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skipdogg
Nov 29, 2004
Resident SRT-4 Expert

I ran 550mhz Cat6 in my new house. Might as well. It's labeled "Cat6E" but there is no such a thing, but it's good quality wire.

Try to get them to run the wire before the drywall goes in. Also take tons of pictures. I have probably 300 photos and 40 minutes of video of my house before the drywall went up in case I have to run wires in the future.

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Dogen
May 5, 2002

Bury my body down by the highwayside, so that my old evil spirit can get a Greyhound bus and ride
What’s the cost differential on your project for 6 over 6a?

Thanks Ants
May 21, 2004

#essereFerrari


Cat6 over Cat5e is an easy decision because the cost difference is tiny. Cat6a requires you to terminate a load of shielding and gently caress that.

movax
Aug 30, 2008

Run conduit (if possible) where you can so places like your office or similar could enjoy a fiber run in the future, if you do some 10GbE backbone stuff. And don’t forget a fishing wire!

PitViper
May 25, 2003

Welcome and thank you for shopping at Wal-Mart!
I love you!
Unfortunately I'll be running this post-drywall, but I do have relatively easy access to everywhere I need to terminate wall plates. Id have to verify cost per drop with keystones and patch panel, but cost difference is probably $150 or less between 5e and 6a. Is Cat6 10g capable? I see both shielded and unshielded varieties, and I expect my short runs shouldn't require shielded.

Conduit was how we did the last house, and I don't think it was worth the hassle, tbh. I may do a conduit from the basement up to the attic, to make running additional cables slightly easier in the future. Depends on whether the wife is ok leaving access panels hidden in a couple of the closets or not.

Edit;

Wevel, that's exactly my situation. We've got some limited customization, but data cabling is not one of the things they typically offer, and I didn't want to babysit the builder more than I already am. They've gotten the major change right (added garage depth), so as long as they get my additional electric circuits in roughly the right place I'll be happy. The basement will be unfinished, so wiring the main floor should be easy.

PitViper fucked around with this message at 17:33 on Jun 18, 2018

TheWevel
Apr 14, 2002
Send Help; Trapped in Stupid Factory
We're using one of those non-custom, custom builders and during our drawing review meeting, I told them to use RJ45 jacks instead of RJ11 for the 'phone' outlets. I knew they were already running cat5e so either I was going to have to do it once the house was built or they could just pay an extra .50 for different wall plates. I also had them move the outlets around since they were putting them in places you'd want a phone, like next to where the beds go and not where you'd actually put a data jack.

The construction PM and his boss had to make a bunch of phone calls to see if they could even do that. I can't wait to find out what mess I've created for myself in 6 months.

TheWevel fucked around with this message at 17:30 on Jun 18, 2018

skipdogg
Nov 29, 2004
Resident SRT-4 Expert

Dogen posted:

What’s the cost differential on your project for 6 over 6a?

Not sure. Luckily my builder had an option where I could get a structured cabling panel and as many drops as I wanted. I paid about 2K for 9 combo drops of cat 6 and RG6, plus the panel, switch, electrical outlet and cable distribution unit.
This is the cable they're using - http://www.comcables.com/product-cat-6-e-4-pair-23-awg-550-mhz-plenum

I'm not really worried about 10G, but it's nice they used this cable instead of 5E.

I'm going to be running some extra runs once I move in for a couple WAP's and some security cameras. I"m just getting whatever plenum rated 550mhz cable monorprice sells. It'll do the job. Conduit is nice to have, but I'd only run it in really hard to get to places, that stuff can be expensive. Anywhere I may need to pull specialty wires in the future I can luckily get to from the attic spaces so I didn't worry about it.

Kerbtree
Sep 8, 2008

BAD FALCON!
LAZY!
Potentially stupid question, but can I run two directional wifi antennas on a double-antenna adapter without running into some sort of unforseen physics issue if they're not perfectly aligned?

I've got an alfa AWUS036AC and thinking about a couple of these for when I'm staying at someone's caravan and trying to use the site wifi while it's pissing it down. They seem to review quite well.

22 Eargesplitten
Oct 10, 2010



RoboBoogie posted:

if they are being used for phone or ethernet or nothing, the wires will lead somewhere.

