House pre-wired with Cat5/6 cabling

dionsiseire

Hey guys

Looking for some advice, I'm told my new build house is wired to each room with networking cable. The cables run to a blank faceplate in a utility room. It's just on the wall nothing to sit anything useful into and resides beside the electrical panel board for killing the power to rooms.

I'm wondering what the best thing I can do with this to make it manageable/useful. I'm still awaiting internet from an ISP and living off 4G at the moment, but there would be usefulness in being able to network my Sky Q box to a Sky Q mini to allow TV without internet for now.

Is there something smart I can install to be able to run signal from room to room and manage it in a way that will make it easy then when I get the internet installed once the UG cable drops in my estate.

Johnboy1951

dionsiseire wrote: »

Hey guys

Looking for some advice, I'm told my new build house is wired to each room with networking cable. The cables run to a blank faceplate in a utility room. It's just on the wall nothing to sit anything useful into and resides beside the electrical panel board for killing the power to rooms.

I'm wondering what the best thing I can do with this to make it manageable/useful. I'm still awaiting internet from an ISP and living off 4G at the moment, but there would be usefulness in being able to network my Sky Q box to a Sky Q mini to allow TV without internet for now.

Is there something smart I can install to be able to run signal from room to room and manage it in a way that will make it easy then when I get the internet installed once the UG cable drops in my estate.

I am surprised (if I understand correctly).
I would expect the each cable arriving in the utility room to be terminated with an ethernet socket. If 8 rooms were wired then you should have 8 RJ45 sockets.
From those 8 you would use short Cat5e 'patch' cables to connect each room into a switch.
Also into that switch you would connect your internet connection and anything else you wished to have accessible from the 8 rooms.

smuggler.ie

dionsiseire wrote: »

Hey guys

Looking for some advice, I'm told my new build house is wired to each room with networking cable. The cables run to a blank faceplate in a utility room. It's just on the wall nothing to sit anything useful into and resides beside the electrical panel board for killing the power to rooms.

I'm wondering what the best thing I can do with this to make it manageable/useful. I'm still awaiting internet from an ISP and living off 4G at the moment, but there would be usefulness in being able to network my Sky Q box to a Sky Q mini to allow TV without internet for now.

Is there something smart I can install to be able to run signal from room to room and manage it in a way that will make it easy then when I get the internet installed once the UG cable drops in my estate.

Providing there should be enough slack on CAT cables you could have 8 (or more) port wall mounted patch panel and then switch next to it. Or even wall mounted comms cabinet that would accommodate patch panel and switch, any plans for NAS box, etc.
Use your imagination depending on room layout . Ensure you plan everything before you commit to buy.

dionsiseire

Yeah so the RJ45 sockets aren't there.

Just two boxes with these in them in it






https://ibb.co/nazKiJ
https://ibb.co/nbmbVy

Johnboy1951

dionsiseire wrote: »

Yeah so the RJ45 sockets aren't there.

Just two boxes with these in them in it






https://ibb.co/nazKiJ
https://ibb.co/nbmbVy

There seems to be six cables in each of those boxes ...... or are my eyes playing tricks?

The cables are waaaaaaaaay too short to make anything easy.
The cables are too short for a patch panel unless there is some slack in the wall..
The socket boxes look too shallow for multiple cables and sockets.

Difficult to be sure based on those pics.

dionsiseire

Yeah that's pretty much exactly right, 6 in each box. The two pictures are separate boxes about 5-8 inches apart. None of the cables are labelled (so I don't know where each cable runs to) and they are standard plug socket size. So putting in a meaningful switch of any kind looks awkward without mounting a full on cabinet, which would be different as that wall is where the door opens into.

The high horse brigade

That is a mess, they should have left longer tails so you could do something with them, run then into a patch panel in a cabinet This is what happens when you use electricians unfamiliar with with data networks. You can use 4 cat5e cables in a double socket faceplate like this

World of Data CAT6 Double Socket Quad Port Faceplate - Socket - RJ45 - Ethernet - Network - Face Plate Module https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00V2RSXL8/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_Nv.eBbRNZX8Y6

smuggler.ie

dionsiseire wrote: »

Yeah so the RJ45 sockets aren't there.

Just two boxes with these in them in it






https://ibb.co/nazKiJ
https://ibb.co/nbmbVy

Try carefully pull cables to check for slack - sometimes plasterer/painter might have them pushed in for ease of work.
6port rj45 wall plates available, but you still have to track each cable -- 6+6 = 12 ??

The high horse brigade

smuggler.ie wrote: »

Try carefully pull cables to check for slack - sometimes plasterer/painter might have them pushed in for ease of work.
6port rj45 wall plates available, but you still have to track each cable -- 6+6 = 12 ??

Are 6 port Ethernet plates available in UK size double back box?

You do not really need to track cables, just buy a 16 port switch and plug them all in.

Grassey

That's pretty similar to the half arsed job left by my builder. I covered the box with a wire brush faceplate and pulled the cables through. Then terminated them into a netgear switch box above it.

I couldn't find any faceplate that would take 8 wires so this was the easiest and neatest.

smuggler.ie

The high horse brigade wrote: »

Are 6 port Ethernet plates available in UK size double back box?

