Data cabling - is it worth it?

[Flyfisher]

Show me a 200Mb powerline adaptor which has anything other than a 100Mb ethernet connection on it. (The Belkin one doesn't count as it is rubbish.) Real life speeds are very approx 50mb YMMV.

I believe they are rated at 200Mbps as they support full-duplex operation, i.e. 100Mbps in both directions simultaneously - theoretically. But it's really just marketing guff and such speeds are almost certainly unobtainable in any practical installation.

Although networking has been made very easy these days, in the sense of plugging and playing, implementing a performance-critical system with guaranteed speeds and throughputs is a whole different ball-game. A wired system with network 'switches' is trivial to implement but actually incredibly sophisticated in its operation, meaning that a two PCs can exchange a huge file (e.g. stream a video) while a third PC can still access the web at full speed. With a wi-fi system, all the data transfers have to compete for the same bandwidth and this significantly slows down the overall speed of operations - usually by far more than just the sum of all the data transfers - for all the devices on the network.

It's the same with a powerline network but with the added complication of mains-borne interference causing additional slow-downs as the powerline units have to resend data many times before uncorrupted data finally gets through.

In essence, a single PC used mainly for email and web browsing will work perfectly well with wi-fi or powerline networks and using a wired LAN will give little or no increase in performance (because the broadband connection is the bottleneck). But, add more PCs and/or other devices to the LAN, start copying files or streaming music and/or video across the LAN and the limitation of wi-fi or powerline will quickly become apparent. Copying a file (as part of a backup regime perhaps?) slower than possible might not be a problem but stuttering video or music playback is unlikely to be acceptable.
Horses for courses indeed.

 

[Feltwell]

Good Lord - FF, that picture is scary!

I'd never heard of powerline adaptors - for what we need, I suspect that will do if we find the wireless is dubious. I'm not an "enthusiast" of technology really, quite happy to use it but it does not excite me.

Rob, I take your point - the kids do play outside a lot as well though! The world is changing - my 5 year old asked me a question recently - the kind that only a 5 year old can ask, "Dad - how many teeth does a crocodile have?" - and of course she was not satisfied with the answer of "lots". Her reply to that was "Why don't you Google it then? I can show you how" ! They had been taught the very basics of how to use Google in the reception class at primary school - clearly as they get older homework without a computer will be less of an option.

Pford, good point on the "internet of things" - although it will no doubt be technology enthusiasts only at first, until the price drops.

Yes, my router does have 4 LAN ports, which at the moment would be plenty if I was to go down the hard wired route.

All food for thought, thank you everyone. If I wasn't taking up floorboards and doing plumbing & electrical work anyway then I definitely wouldn't bother for now, what's of more interest is as I do each room to run the cables and leave them coiled up, ready to run on as I do the next room. Laying cables is easy, it's getting the access to the run prepared and re-instatement that's the pain.

Before we moved in, when the house was empty, I took the opportunity to run alarm system cables and telephone extension cables all round the building - I wish I'd added data to that list now as well!

 

[Flyfisher]

The school homework example is very appropriate. If they are already using the web at 5 years old, how indispensible do you think it will be by the time the serious exams kick-in? A single PC per household will be a real disadvantage I'm afraid; the 'personal' in PC has never been truer. I think you should be pleased that your 5-year old is already using the web. Thankfully, education seems to be moving away from just teaching facts and testing memory in favour of how to effectively analyse and utilise the wealth of facts now at our fingertips.

If I wasn't taking up floorboards and doing plumbing & electrical work anyway then I definitely wouldn't bother for now, what's of more interest is as I do each room to run the cables and leave them coiled up, ready to run on as I do the next room. Laying cables is easy, it's getting the access to the run prepared and re-instatement that's the pain.

Absolutely. Just lay the cables at every convenient opportunity and then they're there if/when you need them. Actually, that's pretty much what telecoms companies do as well; any new road or major roadworks will usually include laying optical cables for later use. They call it "dark fibre", i.e. not yet lit up and in use. If you've ever seen that purple ribbed trunking along the edges of main roads - that contains the data cabling.

Before we moved in, when the house was empty, I took the opportunity to run alarm system cables and telephone extension cables all round the building - I wish I'd added data to that list now as well!

No need to have added data, you could have just used it instead of all the telephone wiring and then run the telephones over the data cables. Probably the alarms as well. Never mind.