As others have said check the phone box inside the house or there may be a media center. My house was built two years ago and the previous renters only had comcast, in my case the wires were tied up and hanging off the ceiling in the basement and all the jacks were phone and cable tv with the phone jack unwired. You could ask your landlord and see if he/she/it knows


Are there any routers that can support 1 gig of bandwidth now (other than a PC)?

I hadn't been able to find the phone box at first, but ran across it by accident moving boxes. It turns out the reason the coax jack in the room we picked to be the office didn't work because while coax cables were run to all four bedrooms and the living room, Comcast only installed a 3-to-1 splitter. So two of them were just sitting there disconnected.

Now I've got to figure out how to set everything up because the phone box A) has no power to it to plug in a modem or router, B) doesn't have enough room for both, and C) was installed right next to the water heater and furnace. I'd like to have the extra layer of protection between the outside world and the wall jacks, but if I hooked up the router with WiFi down there (probably mounted on the 2x4s by the phone box) I'm thinking the giant metal fixtures right next to it, the air ducts, and the water pipes would all gently caress with the reception pretty hard. Reception was even lovely just from the living room up 1 floor and maybe 30 feet away.

Thoughts? The modem is going to be company-provided in a week or so, the city fiber comes with its own modem for free.

There are plenty of routers that will do 1gb. Even my old N-band router has 1gb ethernet, it just tops out at 800 leaving the LAN. Newer ones can handle it just fine.

CrazyLittle
Sep 11, 2001





Clapping Larry

PitViper posted:

Is Cat6 10g capable?
Maybe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10_Gigabit_Ethernet#10GBASE-T
Basically you have to do everything right during the install to get the full capability of 10gig over copper.

PitViper posted:

I'm leaning towards 6/6a, only because I'd like to do this once and have some sort of upgradeability past gigabit.
If you really wanted future proof, you should pull conduit and/or single-mode fiber. SMF will get you future compatibility with 10gig, 40g, 100gig ethernet.

PitViper posted:

Lastly, is Monoprice still a good source for cable? That's where I ordered all my cable and patch panel/keystones for my last project, and that all worked perfectly fine.

Yeah they're fine, but stay away from the tool-less keystone jacks since they're not as reliable a connection as a regular punchdown.

RoboBoogie
Sep 18, 2008

22 Eargesplitten posted:

I hadn't been able to find the phone box at first, but ran across it by accident moving boxes. It turns out the reason the coax jack in the room we picked to be the office didn't work because while coax cables were run to all four bedrooms and the living room, Comcast only installed a 3-to-1 splitter. So two of them were just sitting there disconnected.

Now I've got to figure out how to set everything up because the phone box A) has no power to it to plug in a modem or router, B) doesn't have enough room for both, and C) was installed right next to the water heater and furnace. I'd like to have the extra layer of protection between the outside world and the wall jacks, but if I hooked up the router with WiFi down there (probably mounted on the 2x4s by the phone box) I'm thinking the giant metal fixtures right next to it, the air ducts, and the water pipes would all gently caress with the reception pretty hard. Reception was even lovely just from the living room up 1 floor and maybe 30 feet away.

Thoughts? The modem is going to be company-provided in a week or so, the city fiber comes with its own modem for free.

So the box has no Ethernet cabling ?



22 Eargesplitten posted:


There are plenty of routers that will do 1gb. Even my old N-band router has 1gb ethernet, it just tops out at 800 leaving the LAN. Newer ones can handle it just fine.

My router Asus tm1900 has gigabit ports but the CPU may not be able to handle the traffic load

SlowBloke
Aug 14, 2017

PitViper posted:

I'm leaning towards 6/6a, only because I'd like to do this once and have some sort of upgradeability past gigabit. Current gear is all gigabit, but having the overhead to swap gear and get 5gbit/10gbit over the same wiring seems like it's worth the added up front cost for 6a cable/keystones/patch panel.

Lastly, is Monoprice still a good source for cable? That's where I ordered all my cable and patch panel/keystones for my last project, and that all worked perfectly fine.

The main expense in data wiring is not the wire but the guy pulling it, cat 5-6 price delta is minimal so i'd say to go for the better spec if you can. I would suggest to investigate if you could pull shielded wire to make sure you won't get interference but that's up to you.

22 Eargesplitten
Oct 10, 2010



RoboBoogie posted:

So the box has no Ethernet cabling ?


