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[NTP66]

I recommend a managed ethernet switch.

[tifosi77]

What are some good online sources for DIY networking? We've looked at a couple homes that were CAT5 throughout, and I'm kinda enamored with the idea now.

[NTP66]

smallnetbuilder.com. Or, you could not insult some of us and simply ask for advice here, prick.

[Miami Vice]

The morning after I closed on this house I was in here running cat6 everywhere.

I have:
4 port gigabit wifi router (htpc, smart TV, 2 switches)

5 port 10/100 switch (Nexus Player, security system, router)

8 port gigabit switch (router, server, Xbox one, Xbox 360 #1, Xbox 360 #2, htpc, raspberry pi, switch #3)

8 port gigabit switch (switch #2, Linksys DMA2100 media player, Logitech Revue, Panasonic bluray player, Onkyo receiver, office switch)

Old Belkin router set up as a dumb switch (two office computers, networked printer)

[eddy]

What's the deal with TCL tvs? They revealed their 2017 lineup at ces and they are throwing in everything and focusing on picture quality. 65" full array led with hdr and Dolby vision for $900? Can these actually be decent tvs?

[shmenguin]

What are some good online sources for DIY networking? We've looked at a couple homes that were CAT5 throughout, and I'm kinda enamored with the idea now.

I'm not a handy person, but even for me, installing CAT5 in every room of my 70 year old house wasn't hard.

Cut a bunch of wire...run it in the walls...make one side a jack and the other side a plug...get a switch...and you're done.

[VoiceOfTheFan]

What are some good online sources for DIY networking

Youtube videos for everything DIY

[NTP66]

Start here, @tifosi77:

Looking forward to doing this in our house if we do decide to build.

Learn from the original home's owner's mistakes and do everything that you want to do up front. This was borderline torture.

I've been saying every year that I'm going to do this and I haven't yet. I'm not even sure where to begin. Where do you choose to run it? What kind of Wall plates did you get? Do you get a new fancy router?

Router, no. Switch, yes. Nothing fancy required though. Just need a bunch of ports.

Wall plates...get the plain white ones or whatever. The jacks that attach to the wall plates are the expensive part.

Best way to run it is to find a path from your basement to your attic. Put the switch in your basement and run cable all the way up to the attic and then go down into the bedrooms. and go up into the 1st floor rooms from the basement. But you need an attic and a basement that touch each room of course. Buy a spool of fishing tape for this.

I'm going to expand on what shmenguin said, and this post is going to be very long. I do agree - if you've got access to your basement and attic, this becomes significantly easier. Here's a 2 minute MS Paint rendering of how my house is wired, in a nutshell:



Everything starts in the basement, with the Verizon FiOS ONT (where the fiber cable plugs into). From there, I have a CAT5e Ethernet cable (red line in the diagram) running from the ONT through the attic, and down into the WAN port on my router in my 2nd floor bedroom. That completes the connection for Internet access. I then ran a second CAT5e cable (blue line in the diagram) from the basement through the attic and down into one of the LAN ports on my router. The other end of this cable plugs into my gigabit Ethernet switch. Since this is a smart switch and auto-detects everything, you don't have to do anything else here. While I purchased a managed switch, which allows me to create VLANs and such, you absolutely do not need to go that route. An unmanaged gigabit Ethernet switch is perfectly fine. I only went the managed route so that I could disable IGMP Snooping on the switch, since that feature has been known to cause issues with streaming between TiVo devices.

Next, I ran another CAT5e cable (green line in the diagram) from the basement and up an exterior wall to my TiVo Roamio. I then ran the final CAT5e cable (orange line in the diagram) from the basement up an interior wall to my saltwater tank's aquarium controller. Both of these cables are plugged into the switch in the basement, and now have Internet access since that switch is plugged directly into the router.

In case you were wondering why I didn't simply connect the ONT to the switch, and then just have everything else connect to the switch, eliminating one of the runs to the attic/2nd floor bedroom, that is only possible if you separate the ports on the switch using VLANs since you can't have WAN and LAN traffic running on the same ports. I didn't want to go that route because it's a pain in the ass, and just adds complexity to your network.