 

[d49xc]

The main issue in rural areas is the so called D side of the BT's system: - that part of the cable after the street box up to the customer's home: sometimes also refered to as 'the last mile'.
This cable is generally not laid in conduit but buried directly in the ground and is often comprised of aluminum rather than copper conductors: and it was probably laid in the 1950's.
(At intervals customers connections are taken off the cable, run up a pole and thence across o the customer's house)
The cable from the street box back to the exchange usually is in ducts and has probably been replaced several times.

Obviously it is a major major major exercise to replace all this D-side cable!
Additionally aluminum corrodes and has other distinct technical disadvantages when compared to copper- particularly where high frequencies are used - as adsl does and adsl2 does even more.

Locally round here the major determinate as to your broadband speed is simply how far away from the street box you are - and the differences are very considerable.
The point of this is that BT's roll out of Fibre to the Curb (FTTC) - ie moving the exchange in effect into a street box is unlikely to improve speeds much in such areas.

As to maintenance eventually replacing this old stuff - dream on. I know of one road when BT are in the Street box every week, sometimes multiple times per week, mending the last one to break and in the process breaking the next one so someone else can mend it tomorrow. All the BT engineers you talk to know the solution - rip the lot out and do it properly. Will BT do it - of course not: 'cos doing so represents large expenditure NOW but endlessly mending faults on a never ending schedule represents an small expenditure NOW (at the cost of much more later).

 

[Feltwell]

The school homework example is very appropriate. If they are already using the web at 5 years old, how indispensible do you think it will be by the time the serious exams kick-in? A single PC per household will be a real disadvantage I'm afraid; the 'personal' in PC has never been truer. I think you should be pleased that your 5-year old is already using the web. Thankfully, education seems to be moving away from just teaching facts and testing memory in favour of how to effectively analyse and utilise the wealth of facts now at our fingertips.

I view the web access for kids in a very positive way - I'm delighted my kids are using it, my earlier comment wasn't meant to be negative at all. My son, at age 4, copes easily with switching the PC on and finding his way to his favourite websites. CBeebies in particular has some fantastic educational games on it, which he loves.

My kids are the reason why I was asking about data cabling - I've got a couple of old laptops from my work that my kids now have, they are not the latest greatest models but are only about 4 years old so are perfectly useable for now (and if they get a glass of milk tipped onto them by accident it's not too much of a disaster!). My daughter is asking for one in her new bedroom, the wireless will work fine for what she does now but in 5-10 years time maybe not.

I went to a numeracy evening at our primary school tonight, to show parents how much maths teaching for young children has changed since we were kids. It is much, much better now - they really involve the children and make it fun, with lots of games both with and without computers. It certainly beats my recollection of maths at primary school, the whole class being made to endlessly chant the times tables, without any real explanation of what it meant.

Still, as I ended up doing an engineering degree it clearly didn't put me off that much!

 

[Lime]

completely off the subject per se but a month ago I was going down a tiny country lane I had not been down before.
Halfway along the track were about 4 or 5 cottages (nothing unusual in that) but they were all served by several 1920-60s telegraph poles in a row topped by multiple wooden arms to hold the huge black and a few a white insulators that were all still in place.
I thought I had entered a time warp.
It took me back to the good old days of the GPO.

I vowed at the time to go back and take a picture or two......... if I can remember where it was!

 

[TomW]

Sorry to drag this this thread to the surface again, but I could do with a bit of advice from those that know.
I'm about to start replacing skirtings, architraves etc. and plastering holes and gaps, and want to hide as much cabling as possible. If I'm doing that I may as well upgrade the existing cabling to cat5 or 6.
Being a complete numpty as regards this sort of thing, where do I start?
Should I replace the cable from where the phone line enters the house to the BT master box?
If I can integrate the phone line and computer what would I need to do to accomplish this.

The black wire is the main BT line into the house.View attachment 1

Ideally I would like a wired connection between my main computer in the bedroom and the router, leaving the wifi for the netbook in the living room.
I will be sinking a mains spur that comes down from upstairs into the wall, could I run the data cable alongside that, or would I get interference from the mains?

Also Cat5e or Cat6? I have read that Cat6 is very fussy as to how it's handled whereas Cat5e is a bit more forgiving. I don't think that my local network is very likely to achieve any of the speeds these cables are capable of, so does it matter which I use?

This is the current BT master and router layout.
Thanks for any wisdom offered.

 

[Lime]

TomW, technically the wiring you show, both the black wire, junction box and the descending white wire are BT's property because they are supplying their master socket.
Any wiring before the master socket is "theirs".
Any wiring after the master socket is yours.