My router Asus tm1900 has gigabit ports but the CPU may not be able to handle the traffic load

The box has ethernet cabling, it's just not hooked up to any network device right now. The house's original owner didn't have internet service, just cable TV. From memory I would say it has about 10 ethernet cables plus ??? Cat3 telephone cables.

You would have to ask the people in the network speed bragging thread what they use, but I know I've seen speedtests of over 1gb. Obviously wifi is going to be its own little quirky thing.

EugeneJ
Feb 5, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
A relative cut the cord recently but is keeping Charter Spectrum's internet ($70/month for 100Mbps is apparently the cheapest option they have without bundling)

Is switching to FIOS worth it? They're offering 100Mbps for $39.99/month and you can buy the modem outright for $149 to avoid a $10/month rental fee

Just wondering if there's outage problems with FIOS since I've never used it

Photex
Apr 6, 2009




EugeneJ posted:

A relative cut the cord recently but is keeping Charter Spectrum's internet ($70/month for 100Mbps is apparently the cheapest option they have without bundling)

Is switching to FIOS worth it? They're offering 100Mbps for $39.99/month and you can buy the modem outright for $149 to avoid a $10/month rental fee

Just wondering if there's outage problems with FIOS since I've never used it

You don't even need to buy the router from them just ask them to activate the Ethernet port on the ont and then use whatever router you want.

Thermopyle
Jul 1, 2003

...the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. —Bertrand Russell

EugeneJ posted:

A relative cut the cord recently but is keeping Charter Spectrum's internet ($70/month for 100Mbps is apparently the cheapest option they have without bundling)

Is switching to FIOS worth it? They're offering 100Mbps for $39.99/month and you can buy the modem outright for $149 to avoid a $10/month rental fee

Just wondering if there's outage problems with FIOS since I've never used it

Maybe? We don't know which FIOS provider they have available to them or how good they are. Maybe they're selling "100mbps" that actually manages 10mbps or is down multiple times a week. Maybe Charter is doing the same.

All things being equal, cheaper is cheaper.

Thanks Ants
May 21, 2004

#essereFerrari


I’ve never lived in the US but isn’t some FiOS VDSL rather than actual fibre? So check what you’re going to get, and whether that 100Mbps tier is an “up-to” number.

Rexxed
May 1, 2010

Dis is amazing!
I gotta try dis!

No, Fios is fiber optic service to the home. It terminates in a transceiver box that breaks out coax, phone, and ethernet so you can setup whatever services you buy from them. When a tree ripped my old fios line off the house they left 120 feet or so of corning fiber optic cable on the ground and pulled a new cable. I assume it was all trashed due to being beat to hell in the storm that pulled it down anyway.

For Verizion FIOS (which is the one I'm familiar with) they have synchronous speeds. Most ISPs will give you slightly more than what you're rated at just to minimize customer complaints when they go to do speedtests and it's not "as advertised".

apropos man
Sep 5, 2016

You get a hundred and forty one thousand years and you're out in eight!
Is there any evidence to suggest that a WiFi AP 'wears out' quicker if you're using it at the edges of its radio distance?

I installed a Ubiquiti AC Pro about a month ago and I'm very happy with it.

If I buy another Pro to saturate my dwelling, apart from having the benefits of full AC everywhere, the load balancing will be pulling less juice on the current unit and therefore let the electronics run cooler, yes?

This post sounds like I'm justifying spending more money, and I justly am! 🙂

Thanks Ants
May 21, 2004

#essereFerrari


I think transmission rate and the CPU having to do more work generates more heat than the amplifier on the radio running at a slightly increased power level.

apropos man
Sep 5, 2016

You get a hundred and forty one thousand years and you're out in eight!
Hmm. So tempted to buy another one.

They're really nice units, and if I have two working together they'll last a good amount of time.

Gonna do it 🙂😀

RoboBoogie
Sep 18, 2008

22 Eargesplitten posted:

The box has ethernet cabling, it's just not hooked up to any network device right now. The house's original owner didn't have internet service, just cable TV. From memory I would say it has about 10 ethernet cables plus ??? Cat3 telephone cables.

You would have to ask the people in the network speed bragging thread what they use, but I know I've seen speedtests of over 1gb. Obviously wifi is going to be its own little quirky thing.

