New Construction Q's

[BarryB]

Hello,

So I had a couple of question I'm trying to figure out before I set expectations/prices with the builder/electrician/networking folks. Keep in mind this is all new construction so It all can be arranged far ahead of sheetrock being installed.

I checked and ATT Fiber is available in the area. My understanding is that the Fiber will run to the house where it will end at the ONT either on the exterior wall or directly inside. Between the ONT and the patch panel (https://www.legrand.us/structured-wiring/enclosures.aspx), who handles the wiring (presumably CATX) between those two points, ATT or my installer?

I notice most houses have the ONT in the garage, is that a necessary or can ATT run it, say into an adjacent room, like a laundry room that has an exterior wall? I've heard the ONT cannot be far away from the Pace/2Wire 'modem' they supply. Not sure if that's true or not.

Any particular reason why the patch panel box should/should not be in the garage, perhaps adjacent to the ONT?

Thanks all!

 

[coxhaus]

My daughter has an ONT outside. I had AT&T run a CAT5e to the garage where I mounted her Switch for 6 or 7 rooms of CAT5e cable. The house was wire for DSL but there was no DSL in the neighborhood there was only fiber to the houses. So I talked AT&T to cut all the CAT5e cables that ran outside and terninate them in the garage. My daughter has no issues running her modem/router and switch from the garage. We are in Texas so it gets hot in the summer.

 

[degrub]

i have the ATT ONT inside near the point of entry. it is powered from a UPS as is the rest of my network. From there the Cat6 cable plugs into a GoCoax 2.5 Gb/s modem. The RG6 runs up to my wiring closet (50 ft roughly) to another GoCoax modem. Then it is Cat 6 to the ATT router ( BGW210), then Cat 6 to my RV325 router. The ATT router reports 960/950 on their speed test. i am double NATed without issue and see up to around 940 Mb/s down and 920 up from devices depending on the ethernet chip in the PC (single device accessing directly through the switch). My network looks like a star with bonded MOCA2 Actiontec 6200s connected to the RV325 switch. My slowest wired speeds to the internet from my slowest PCs across this are around 500/500 to the internet.

ATT may give you the option of a combined ONT-Router. i chose the separated unit option since i wanted all of the routers in my wiring closet and did not have fiber to it. There might be other reasons to not use the combined unit. i have not researched it.

If your walls are still open, ATT might be able to run the fiber wherever you want it. However, if something goes wrong with the interior fiber after sheetrock is up (nails from trim can be an issue or if there is a fiber fault), you would have to tear open the walls or reterminate to an ONT at/near the entry point. You can also run conduit, but if you do, run at least 1 inch ID with about 9 inch radius elbows and leave an extra pull cord inside when the fiber is pulled in case you change ISPs or the fiber needs to be upgraded. i would run RG6 coax ( not in the conduit) as well to the wiring closet in case you want to switch to a cable based ISP in the future.

 

[coxhaus]

I think CAT6 would be a better option now days over CAT5e.

 

[degrub]

for sure.

 

[BarryB]

So in a new

i have the ATT ONT inside near the point of entry. it is powered from a UPS as is the rest of my network. From there the Cat6 cable plugs into a GoCoax 2.5 Gb/s modem. The RG6 runs up to my wiring closet (50 ft roughly) to another GoCoax modem. Then it is Cat 6 to the ATT router ( BGW210), then Cat 6 to my RV325 router. The ATT router reports 960/950 on their speed test. i am double NATed without issue and see up to around 940 Mb/s down and 920 up from devices depending on the ethernet chip in the PC (single device accessing directly through the switch). My network looks like a star with bonded MOCA2 Actiontec 6200s connected to the RV325 switch. My slowest wired speeds to the internet from my slowest PCs across this are around 500/500 to the internet.

ATT may give you the option of a combined ONT-Router. i chose the separated unit option since i wanted all of the routers in my wiring closet and did not have fiber to it. There might be other reasons to not use the combined unit. i have not researched it.

If your walls are still open, ATT might be able to run the fiber wherever you want it. However, if something goes wrong with the interior fiber after sheetrock is up (nails from trim can be an issue or if there is a fiber fault), you would have to tear open the walls or reterminate to an ONT at/near the entry point. You can also run conduit, but if you do, run at least 1 inch ID with about 9 inch radius elbows and leave an extra pull cord inside when the fiber is pulled in case you change ISPs or the fiber needs to be upgraded. i would run RG6 coax ( not in the conduit) as well to the wiring closet in case you want to switch to a cable based ISP in the future.

I was going to ask about your setup but after reading a few times I think I get it.

Basically, you're bumping off where your existing coax comes into the house to where your box is instead of running straight CatX from the ONT to your box. My question is typically the Coax in the house runs to the outside cable box. How did you get it inside, did you pull it in from outside?

I guess if you picked a combined ONT/Router combo would you still be able to use your MOCA adapters?

 

[degrub]

when i built the house 26 yr ago, i ran RG6 to every room from a central wiring closet and two dedicated runs to the exterior of the house from the same. i was not smart enough to use CAT5e for the telephone wiring, so i would only get about 40-50Mbit/sec sync rate on ATT Uverse DSL. over my POTS phone wiring. Fortunately, the MOCA technology developed enough (GoCoax 2.5 Gb/s) to support gigabit full duplex across the RG6 home runs to my wiring closet. Each of the used ports on my switch is connected to an Actiontec 6200 MOCA2 bonded modem going off to each of the rooms. i have 4 CISCO 371 APs running 5 GHz only scattered around the house to get seamless coverage and roaming (i have not tried phone calls, just ipads, iphones, and laptops). Single point setup used.

i also run TV antenna signal from my OTA antenna via a ChannelMaster 776 amp ( i think - the low noise version) across one of the moca runs to an old set as well as to a HDHomeRun tuner that allows me to distribute across my internal ethernet lan to any device.

