Is it worth the effort to wire a home with cat-6

**ri0tnerrrrrd** · February 1st, 2010, 01:27 PM

Hi everybody. My wife and I are in the middle of purchasing our first home. The home was previously purchased by a contractor and "flipped", so everything looks very new and nice....but that hasn't stopped me from thinking of all the cool projects I can do to make it even better. I had always assumed one of the first projects I would take on would be to wire all the rooms with cat-6, but I'm curious if you all think it is worth it. Has wireless advanced far enough where this is a waste of time, money, and holes in the wall, or should I still go for it?

Right now I am thinking I would install the cable modem/router in the closet of the room that would be the media room (with my boxee PC), so I could potentially just hard-wire that PCs networking, but in the future it would be nice to know I could stream higher bitrate online content to other rooms of the house without any lag issues.

What are your thoughts? Any similar experiences?

**darcilicious** · February 1st, 2010, 01:37 PM

My husband actually wired most of the house several years before wireless G was prevalent. For all but casual web surfing and in the farthest parts of the house, I prefer wired over wireless throughout my house. Just the other night, I had to scrounge up an ethernet cable for the bedroom because I wanted to run Boxee on my laptop and don't like how wireless signal strength can effect bandwidth

**tcchris** · February 1st, 2010, 02:48 PM

Cat5e will do the 1gig , and is much cheaper than cat6 , most routers now are 100meg
Unless you just want cat6
I ran cat6 in my house , but I am an electrician , and happened to have a box left over from a job , so it didn't cost.

**dutchhome** · February 1st, 2010, 03:21 PM

I ran Cat6 to the downstairs. Was it worth it? Not yet.. I have a 100 meg switch in the basement tying it all together

. Ok, in my "computer room" I'm running 1 gig.

Bottom line is it all depends on what you are going to do with your network. If you are doing basic Internet stuff and don't have servers in the house (MythTV, networked disks, etc) I'm not sure its worth it. You'll be lucky to get a 30 meg Internet connection, and Cat5 can run 100 meg, so no problem there.

If you are going to transfer files around the house, it could be a different story. You want a centralized location for your dvd rips and tv shows? Streaming speed is fine on the 100 meg. Want to move those files around? You definitely notice the difference when moving large files across the network when you have the faster speed.

Ok, so maybe its a no-brainer.. You like your tech and want the fast speed? Whats the down side? Cable is expensive, but you can get decent prices if you look around. Besides, its a one-time cost. The biggest pain (literally!) is making the cable connections. I guess it depends on which cable you go with, but every time I've worked with Cat6 cable, my fingers feel raw by the time I've punched down a bunch of jacks. The cable is so sturdy that its tough to work with. I guess the trick might be to use better tools

**pinkyluvsyou** · February 1st, 2010, 05:48 PM

First thing i did when i bought this new house was go all gigabit, if your lucky like i was all inside walls were hollow with no insulation i ran cable tv, network and second cat 6 for telephone, and keystone jacks for all on triple wall plates, back to central panel in the laundry room, with a shelf for my NAS and all equipment.
If you have insulation in your walls home depot sells screw together fibeglass rods specificaly for the job and they work very well, they are also good for spanning several ceiling tiles too. If you have any questions let me know i run cable for a living.

**mobrien118** · February 5th, 2010, 08:49 AM

I don't have a stitch of cable run in my house.

I have a wireless B/G/N router upstairs on the 3rd floor and use a Linksys WRT54GL (could use many different routers) and run either DD-WRT or Tomato firmware on it, then set it to "client bridge" mode (configure it, of course) and just plug in your devices to it. This allows me to easily get a decent signal down 3 stories to my Media Center.

The signal from router to router is MUCH better than using a wireless card and I consistently get NO LESS than 22 MBit (usually more) just over a G connection.

It's pretty cool, and I think DD-WRT is starting to support Wireless-N better, which will give yoiu even greater range and bandwidth.

IMHO, it's a lot easier than running cable, and gives great results, but that's up to you!

--mobrien118