Sounds like you will need to get some crimping tools




EugeneJ posted:

...
Is switching to FIOS worth it? They're offering 100Mbps for $39.99/month and you can buy the modem outright for $149 to avoid a $10/month rental fee

Just wondering if there's outage problems with FIOS since I've never used it


Get it! I've signed up for it and it's rock solid.

Use a regular router, they turn on the Ethernet port on the ONT by default

Ashex
Jun 25, 2007

These pipes are cleeeean!!!
I've got a really irritating bottleneck that I can't quite figure out. My home network consists of a lovely Fritzbox router/modem for DSL that everything is wired to because the junction box has all the LAN hookups in it along with DSL and nothing else fits. My media server isn't near a LAN jack so it's plugged into a wireless router (gigabit lan connection) that does a WDS bridge over 2.5Ghz because the Fritbox doesn't do 5Ghz.

My laptop is connected to the wireless router (not fritzbox) on the 5Ghz network and when I copy files over it to the media server via rsync I get a maximum of around 3MBps.

I also notice a degradation of overall internet performance when I do this and I don't really know why. In my previous apartment where it was just the wireless router everything was much faster. Anyone have suggestions on what I can do to improve things?

nickhimself
Jul 16, 2007

I GIVE YOU MY INFO YOU LOG IN AND PUT IN BUILD I PAY YOU 3 BLESSINGS
Thanks to the OP, my new tp-link Archer C9 showed up today and I'm extremely excited to install it and finally get rid of my old garbage router that was made before everything streamed in HD.

Goodbye, buffering *waves*

CrazyLittle
Sep 11, 2001





Clapping Larry

Ashex posted:

Anyone have suggestions on what I can do to improve things?

Don't use a wireless bridge on 2.4ghz wifi to serve media.

CrazyLittle
Sep 11, 2001





Clapping Larry

CrazyLittle posted:

Don't use a wireless bridge on 2.4ghz wifi to serve media.


1) Move your media server next to the modem/router/switch. Do this regardless of the other steps. Servers should be a the center of your network, not on the edge. If your media server is too big/ugly/bulky, get a better one.
2) Disable wifi on the fritzbox. If it doesn't support 5ghz, it's not even worth entertaining leaving it around. Get proper APs or a wifi mesh product (google wifi etc) that actually supports a proper back channel separate from the client-facing channels.
3) Don't use wireless bridges or "wifi extenders" if you absolutely can avoid them.

CrazyLittle fucked around with this message at 22:12 on Jun 20, 2018

Ashex
Jun 25, 2007

These pipes are cleeeean!!!

CrazyLittle posted:

1) Move your media server next to the modem/router/switch. Do this regardless of the other steps. Servers should be a the center of your network, not on the edge. If your media server is too big/ugly/bulky, get a better one.
2) Disable wifi on the fritzbox. If it doesn't support 5ghz, it's not even worth entertaining leaving it around. Get proper APs or a wifi mesh product (google wifi etc) that actually supports a proper back channel separate from the client-facing channels.
3) Don't use wireless bridges or "wifi extenders" if you absolutely can avoid them.

I've got 3 drops in the apartment, one next to the TV that I've got the ps4 and other things going into via a gigabit switch. The other two are in the bedrooms so putting the media server in there isn't much of an option (and there's no place near the TV). The landlord said I can have additional drops installed but must be removed when I leave (apartment must be in original condition) so that's out.

The fritzbox is super lovely and I'd toss it out if I could but for the time being I'm stuck with it (fiber is coming to my neighborhood and I'm switching as soon as it's available). The wireless bridge is being done with an Archer C7 router that I was using previously as the central hub.

I've got my desktop plugged into the C7 so 90% of the time I'm accessing the data on the media server over LAN (primarily photo editing/design work). The other use is Plex which typically isn't much of an issue.

I've been toying with doing the following:

1) Move C7 to one of the drops and use it for Wifi
2) Turn off Wifi on fritzbox
3) Run a ridiculously long LAN cable from C7 to gigabit switch for desktop/media server (pretty much opposite end of apartment).


I've also been seriously considering wifi mesh but the options I've looked at are over €200 and I'm not quite ready to drop that much.

Ashex fucked around with this message at 22:04 on Jun 20, 2018

CrazyLittle
Sep 11, 2001





Clapping Larry

Ashex posted:

3) Run a ridiculously long LAN cable from C7 to gigabit switch for desktop/media server (pretty much opposite end of apartment).

