpoint which is pretty darn fast for most home use. If a critical device that you need to accommodate is not Wifi-capable then upgrading it to a wireless version would be easier than running wire for it -- or you can relocate the device to a place where it can directly plug into your router, of course.

Since your entrance seems to be in an awkward location and you have plenty of cable available, a compromise might be to run a single hardline from your entry point to the optimum location for the router -- but after that clean out the extra wiring from your home and enjoy.

Source: 25+ years in IT infrastructure, a home setup that has a lot less spaghetti than it used to and way too much time running wires through dirty spaces in the early 90's.

Good luck!

PS: If you're feeling particularly geeky, I am a huge-fan of Pi-Hole for network-wide ad blocking too!

One consideration:

If the OP or his children are gamers at all, they'll want a wired connection to whatever device on which they're gaming, PC or console. No matter how good your wireless is, it will suffer from significant latency compared to a hard-wired connection. Wireless is fine for turn-based or exploration-style games, but not at all for anything involving fast movement, such as shooters, racing games, or sports games.

 

[MagicSpell]

Just getting back to catch up on all the responses. Thanks to everyone for their input! A lot of good suggestions and experiences. I did some poking around online last night and this morning to better understand the options available with mesh networks. Still trying to decide what route I'll go but thinking of The TP-Link Deco M9. I only have about 2500 sqft to cover so I'm thinking the two nodes in this solution should be enough. I'm actually more concerned about overall bandwidth than coverage area since even my current router covers the house well enough for mobile devices. Some additional points:

1. I long ago ditched the cable company provided modem. My current one is only a DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem. Would I see enough gain to replace it with a DOCSIS 3.1 version?
2. My contracted cable download speed is up to 150 Mbps. When I ran a speed test last night and earlier today I was seeing roughly 125 on a wired connection. I do a fair amount of video manipulation/editing and storage on personal network storage devices. That's where I don't want to lose speed (offloading video from the TiVo and storing, etc).
3. I'm still worried about the connection from the cable modem to the router since they aren't located near each other. Anyone think things would work with a powerline connection from the cable modem to the router and then hard wired from the router out? I'm thinking the connection between the modem and router should be wired myself. I keep trying to come up with a different solution to that run. Most of my problems would be solved if I could just get the cable modem located next to the router in the middle of the house. I have a cable feed in the office but the wiring is so outdated my signal (according to Comcast) was too poor to get a reliable connection in there.

Decisions, decisions.

 

[aljaklaw]

Most items I have are on the 1st floor using the 5 ghz network. Using the speed test on the Roku tv, I get about 25-50 mbps on the upstairs tv on the 2.4 ghz network. I generally don't have many issues with slowness and buffering on there but it meets the minimum requirements for streaming in HD.

that would be more than enough for netflix 4k streaming

 

[gmiller598]

that would be more than enough for netflix 4k streaming

Yeah. I have a good enough connection to be sufficient. I used to have more issues but I think it was mainly my old iPad being slow. Now that I’ve upgraded to the iPad Pro I’ve had no issues. I used to get plenty of buffering when my old iPad was on the 2.4 network in the same room with the tv because it wasn’t compatible with the 5 ghz network.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[TheDoctor]

Personally I am not a fan of wireless and would hard-wire wherever possible - the only wireless devices in our house are the mobile phones, Jen has a Kindle and the TV in the main living room (I forgot to ask for a network point on the wall behind the TV but the only network use by the TV is for an update and it is less than 1m from the main router so connection strength is fine)

Due to the layout of the house and the positioning of the internet provider router at the front of the house, I have an old router set up as a wireless access point in the bedroom at the opposite end of the house and we have seamless roaming between the two devices. I am looking at the option of removing the WAP and turning off Wifi on the router and placing a single Ubiquiti access point in the centre of the house to handle the wireless side of things

However, we were in the position of having the electrics replaced in our house, so whilst that was being done, we had every room cabled with a minimum of 2 network points as the walls were all being chased anyway so it wasn't any extra hassle to have it done at the same time

Every network point goes back to a cupboard under the stairs and eventually I will get round to putting a NAS in there as well

In order of preference I would always go

1 - Hard-wired
2 - Powerline (although this can depend on the quality of your electrical wiring as to how good this will work)
3 - Wireless

 

[sposey013168]

I agree with using power line Ethernet. I went that route when I starting working from home and has worked great


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[kenh]

One consideration:

If the OP or his children are gamers at all, they'll want a wired connection to whatever device on which they're gaming, PC or console. No matter how good your wireless is, it will suffer from significant latency compared to a hard-wired connection. Wireless is fine for turn-based or exploration-style games, but not at all for anything involving fast movement, such as shooters, racing games, or sports games.

I don't think this is the case with modern wireless, at least neither I nor my kids have noticed latency issues with our 5GHz-connected gaming desktops or with the frantic games they play on our Xbox One.

They key is to have a good quality wireless router with plenty of performance so it won't buckle under heavy load.