 

[Flyfisher]

Sorry to drag this this thread to the surface again, but I could do with a bit of advice from those that know.

No need to apologise, although I can hear a collective groan in PPUK hyperspace as I drone on even more such things. :lol:

I'm about to start replacing skirtings, architraves etc. and plastering holes and gaps, and want to hide as much cabling as possible. If I'm doing that I may as well upgrade the existing cabling to cat5 or 6.
Being a complete numpty as regards this sort of thing, where do I start?

I'd say the main thing is to think about where and how you'll want to lay the cables. Such wiring systems are basically "stars", meaning that all the outlet boxes are wired back to a central point and it's at that central point that all the 'patch-cables' are used to connected the various services to the various outlets. As you can see by the photo I posted earlier in this thread, the central point can end up looking a bit messy so it's best if it can be hidden away somewhere such as under the stairs or in the attic (as in my case) as you will only need infrequent access to it. Alternatively, you can buy fancy equipment cabinets and mount everything in a racking system.

As for the cabling choice, it's really between cat5e or cat6 at present, though there are other standards in the wings. FWIW, my view is that cat5e is perfectly adequate for 'normal' domestic purposes where the cable runs are going to be far shorter than the maximum specified lengths because the shorter the cable, the better the performance anyway. But 'performance' in this context is all a bit vague to be honest. It means something in a very technical sense but, in practice, it's all a bit wooly and unless you are going to install an expensive network monitoring system and worry about things such as "far-end crosstalk" and "bit error rates" etc., then you'll almost certainly experience no significant difference between cat5e or cat6 cabling over the distances we're talking about. Besides, I can't remember how many times I've seen companies install expensively certified cat6 cabling systems and then connect everything up with cat5 patch cables. And it all works perfectly well, even when some of the cable runs I've come across are 250m and with multiple patch panels in the path - none of which is allowed for in the 'standards', which rather makes a mockery of the certification costs, but there we are.

In summary, I've used cat5e and never had any problems; even when I working from home and had a network of about 6 computers, a few other LAN devices and three telephone lines.

Should I replace the cable from where the phone line enters the house to the BT master box?

Strictly speaking, no, because as Lime has pointed out, everything up to the BT master socket belongs to BT. The correct way would be to ask them to relocate your master socket and they'll be quite happy to route their cable wherever you wish, within reason, but they will probably charge you for the privilege. However, their record-keeping is so poor that they would never know if you relocated everything yourself . . . BUT, if you get it wrong and cause a problem they will probably charge you even more to put things right. So, not something to DIY unless you really, really know what you're doing.

If I can integrate the phone line and computer what would I need to do to accomplish this.

The telephone service and a computer network can run over the same types of cabling but not simultaneously. So, thinking back to the star arrangement, you should have a broadband filter plugged into the master socket giving you two separate outlets for the telephone and the computer network. These must be patching into separate runs of data wiring. This is why I'd recommend using dual outlet faceplates wherever you run your cables. This will allow you to have a telephone and a computer at the same place. For some rooms, e.g. a study, you may wish to have more than two outlets depending of you have a separate fax line or a networked printer for example.

But if you only run two outlets, don't despair - if you end up needing more network connections because for about £20 you can buy a small network device (called an "ethernet switch") to expand the number of available network outlets. I've done this and it works fine.

Ideally I would like a wired connection between my main computer in the bedroom and the router, leaving the wifi for the netbook in the living room.

Again, think of where you wish to locate the "hub" of your star-wiring. If, for example, it's under the stairs, then run your (dual) cables from there to your bedroom and terminate each end into a dual-faceplate pattress box, taking care to label them so you know which is which at each end. Then relocate the BT master socket to the same place. Depending on the size and layout of the house, you could also locate the wi-fi router under the stairs as well, although you probably already know that wi-fi reception can be a bit finicky. Then, with a broadband filter plugged into the BT master socket, connect the 'telephone' outlet into one of the cat5e sockets and the 'data' outlet to the router. Then connect one of the router's network sockets to the other cat5e socket with a short patch cable. That's it at the 'hub' end.

In the bedroom, plug your telephone into the appropriate cat5e socket (adapters are available) and your computer network card into the other cat5e socket with a short cat5e patch cable. And away you go.

Should you ever wish to relocate your computer to another room, just plug it into another cat5e data socket and re-patch the router to the corresponding socket at the 'hub' end. Actually, in practice, most modern routers have four network outlets, so there would be no need to disconnet the bedroom connection. This is when such wiring really becomes useful if you have multiple PCs in the house.