The MOCA modems are all used as point-to-point devices to keep maximum throughput.. No multidrops like one can see with cable installs where there would be sharing of bandwidth..

So fiber enters the house to the ONT. From the ONT an ethernet cable connects to the GoCOAX modem, then across the RG6 to the GoCoax on the other end in my wiring closet, then ethernet to the ATT Modem/Router, then from a LAN port to the WAN port of my RV325. From the Lan ports on the RV325, an ethernet cable connects to the Actiontec modem then across the dedicated RG6 run to the other end Actiontec modem and then out across ethernet to whatever devices i need.

 

[degrub]

So in a new


I was going to ask about your setup but after reading a few times I think I get it.

Basically, you're bumping off where your existing coax comes into the house to where your box is instead of running straight CatX from the ONT to your box. My question is typically the Coax in the house runs to the outside cable box. How did you get it inside, did you pull it in from outside?

I guess if you picked a combined ONT/Router combo would you still be able to use your MOCA adapters?

Yes, i pulled one RG6 back in and terminated it near where the ONT was to be mounted.

Yes, All i have to do is plug in the ethernet cable between the MOCA modem and the combo lan port. MOCA is transparent to ethernet.

 

[BarryB]

Yes, i pulled one RG6 back in and terminated it near where the ONT was to be mounted.

Yes, All i have to do is plug in the ethernet cable between the MOCA modem and the combo lan port. MOCA is transparent to ethernet.

Tracking!

 

[degrub]

Tracking!

???

 

[Keith Gorham]

When my house was getting built 20 years ago, I attempted to get a combo coax/Cat5/Fiber run to each room. The builder would not do it. I found they were using CAT5 for the telephone lines, so I had telephone drop;s everywhere. They did not understand why I needed that many telephone drops. I wish I did a few more done.

 

[MichaelCG]

1.) Attempt to identify where ATT if your region uses an exterior or interior ONT
- I am on Google Fiber, and my ONT is interior
2.) Attempt to identify where ATT plans to install the DMARC box/panel outside
3.) Based upon where the exterior panel is, and assuming interior ONT, identify where you want the ONT to reside
- generally want this to be very close to the DMARC due to this being a fiber run which shouldn't be moved, touched, bent, etc
4.) Identify where you plan to do your centralized wiring
5.) Run at a minimum 2 CAT6a runs from the ONT location to your wiring location
6.) Consider running 2 COAX runs as well just in case future antenna options are to be investigated
7.) Run COAX and Cat5e/Cat6a to every room
8.) Run Cat6a to multiple locations for Access Points
- a single AP is unlikely be able to service future needs and before the walls are done is the right time to cable up distributed AP

My Fiber enters my house in the same location as my power, phone, coax, etc. The ONT is directly on the other side of the wall mounted on the same board as the breaker box. I have run 2 CAT5e and 2 CAT6 cables from that corner of the house back to the central stairwell which is where all of my wiring and equipment resides. I also have two COAX runs there to bring my antenna back to the distribution amplifier.

So no matter if I stick with Google Fiber or go back to Cable, I have COAX and Ethernet lines sitting right there able to bring the feeds back to my router/firewall back in my equipment closet.

 

[BarryB]

1.) Attempt to identify where ATT if your region uses an exterior or interior ONT
- I am on Google Fiber, and my ONT is interior
2.) Attempt to identify where ATT plans to install the DMARC box/panel outside
3.) Based upon where the exterior panel is, and assuming interior ONT, identify where you want the ONT to reside
- generally want this to be very close to the DMARC due to this being a fiber run which shouldn't be moved, touched, bent, etc
4.) Identify where you plan to do your centralized wiring
5.) Run at a minimum 2 CAT6a runs from the ONT location to your wiring location
6.) Consider running 2 COAX runs as well just in case future antenna options are to be investigated
7.) Run COAX and Cat5e/Cat6a to every room
8.) Run Cat6a to multiple locations for Access Points
- a single AP is unlikely be able to service future needs and before the walls are done is the right time to cable up distributed AP

My Fiber enters my house in the same location as my power, phone, coax, etc. The ONT is directly on the other side of the wall mounted on the same board as the breaker box. I have run 2 CAT5e and 2 CAT6 cables from that corner of the house back to the central stairwell which is where all of my wiring and equipment resides. I also have two COAX runs there to bring my antenna back to the distribution amplifier.

So no matter if I stick with Google Fiber or go back to Cable, I have COAX and Ethernet lines sitting right there able to bring the feeds back to my router/firewall back in my equipment closet.

What's your reasoning for #5? Why would I need two CAT6 runs from the ONT to my wiring box?

 

[Fatawan]

The newest gateway for ATT fiber(BGW320) has an ONT included, so the fiber can run directly into the gateway. That is the future for sure. I just built a house a year ago and ran cat 6a from where the ONT would be located to the location where I wanted the gateway. Now with the 320, I wish I had run fiber as well. I would pick the ideal location for your gateway, put a conduit from your patch panel to that spot and have a cat 6a and a fiber available. If you get the older gateway, the ONT can be put near your patch panel and connected to the gateway with cat 6a. If you get the new gateway they can use your fiber or pull their own through your conduit.