So, that's how I have everything wired in my house. I was lucky enough that the builders of my house (built in 2009) ran PVC conduit from my basement to my attic, and while it was pretty full with other RG6, CAT5e, etc. wires, I was able to fish new CAT5e through the conduit using nylon fish tape. This type of fish tape is round, and just looks like very large fishing line. It does retain its coiled shape a bit, so it may not be the best solution for instances where you're going through open wall cavities. In that case, I'd stick to tried and true steel fish tape. For the upstairs rooms, you're basically just drilling into the top plate and feeding the cable into the cavity. If you've got other wires near where you want to run the cable, it should make it easier to locate where they were fed, and you can drill nearby. You can also pull those outlets out of the wall in order to retrieve your fish tape/cable once you get it into the channel. All of my runs were done near existing RG6 (coax) outlets, so I just pulled them out to grab the CAT5e.

This is also where you've got a decision to make. Your best two options are to either wire the CAT5e to a keystone jack that fits into a wall plate, or you can use a surface mount CAT5e box (see diagram below). I use both in my house, personally. There is zero room behind my saltwater tank, so the only viable solution was the surface mount box, and it's a terrific solution at that. I did use a wall plate and keystones upstairs since I was running two cables to the same location in my bedroom.



As for the actual CAT5 cable, I would highly suggest running CAT5e Solid cable, not Stranded. Solid is made for longer runs, and is what most people use in this scenario, where the cables are run behind the walls. Solid cable has a lower tolerance for twists and turns, so you also have to make sure that you aren't bending it in crazy, hard directions. Run the CAT5e solid cable to either the keystone jacks or surface mount boxes, and then you would use an RJ45/RJ11 punch down tool to secure the wires into the slots. For the ends that connect to the ONT and switch in the basement, you would use an RJ45 crimper and install RJ45 modular plugs on that end. Regardless of which method you're using, you also want to make sure you follow the same standard on each cable - wire both ends using the T568B standard (see image below); ignore the T568A standard. Both ends must be wired this way. RJ45 modular plugs will always be wired in the same pattern, but you will find that the keystone jacks and surface mount boxes may look different when you go to secure the wires - no worries, just follow what the terminal's wiring diagram shows for T568B and you will be fine. Once you've got all of your cables run and your keystones/surface mount boxes installed, you'll simply run CAT5e patch cables from these terminals to your devices.



I know this post is incredibly long, but the hardest part about all of this is running the actual cable throughout the house. The technical stuff is really not that difficult if you follow instructions, and the parts aren't all that expensive. Speaking of parts, here's a list of items that you'll likely need, and I can vouch for every single one of them, personally:

1-Gang Low Voltage Mounting Bracket
Wall Plate for Keystone, 1 Hole
Cat5E Punch Down Keystone Jack
Surface Mount Box Cat5e Single
RJ-45 MODULAR PLUGS RJ45 - 100 PACK FOR SOLID
CAT5e Bulk Bare Copper Ethernet Cable - Solid
RJ-45/RJ-11 Modular Crimping Tool
RJ45/RJ11 Punch Down Tool

As for the fish tape, your two options are flat, steel fish tape and round, nylon fish tape:

50' Steel Fish Tape
50' Nylon Fish Tape

And, since you asked, I personally use an ASUS RT-N66U router with custom firmware. It's only a wireless-N router because nearly all of my wireless devices are wireless-N, but if you needed a wireless-AC router, the ASUS RT-AC66U would be my choice.

ASUS RT-N66U Wireless-N900 Router
ASUS RT-AC66U Wireless-AC1750 Router

As for the gigabit Ethernet switch, I use the following: TP-Link 8-port Gigabit Ethernet Easy Smart Switch (TL-SG108E). If you look on that page, you'll see that they make an unmanaged version of the same switch (TL-SG108). They also make 5-port versions, but the price is so close that I wouldn't bother with them, and just go the 8-port route. If you have any questions, let me know.

[scb147]

What's the deal with TCL tvs? They revealed their 2017 lineup at ces and they are throwing in everything and focusing on picture quality. 65" full array led with hdr and Dolby vision for $900? Can these actually be decent tvs?