 

[Reframmellator]

Just getting back to catch up on all the responses. Thanks to everyone for their input! A lot of good suggestions and experiences. I did some poking around online last night and this morning to better understand the options available with mesh networks. Still trying to decide what route I'll go but thinking of The TP-Link Deco M9. I only have about 2500 sqft to cover so I'm thinking the two nodes in this solution should be enough. I'm actually more concerned about overall bandwidth than coverage area since even my current router covers the house well enough for mobile devices. Some additional points:

1. I long ago ditched the cable company provided modem. My current one is only a DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem. Would I see enough gain to replace it with a DOCSIS 3.1 version?
2. My contracted cable download speed is up to 150 Mbps. When I ran a speed test last night and earlier today I was seeing roughly 125 on a wired connection. I do a fair amount of video manipulation/editing and storage on personal network storage devices. That's where I don't want to lose speed (offloading video from the TiVo and storing, etc).
3. I'm still worried about the connection from the cable modem to the router since they aren't located near each other. Anyone think things would work with a powerline connection from the cable modem to the router and then hard wired from the router out? I'm thinking the connection between the modem and router should be wired myself. I keep trying to come up with a different solution to that run. Most of my problems would be solved if I could just get the cable modem located next to the router in the middle of the house. I have a cable feed in the office but the wiring is so outdated my signal (according to Comcast) was too poor to get a reliable connection in there.

Decisions, decisions.

I'm not an expert but I read a lot. :arrogant:

As I understand it, at 150 MBPS, a DOCSIS 3.0 modem is fine and you will not see a performance boost. I can think of only two reasons to get a 3.1 modem: 1) you service provider requires it or 2) you current modem dies. My modem died in November and I replaced it with a 3.0 unit, and I have 100 MBPS service.

I think the powerline ethernet connection to your router is worth a shot. You've read of some good and some bad experiences with them, and I think the characteristics of your home wiring may be the biggest determinant of whether it will work. I bought the TP-Link gigabit adapters because they were very well rated, knowing it was overkill/futureproofing. They are $80/pair full retail, and you can always return/resell if they don't work for you. If you had a friend with a spare set to test, that would be ideal.

 

[kenh]

3. I'm still worried about the connection from the cable modem to the router since they aren't located near each other. Anyone think things would work with a powerline connection from the cable modem to the router and then hard wired from the router out? I'm thinking the connection between the modem and router should be wired myself. I keep trying to come up with a different solution to that run. Most of my problems would be solved if I could just get the cable modem located next to the router in the middle of the house.

I'd go with this for sure, just run a segment of high quality cat 6 from the cable modem to the wireless router. You need that connection to be stable and able to sustain the maximum data rate possible from your cable modem which in a DOCSIS3.1 world would be about 1Gbit in each direction (I think).

This model incidentally matches my home setup. My cable modem is in the basement next to the Xfinity entry point and the rest of the network gear is on the floor above. I hate Xfinity but they are the lesser of my two local-ISP-monopolist evils and I grudgingly admit their internet service has been excellent. :-/

In a truly hardcore setup the connection from your ISP (cable modem) to your internal network infrastructure (wireless concentrator/router/firewall) would be via optical fiber for essentially unlimited bandwidth potential but then you're way beyond consumer-grade gear so we'll stick with copper.

 

[MagicSpell]

Resurrecting my own thread for an update.

I tried the powerline approach but couldn't ever get it to work for a connection between the cable modem and the router. My guess is it's because where the cable modem was and where the router is are in separate power drops in the house (the modem is in an add-on part of the house with much newer power/wiring).

I ended up moving the cable modem to my office next to the router. That allowed me to eliminate one of the long runs between the master bedroom and the office. It appears to work (appearances can be deceiving however, more to follow) as my speed tests all show good speed (both hard wired via my laptop as well as wifi from my phone or tablet). The rub, which I feared from the beginning, is the connection is much less stable. I've had to reset the modem and/or router multiple times since the move. I periodically will see my VPN connection (used for work) drop and reconnect sporadically. I'm sure it is the crappy coax which was initially installed in the house back in the 80's running to the office (which used to be the old master bedroom).

Today I did some more digging. I've noticed that lately the US light on the cable modem blinks on and off instead of being on solid as it used to when it was in the other part of the house. This prompted me to look at the modem connection statistics. I'm seeing power levels on the downstream bonded channels around -17 dBmV on each of the 8 channels (a good range would be -8 to +10 according to Comcast). What's worse is the correctable/uncorrectable transmissions. Total correctables are 303504616 while the uncorrectables are 41746651. I've got to believe this is a signal problem coming into the modem.

Bottom line, I think I'm back to having to put the modem back in the bedroom where the signal coming from the street is the strongest. I don't think I want to tackle trying to rewire the house with the coax. Once the modem is back in the bedroom I'm right back to where I started :-(. If I move the modem and the router to the bedroom the wifi signal will be coming from the far end of the house. Guess I'll need to look at either a new wifi mesh network or a wifi signal extender next.

Any other suggestions or thoughts?

 

[SquirrelyDave]

Mesh network. The Netgear Orbi has a pretty solid setup and there are ports on the extended access points that will allow you to hardwire to a few devices. There are other options as well, but if you have poor connection mesh is probably the easiest to setup and the most likely to just work easily.

 

[Reframmellator]

Mesh network. The Netgear Orbi has a pretty solid setup and there are ports on the extended access points that will allow you to hardwire to a few devices. There are other options as well, but if you have poor connection mesh is probably the easiest to setup and the most likely to just work easily.

Don't have an Orbi but if I had to upgrade, that is the way I would go. From my limited understanding of what makes these things work, a backchannel is required for comm from the satellite to the mother ship. Orbi has a dedicated backchannel and therefore is faster than the average mesh, for which the backchannel is shared.

I tried the powerline approach but couldn't ever get it to work for a connection between the cable modem and the router. My guess is it's because where the cable modem was and where the router is are in separate power drops in the house (the modem is in an add-on part of the house with much newer power/wiring).

I have seen this with powerline as well and I have the same suspicion. Full disclosure - in engineering school, I passed circuits by one point.