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Structured
Wiring
Concept
What Do
You Want?
Planning
Chapter 1
Planning
Chapter 2
Buying Tools
Chapter 1
Buying Tools
Chapter 2
The Rough-In
Chapter 1
The Rough-In
Chapter 2
The Central Wiring Panel
Chapter 1
The Central Wiring Panel
Chapter2
Finishing
Coax Stripping
Coax Terminating
Compensate for
Video Losses
CATx Stripping
and Terminating
Chapter 1
CATx Stripping
and Terminating
Chapter 2
Home
Network
Wiring and Setup
Chapter 1
Home
Network
Wiring and Setup
Chapter 2
Home
Network
Wiring and Setup
Chapter 3
Home
Network
Wiring and Setup
Chapter 4
NEW!
VOIP
(Voice Over Internet Protocol)
Wireless
Networks
Chapter 1
Wireless
Networks
Chapter 2
Pull Cords
Wiring Diagrams
More Photos
Reference
Links
Contact Me
Extra’s
?2001
Bob Catanzarite
What Do You Want?
What do you want your Structured Wiring
to include? If you are trying to go the Do It Yourself route here you
first need to ask yourself what you think your personal capabilities are. I’ll
do my best to expose you to the details of doing things yourself here and
include links to other who may be able to do a better job of explaining things.
Before you invest your time and money in this you should be reasonably sure you
will be able to do this kind of work. You should be good with tools and have
some experience with running wiring in a house. Having run power lines
through walls to add an outlet is good background. Doing the same for telephone
or cable TV is good. Don’t bite off more than you can chew – but then
again – don’t underestimate your ability to learn something new.
Here are some of the wiring types that
you can choose from:
Data
Video
Telephone
Audio
Fiber Optics
Infrared Control
Alarm (including surveillance video)
VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol)
Let’s touch briefly on each of these choices.
Data
For me data networking was one of the major
reasons for taking on this project. With multiple PC in my home I wanted all of
these PC to be networked. This would allow a number of things to happen:
- Internet Connection Sharing – Having multiple
PC’s sharing a single internet connection.
- File Sharing – Having the ability to access files on located on any of the
PC’s hard disk from any other PC.
- Resource Sharing – The ability to use devices such as scanners and printers
from any of the PC’s.
The obvious data networking medium of choice for me was ethernet. With phone
line networking (PNA), power line networking and several wireless networking
options available you may ask why run special wiring dedicated to networking?
Speed for starters. The best you can expect out of the other non-ethernet
options I listed is 11Mbps. Even this 11Mbps that wireless is advertised as in
reality only gets you in the 4.5Mbps range in real performance. CAT5 wiring supports Fast Ethernet running at
100Mbps and possibly even gigabit ethernet if you do everything right. Security is another for choosing ethernet. RF from the wireless and the
power lines from the power line network extend outside your home opening up
access to your network and the PC’s connected to it. Cost is another. Ethernet
is usually cheaper but wireless is getting pretty cheap as well.. My Links page includes
links to information about the non-ethernet data networking options so you can explore those and
decide for yourself. This site is all about structured wiring so
I’ll focus on ethernet.
Speed, security and cost alone are compelling
reasons for choosing ethernet. Even if you want a wireless network to free
your laptop or your PDA from wires you should still seriously consider adding
ethernet as well. I can see how it will become practical
to use the speed of ethernet to distribute audio and video through out your
home. Here again you have look beyond your current wants and needs to anticipate
the future.
Fiber Optics has a lot of potential for more
widespread application. It’s fast! It’s expensive. And it requires a lot of
skills and training. You may be able to handle this but it’s beyond my
capabilities for the time being. You’ll have to look elsewhere for do it yourself help. Sorry, but
I know my limitations. Check the links page
for more on fiber optics. I may update this site soon to include more
on fiber optics.
So, I’ll focus here on ethernet because that is
what I know best and because I think that most reasonably nimble fingered and
nimble minded folk can do this.
The commonly used forms of
ethernet in the home come in two speeds – 10 Mbps and 100 Mbps and now Gigabit
ethernet.
(100Mbps refers to 100 Mega or 100 million bits per second). Almost
all new ethernet components operate at 100Mbps which is commonly
called ‘fast ethernet’. The 10Mbps are usually older components but
there are some new components such as cable modems which operate at
10Mbps. And most NIC cards, hub, switches, etc. will operate at
both speeds. Gigabit ethernet operating at 1000Mbps is available an becoming
cheaper and more prominent but I’m not getting into the specifics of Gigabit
Ethernet. Everything I have on this website does still apply when your dealing
with Gigabit Ethernet.