I have a 40" TCL Roku TV for my bedroom, and it has been a pretty good TV. It was ~$250. I don't think it would have been a TV I would have even looked at if it didn't have the Roku capability in it. I didn't want to pay for a separate Roku, so this fit the bill nicely.

[tifosi77]

So there's a new ISP in South SF. Anyone ever heard of Sonic.net? (I think they might be local only) They spent a good year quietly building a gigabit fiber network under SF before they offered any service, and then when they launched it was this big surprise (especially for customers in the Sunset and Parkside neighborhoods, which has the highest concentration of availability and previously had crap ISPs) Turns out, they are offering service in South City now, piggy backing on AT&T's fiber-to-the-node infrastructure. The max speed of the residential lines they're currently offering in my new neighborhood is only ('only') 50 down, but I'm wondering if there would be any utility in signing up for this service to be ready when they expand their own fiber coverage.

[NTP66]

If it's truly fiber, I'm curious why they're limiting to 50mb unless they want to gauge usage before unlocking speeds.

[tifosi77]

I don't know how this ISP business works, but since they're using AT&Ts network, wouldn't it be in AT&Ts interest to cap the speeds that someone else's customers get on their lines? Especially since they're both aggressively expanding competing gigabit networks in this market.

[NTP66]

If they're leasing lines to them, then yes, I could see that as being part of the contract. That said, fiber networks are capable of ridiculous speeds (faster than any network you've ever seen), depending on the hardware.

[tifosi77]

The advantage AT&T will likely have over this Sonic.net company is that they can do agreements with the high-bandwidth sites like Netflix and DirecTV and such to have access to their highest speed channels. (I don't know what the word is, I just know that super duper fast internet doesn't really matter if you're connecting to a site that's on a server that will only transfer 5 mb/s)

[NTP66]

50mb is plenty for a large majority of people. My own FiOS plan is 50/50 because I have never felt the need to increase it.

[tifosi77]

I'm just being mindful that we plan on canceling the DirecTV sub once we figure out a way to bodge Sunday Ticket.

[NTP66]

You could always do what my dad does - purchase the online version, and connect your laptop to the TV. Or get it through PS3/PS4.

[shmenguin]

@Miami Vice

If you could have a blank canvas of a media room, built from scratch...what are some features you'd be sure to include?

[dodint]

Popcorn machine.

[NTP66]

A lock on the door to keep everyone else out.

[nocera]

My main struggle with my current/future media room build is the wiring. The basement was recently renovated when I bought the house so I feel guilty spending the time/money tearing down the perfectly good walls to install the wiring. Most of my budget will be going into the sound system.

[NTP66]

My main struggle with my current/future media room build is the wiring. The basement was recently renovated when I bought the house so I feel guilty spending the time/money tearing down the perfectly good walls to install the wiring. Most of my budget will be going into the sound system.

There are ways to get around that, though they may not be worthwhile to some. At a buddy's house, we routed out a notch behind his baseboards, ran the speaker wire through there, and then fished them up to the wall speakers. He got lucky and was also able to run his projector wiring through the ceiling in a joist bay because it ran lengthwise in the room.

[nocera]

My main struggle with my current/future media room build is the wiring. The basement was recently renovated when I bought the house so I feel guilty spending the time/money tearing down the perfectly good walls to install the wiring. Most of my budget will be going into the sound system.

There are ways to get around that, though they may not be worthwhile to some. At a buddy's house, we routed out a notch behind his baseboards, ran the speaker wire through there, and then fished them up to the wall speakers. He got lucky and was also able to run his projector wiring through the ceiling in a joist bay because it ran lengthwise in the room.

That's helpful, thanks. I figured I would need to fish them through the entire wall. I'm putting in a new drop ceiling so the projector will be easy.

[tifosi77]

You could always do what my dad does - purchase the online version, and connect your laptop to the TV. Or get it through PS3/PS4.

We did the PS3 route this season, but it requires address verification. We were talking about it last night, if we bought the '17 season now while we were still in the apartment would the subscription still work once we move?

[iamjs]

Any good Super Bowl sales for TVs coming up? Looking for something in the 65" range for $1000-1200.