I will be sinking a mains spur that comes down from upstairs into the wall, could I run the data cable alongside that, or would I get interference from the mains?

It's not advisable. I can't remember offhand the recommended distance between parallel runs of mains and data cables, but I'd try for at least 12 inches. Crossing over mains cables is not a big issue, but running them in the same channel or conduit is not good practice.

Also Cat5e or Cat6? I have read that Cat6 is very fussy as to how it's handled whereas Cat5e is a bit more forgiving. I don't think that my local network is very likely to achieve any of the speeds these cables are capable of, so does it matter which I use?

Basically Cat6 has a higher performance specification and is more susceptible to various performance parameters being affected by things such as tight bends, poor connections, incorrect patch cables etc. So, for example, a carelessly installed Cat6 system might only 'perform' to Cat5e specifications. But, as previously mentioned, unless it's a complete disaster of an installation, you'll only notice any differences in performance if you use sophisticated test equipment. Even then, it won't make any practical difference in a domestic environment. You won't notice anything different when web browsing and files transfers will still work correctly.

In other words, I don't think it really matters too much what you use. I've been quite happy with cat5e. Perhaps I'll regret that in 10 or 20 years time, by which time perhaps all such wiring will be optical anyway.

Thanks for any wisdom offered.

I hope this helps rather than confuses. I know I have a bad habit of rambling on and on. :wink:

 

[TomW]

Thank you FF, a majestic and lucid feat of description.
I can see where I need to go now, the router can stay where it is, it's pretty much in the centre of the house, I just need to work out cable runs. A visit to maplin is needed methinks.
Many thanks.

 

[MdB]

I will be sinking a mains spur that comes down from upstairs into the wall, could I run the data cable alongside that, or would I get interference from the mains?

It's not advisable. I can't remember offhand the recommended distance between parallel runs of mains and data cables, but I'd try for at least 12 inches. Crossing over mains cables is not a big issue, but running them in the same channel or conduit is not good practice.

Just to add, this is a safety thing not a signal integrity thing.

 

[Penners]

Just out of interest, FF, what is considered to be unsafe about it?

 

[Flyfisher]

I suspect it's one of those mainly theoretical things. Data wiring is supposed to be low voltage and therefore inherently safe, so running it amongst power cables for long lengths could, perhaps, somehow, result in a fault condition where power ends up on the data cabling. That would certainly not be a good thing and would likely damage every piece of equipment connected to the data cabling but, in these days of RCCDs and the like, the chances of it being really dangerous are probably slim.

In the days before modern LANs, the separation of data and mains wiring used to be for good technical reasons. Older data standards such as RS-232 were far more susceptible to noise and interference than today's standards (look up LVDS on wikipedia if you're having trouble sleeping), and the communications equipment was less tolerant of data errors in general. These days, data communications is actually an incredibly complex process (look up '7-layer model' on wiki, if you're still awake), but it's all highly standardised and results in totally reliable end-to-end data fidelity.

Keep the two types of cabling apart and you definitely won't have any problems. Run them together and you'll probably not have any problems.

Would you agree MdB?

 

[benmc]

We have run miles of cables in the house and I have always followed these simple rules

"as far apart as possible" is the usual advice and 300mm/12" is often quoted as a minimum
In the UK you can't (usually) run mains and LV cables in the same conduit, you need a physical barrier or at least a 2" clear air gap between the two.
Safest practice is separate trunking

 

[MdB]

Sub 70V equipment doesn't have to be grounded so if a nail goes though both data cable and mains cable, there is the chance of a piece of downstream equipment becoming live. I would agree though that I think this would be rather unusual thing to occur.

(Note: be careful of using the term low voltage as it means different things to different people. The low voltage directive for example considers 240V to be low voltage...)

 

[Flyfisher]

Fair point about the variable meaning of 'low voltage', although I'd not heard of a 70V threshold before . . . is this an 'up-rated' version of the 48V threshold (or it may be 50V) for certain things?

 

[MdB]

Fair point about the variable meaning of 'low voltage', although I'd not heard of a 70V threshold before . . . is this an 'up-rated' version of the 48V threshold (or it may be 50V) for certain things?

My memory wasn't quite up to it. The limits are as follows:

The Directive covers electrical equipment with a voltage between 50 and 1000 V for alternating current and between 75 and 1500 V for direct current.

So stuff below 50V AC is considered to low to be in the low voltage directive and by implication safe to be touched by humans.

It is also interesting to note that 1500V can still be considered low voltage....