On the cabling front CAT5
cabling will support up to 1000Mbps (Gigabit Ethernet). CAT5 will work fine down at 10Mbps
as well. In addition there are CAT cable ratings of CAT5e and CAT6.
See the chart below. CAT5e or enhanced CAT5 has higher capabilities in
a number of parameters. But, CAT5e is still only rated for 100Mbps.
You might wonder why bother with CAT5e if its bit rate is the same as
CAT5? Cat5e has more headroom in some of the other cable performance specs, meaning several parameters are rated
higher than they need to be. I’ll explain an advantage of this extra
headroom later in the website. CAT6 is capable of 1000Mbps.
These standards are more than a
bit confusing and are changing as well. Added to that many cable
suppliers are stating that their cable will work at higher bit rates. Most of those claims are probably correct. But, here is the commonly
accepted simplification of all this:
Cable Rating
Bit Rate
CAT5
up to 1,000 Mbps
CAT5e
up to 1,000 Mbps
CAT6
up to 1,000 Mbps
See my Special Note about
Gigabit Ethernet below for more on how fast these CATx cables will actually
go.
And here are some details of the
different cable ratings:
EIA/TIA Specs
Specification
Category 5
Category 5E
Category 6
Frequency Range
1-100 MHz
1-100 MHz
1-250 MHz
Attenuation at 100MHz
22 dB
22 dB
19.8 dB
NEXT at 100MHz
32.3 dB
35.3 dB
44.3 dB
Power sum NEXT at 100MHz
Not Spec’d*
32.3 dB
42.3 dB
Power sum ACR
Not Spec’d*
3.1 dB
15.4 dB
ELFEXT at 100MHz
Not Spec’d*
23.8 dB
27.8 dB
Power sum ELFEXT
Not Spec’d*
20.8 dB
24.8 dB
Return Loss
16 dB
20.1 dB
20.1 dB
Propagation Delay
548 ns*
548 ns
548 ns
Delay Skew per 100M
Not Spec’d*
45 ns
45 ns
See this link
for some details about the differences between CAT5 and CAT5e. I used CAT5 cables, plugs and jacks
in my data network because ,at that time (early in 2000), they were considerably cheaper than
CAT5e. Today CAT5e would be my choice based on pricing and availability.
On this website I’ll use the term
’CATx’ which I use to describe ANY cable that is CAT5 or better.
Special Note about Gigabit Ethernet
Recently the IEEE standard for Gigabit Ethernet was approved
and is now called 1000BASE-T. CAT5 will work with gigabit but
there are conditions to that. Some older CAT5 cables were built to an early
version of the CAT5 spec and will not work with gigabit. So, only newer CAT5
cables will work. And, basically, you have to do
EVERYTHING to spec and strictly ‘by the book’ for this to work. Most actually
recommend that CAT5e be used – the overhead margin that CAT5e has will allow you
a better chance of success. In fact most recommend that your older CAT5 wiring installation
actually be tested to ensure it will meet all the required specs. This testing
expense is well beyond the capacity of most home users. You CAN go out and buy
gigabit NIC’s and Switches BUT they may or may not work
with your CAT5 (and even CAT5e) wiring installation if you have not followed all
of the good practice wiring rules. For these reasons I
recommend using CAT5e cable for gigabit applications and do everything by the
book and don’t compromise anything.
But aware too that gigabit actually uses ALL 4 pair of the CATx cables where 100Base-T Fast Ethernet and
10Base-T only used two of the four pairs. See my Links
page for more on Gigabit Ethernet.
In general most Gigabit Ethernet components will attempt to operate at 1000Mbps
and if the cable won’t perform well it will switch down to the lower 100Mbps
speed.
Telephone
Telephone wiring is an obvious choice as a
wiring type to include. Telephone wiring does not require high performance
cable to work. The cable commonly used in the past for telephone was the
familiar 4 conductor variety and is commonly referred to as POTS (Plain Old
Telephone Standard). But now the minimum recommended wiring for telephone
is CAT3. The photo below has CAT5 on the left and
POTS on the right. Notice that CAT5 has the twisted pairs where the POTS does
not. This gives CAT5 higher immunity from electrical interference.
