Cabling advice for three story house

[hussain]

HI,

I am building a three story house and finalizing the cable arrangments for wired connection.

On each floor i have three rooms where i want to send ethernet cable and i have choosen cat 6 for this purpose.

The main hub is at top floor room.

Can somebody please tell me whether
1. I should run all these cables directly from the main hub
or
2. make a hub on each floor and then run cables from it.

The second solution is obviously more cost effective.

Thanks

 

[devnull]

Extra switches add latency. Low latency is a must for an efficient network.

Having network equipment in living spaces can be a nuisance as well.

Get CAT 5e cabling instead of CAT 6. It'll reduce the price to the point where it won't matter which topology you choose. There's nothing you can do on a home network that will exceed the capability of CAT 5e.

 

[thiggins]

The added latency of the the extra switches will be negligible. A mor important disadvantage of the distributed switch topology is the risk of bottle necking.

With a single uplink port you get only 1 Gbps in each direction. You can increase this with aggregation and smart/managed switches, but then need to pull extra cables.

If the number of drops are 24 or less, I would pull everything to a central point.

 

[Jesse B]

Extra switches add latency. Low latency is a must for an efficient network.

The amount of latency introduced by a switch is practically immeasurable. The greater issue would be the limited throughput from each switch to the central hub, ie.) squeezing multiple lines down to a 1Gb backbone.

Get CAT 5e cabling instead of CAT 6. It'll reduce the price to the point where it won't matter which topology you choose. There's nothing you can do on a home network that will exceed the capability of CAT 5e.

I'm not sure where you're buying cable, but everywhere I've looked, rolls of CAT6 are dollars more than CAT5e. May as well futureproof a little, and get the better cabling. The cost difference is negligible.

As thiggins recommended, I'd try to run everything to the central switch. It also doesn't hurt to add an extra run or two to rooms, just for future expansion. It's a lot easier to pull a few extra now then when you're house is finished.

 

[dgtlman]

we built last year and had a simular issue. we have 4 floors (basement, main, 2nd and 3rd). I decided rather then pulling cable through the whole house I would run a pipe from the basement to the 3rd floor. this would allow me to pull main trunk lines. Then I had then wire from the basement up to the main level; and the 3rd floor down to the 2nd floor. I got two gigabit switches and they are connected over fiber. The hardware cost was $1000, but I think it was more cost effective then having one main run-to location.

As far as latency, we are running all of our video content internally over IP:

- windows media center wlth xboxes hooked up as live tv extenders.
- All dvds and blu-ray stream over the network to tv
- netflix on apple tv
- kids have all thier music and movies in itunes and streamed to appletv's.

we have no stuttering issues no matter how much traffic is going on.

we have a VOIP phone, nest thermostats, and a home automation system.... among other things.

Plus we have 150megabit fios line that we are constantly pushing.

Finally we run our business out of the house and never had a problem with data speeds, latency, etc.

The only thing I would do differently, is have a flexible pvc pipe from the head ends to every room. Then in the future more cable could be added.

hope this helps

 

[dgtlman]

forgot to add:

in several places we have auxiliary switches at the end.

for example, inside the media stand in the family room there is a switch to plug everything in (appletv, xbox, roku, verizon cell extender, receiver, tv, htpc, and automation controller).

again, never noticed it affecting speeds.

 

[nostaw]

Something not directly related, but maybe worth considering since you're planning your network cable install.... (be patient with me while I explain)

My house has a Fiber internet connection and the WAN interface is in the basement where all my utilities come in... Since my Wifi + router are in one box I don't really want that in the basement. When I added cabling to the house I ran 2 lines from the basement to the room where I keep my computers... One line I use to connect the router to the WAN and the other I use to connect the rest of the LAN to the basement wiring closet.

In your house where will the internet WAN connection be relative to your router?

If you need an extra run of cable for this sort of arrangement now would be the time to add it.

I would also say to pull all your wires from each room to a single closet to get the most flexibility.

JW

 

[coxhaus]

I would run a vertical backbone and span out from each floor. You will need a cabling cabinet on each floor to handle the patch panel and switch. Since you are building this I would also include phones and DMARC.

 

[coxhaus]

If you are not going to run phones also and only going to run a couple of drops without distance limitations per floor then I might consider home running the cabling.

 

[Motofixxer]

This is an old thread but for the benefit of anyone that might read this later...It's best to wire anything new with a Home Run. Essentially meaning run all new jacks to a centralized location in the home. Generally in a basement or near the breaker panel.

The idea is to future proof the home as much as reasonably possible. Imagine you have a fancy room you're using as your office with lots of racked goodies then you start adding wiring to your next room over which is your home theater living room area. Then the wife says hunny we need to talk and suddenly that office is being turned into a nursery and all that wiring terminates there...not a good situation.

So if you're adding new wiring a couple of things to keep in mind. If you're needing 1 port...pull 2...if you're needing 2 pull 4. And run everything back to a centralized location where most of your networking equipment can sit. The future users will thank you.

Another good idea wiring a home before sheetrock goes up is to use some sort of conduit runs through inaccessible areas. Examples are the plastic conduit or the Smurf Tube aka blue flexible stuff that snaps right into the low voltage boxes. If you ever have to rewire stuff...you will be very happy.

I even worked with a friend and convinced him to add 2 3" pvc pipe from basement to attic for future wiring needs...be sure to cap them when unused and sealed up when in use. If you ever wanted to add ceiling or wall speakers etc...you will be very thankful.

Be sure to add plenty of extra data ports. You always need more.