They not common, but still : https://www.comms-express.com/products/6x-rj45-cat6-modules-in-doublegang-faceplate/

The high horse brigade wrote: »

You do not really need to track cables, just buy a 16 port switch and plug them all in.

Personally i would prefer to mark wall plate with room numbers/names for future reference.

Johnboy1951

I would not worry about sorting the cables until they all get terminated as best possible.
After that is done this cheap device will sort them out, as well as confirm proper connections for all wires
http://www.freetv.ie/rj45-network-cable-tester/

If there is no slack in all those cables then I would be inclined to move the socket/faceplate up to where a sufficient amount of cable is available to work with it comfortably.

jester77

If you can get them terminated to the wall panel, then you would just need a 12 port+ managed switch and plug all the cables into it. Your router probably also has a few ports that can also be used so you might get away with the 12 port switch and mount it vertically on the wall.

Once your router is plugged into the switch you would have internet at every termination point. You would then be free to plug in an AP (access point) in any of the rooms that has an ethernet port to give you optimum wi-fi coverage around your house.

An even better solution would be a POE switch. This carries power over the ethernet ports to supported devices. So you could plug in an AP, security camera, etc without the need for an electrical outlet. The AP, camera, etc would also need to support POE.

Regarding sky Q, the Apple TV now has a sky Q app that you can use in any room without the need for additional hardware. I would presume they also have an android equivalent.

dionsiseire

Thanks for all the advice so far.

So it turns out the 2 boxes, left side was actually alarm cables and not Cat6 as suspected. So all cables run into the right hand side socket.

I opened all the boxes in every room, stripped the single cable running into each room and gave them RJ45 heads. Then bought PoE powered Access Point wall boxes from TP link.

So now each room will have it's own access point

9 cables run into the right box (3 were hiding above the box and I fished them down)
1 to kitchen
1 to each of the 4 bedrooms
2 in the hallway
2 in the sitting room

All these run to that right hand side box in utility room (which has a washing machine and dryer in it, so can get warm) but I'm going to need to do a rack mount on the wall above the cables, and feed the cables into a patch panel and then patch to a PoE switch.

I'm trying to figure out a good and quiet combination of Patch Panel with rackmount, PoE switch with rackmount and a rack on the wall. Just have no idea what are the best ones to grab. You would think somewhere would sell a really good, Switch, Patch and Rack package.

The high horse brigade

How many access points? Link to them, are they dual band? You do realise they all need to be on staggered channels with some planning put into how they overlap or they will interfere with one another. There are only 3 non overlapping channels on 2.4ghz

dionsiseire

It's 5 AP's. one in each bedroom and one in the kitchen. They will all be 2.4Ghz wifi with 300mbps transfer. It's 802.11b/g/n so I believe it's 4 non overlap channels for 2.4ghz but it has automatic channel management built into the device. So I believe it should try to minimise overlap.

In the main sitting room I'll have a 5ghz nighthawk router. In theory it means every room has it's own channel with minimum interference/overlap. I can always remove 1 AP if there is.

The high horse brigade

dionsiseire wrote: »

It's 5 AP's. one in each bedroom and one in the kitchen. They will all be 2.4Ghz wifi with 300mbps transfer. It's 802.11b/g/n so I believe it's 4 non overlap channels for 2.4ghz but it has automatic channel management built into the device. So I believe it should try to minimise overlap.

In the main sitting room I'll have a 5ghz nighthawk router. In theory it means every room has it's own channel with minimum interference/overlap. I can always remove 1 AP if there is.

5 APs is madness unless you live in a mansion. Auto channel management never works either

dionsiseire

They cost 20 quid an AP. I'll stick them up. Check out the quality of it and if I need to reduce, I will. It's only madness if it doesn't work.

jester77

1 top quality AP centrally located will cover most houses. My house is over 4 levels, AP on level 1 struggles to get a signal to the top floor as all floors are re-enforced concrete, so I need a 2nd AP. But I can go 200m down the street and pick up a signal. 5 is unnecessary.

dionsiseire

Right OK but you're focusing on what isn't the problem though. The AP's exist now. They were bought, are in place, they replaced a blank plate on a wall in each room and give each room an AP wireless and an ethernet port, and while you're right, unlikely to be neccessary, are in each room now.

The question I was asking was about racks, patch panels and PoE switch combo's that are high quality and quiet.

The high horse brigade

dionsiseire wrote: »

Right OK but you're focusing on what isn't the problem though. The AP's exist now. They were bought, are in place, they replaced a blank plate on a wall in each room and give each room an AP wireless and an ethernet port, and while you're right, unlikely to be neccessary, are in each room now.

The question I was asking was about racks, patch panels and PoE switch combo's that are high quality and quiet.

You're completely missing the point that 5x APs will only cause problems unless you turn the tx power down low enough that they do not overlap and interfere with one another. 2.4ghz is noisy enough.

dionsiseire

Yes, that's an management thing. We've kind of covered that. You've said it three times. There's overlap. I'll have to manage the channels. I know. The AP's can be turned off if not needed. I 100% understand. Cannot wait until the conversation moves forward.....