(Click for a Larger Image)
Now since your already using CAT5 or better for your
network cabling it makes a lot of sense to use the same CATx cable for the
phones as well. CAT5 is not that much more expensive than POTS. And using CAT cable for
the phone means you’ll be buying a larger quantity of the CATx cable and can take
advantage of discounts for bulk or higher quantities. CATx has the additional
advantage of being capable of carrying 4 phone lines over the 2 line capacity of
the POTS cable.
One important thing to
note here. I get a lot of questions from people asking if it is ok the run
telephone lines through the two unused pair of wires in CATx cable used
for Ethernet Data. My answer to this is NO!. Others will answer YES but under certain
conditions. Actually this MAY work for
you until the the phone rings and you use the phone. Ring signals are high
voltage (90 volt) AC signals and WILL interfere with 100Mbps high speed ethernet
communications. And, gigabit and Power Over Ethernet use all 4 pairs so these
applications don’t have and unused wires. In general this unorthodox use of Ethernet cables is something I DON’T RECOMMEND.
Do this and your on your own.
Video
Video wiring is another obvious choice as a
wiring type to include. With
the right choice of cabling you can use you video wiring to carry signals from
local broadcast reception antennas, CATV (Cable TV), DSS (Digital Satellite Services) and baseband video
(such as from a video camera). And with the high degree of configurability you
can get with a structured wiring system you can easily accommodate all of these
signals. And if do like I did and run two video lines to every outlet plate you can even do things such as allow a digital CATV converter box
located in your bedroom to also feed a spare TV in another room. Or to
use a DVD player in the living room to feed a TV in the basement. Very
cool and this can save you the expense of buying multiple devices.
The most widely recommended type of
video cable
for structured wiring in RG6/U quad shielded coax. Standard RG6/U coax
has dual shields and to get quad shields you have to use ‘RG6/U
quad shielded coax’. This cabling is
relatively inexpensive and widely available. A more common type of cabling you
are likely to be familiar with is RG59. This RG59 is slightly thinned and
more flexible and has been commonly used for antenna and CATV applications. But
with the both higher and lower frequencies you’ll encounter with DSS, digital
CATV and broadband cable modems, RG59 is not the best choice any more because
the signal losses are higher than RG6/U and RG6/U qual shield. RG6/U has
less signal loss at both higher and lower frequencies especially with longer
runs of cabling. And the quad shielding gives higher immunity from electrical
interference. See the section on Coax Stripping for
For cabling that you’ll install
in the walls and attics and such I would use exclusively RG6/U quad
shielded coax. For short cable runs outside the walls, say from the
wall outlet to the TV or the VCR, the use of the thinner more flexible
RG59 is OK. Common RG59 is a dual shield coax and, as far as I know,
is not available in quad shielded form. Just limit the use of RG59 to
short cable runs (say 20′ or so).
Audio
My idea of whole house audio is one pair of very sweet sounding Definitive
Technologies Pro
Tower 400 speakers with 245 watts per channel to persuade them. Crank
up the volume on these babies and you’ll have a whole house full of excellent
sounding audio. I
obviously chose to leave out audio from my structured wiring plan. I’ll avoid
this subject for the time being because I haven’t researched it fully.
Fiber Optics
Fiber Optics has a lot of potential for more
widespread application. It’s fast! It’s expensive. And it requires a lot of
skills and training. You may be able to handle this but it’s beyond my
capabilities for the time being. You’ll have to look elsewhere for do it yourself help. Sorry, but
I know my limitations. Check the links page
for more on fiber optics. I may update this site soon to include more
on fiber optics if I ever get smarter.
Infrared Control
I don’t have any plans to
support this topic.
Alarm (including surveillance video)
I don’t have any plans to
support this topic.
Wireless Networking
This website being titled
’Structured Wiring – How To’ is all about wiring. But, wireless can be
combined with wired components to enhance your Structured Wiring
System. I have in fact added an 802.11b wireless network to my
own Structured Wiring System. Additionally I have added some sections to this
website on Wireless Networking. You can access these sections from links on the
left side of all my web pages.
VOIP Voice Over Internet Protocol
A well done Structured Wiring system will
accommodate VOIP VERY WELL and with little modification. In fact I have added
Vontage VOIP to my system and have a page
that describes how you can do that too.
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