Synology 4-disk boxes are nearly silent except for the drives themselves.

Have you considered using the coaxial cable as a network run using MoCA?

Ashex
Jun 25, 2007

These pipes are cleeeean!!!

CrazyLittle posted:

Synology 4-disk boxes are nearly silent except for the drives themselves.

Have you considered using the coaxial cable as a network run using MoCA?

There's only one connection in the apartment so MoCA isn't really an option (I was considering powerline ethernet but apparently that comes with it's own problems) . It's also a custom built media server I'm not planning to replace anytime soon.

H2SO4
Sep 11, 2001

put your money in a log cabin


Buglord
Unless you have excessively lovely wiring, new powerline gear is generally better than making GBS threads up the wireless spectrum with repeaters.

Ropes4u
May 2, 2009

I ordered a 6183 and Archer C7 for our new house, do I need to do anything other than plug them in and pick a password? We do not run anything more taxing than the internet and Netflix.

KKKLIP ART
Sep 3, 2004

Just update the firmware on the C7 and set your 2.4 and 5ghz networks up and you are good. My C7 occasionally forgets it is supposed to broadcast a 5ghz network but a quick reboot fixes it and hasn’t happened since the latest firmware update.

Rexxed
May 1, 2010

Dis is amazing!
I gotta try dis!

Ropes4u posted:

I ordered a 6183 and Archer C7 for our new house, do I need to do anything other than plug them in and pick a password? We do not run anything more taxing than the internet and Netflix.

Your cable company will probably want the number on the bottom of the modem to associate with your account. This may be more automated than it used to be (I think in the last couple of years, if you hook up an unauthorized modem, it will send you to a captive portal page with instructions on what to do to get it registered on your account).

Ropes4u
May 2, 2009

KKKLIP ART posted:

Just update the firmware on the C7 and set your 2.4 and 5ghz networks up and you are good. My C7 occasionally forgets it is supposed to broadcast a 5ghz network but a quick reboot fixes it and hasn’t happened since the latest firmware update.

Rexxed posted:

Your cable company will probably want the number on the bottom of the modem to associate with your account. This may be more automated than it used to be (I think in the last couple of years, if you hook up an unauthorized modem, it will send you to a captive portal page with instructions on what to do to get it registered on your account).

Thank you both for the help.

Ashex
Jun 25, 2007

These pipes are cleeeean!!!

H2SO4 posted:

Unless you have excessively lovely wiring, new powerline gear is generally better than making GBS threads up the wireless spectrum with repeaters.


Fortunately this apartment was built right before we moved in so the wiring should be solid, are there specific kits I should consider or are all major brands pretty solid?

I dug through the settings on the C7 and NAT was enabled, after turning it off speeds increased to 10MBps but the 5Ghz network doesn't connect anymore (which makes sense I guess but sucks as now I gotta use the 2.5Ghz for everything) .

apropos man
Sep 5, 2016

You get a hundred and forty one thousand years and you're out in eight!
Unless I'm misunderstanding your last paragraph, you really want NAT turned back on.

Rexxed
May 1, 2010

Dis is amazing!
I gotta try dis!

apropos man posted:

Unless I'm misunderstanding your last paragraph, you really want NAT turned back on.

He's using it as a bridge so it doesn't need NAT, it's just acting as a switch and WAP plus wireless uplink.

Ashex
Jun 25, 2007

These pipes are cleeeean!!!

Rexxed posted:

He's using it as a bridge so it doesn't need NAT, it's just acting as a switch and WAP plus wireless uplink.

Pretty much this. Diagrams are fun so this is a lovely mockup of the setup:




Network1 is configured to bridge with Network2 but I have my laptop connected to Network1 so that the data transfer to the media server doesn't go over the bridge.

Thanks Ants
May 21, 2004

#essereFerrari


If you do a transfer from your laptop to the media PC and turn off the Shitbox, does it break?

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Ashex
Jun 25, 2007

These pipes are cleeeean!!!

Thanks Ants posted:

If you do a transfer from your laptop to the media PC and turn off the Shitbox, does it break?

As long as it's connected to Network1 and has an IP address, no. Shitbox is handling DHCP so everything goes to hell in a hand basket if it stops working. DNS is pointed to the media server (with secondary being shitbox) as I'm doing some internal DNS voodoo for plex.

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