5 ms·
I paid a guy a bit under $200 to pull Ethernet cables from my basement up to the attic of my house. Now I can keep heat-generating stuff like my storage server
by Kadin 4y ago
I paid a guy a bit under $200 to pull Ethernet cables from my basement up to the attic of my house.
Now I can keep heat-generating stuff like my storage server and the cable modem (surprisingly heat-intensive) in the basement, have a WiFi AP in the attic for great coverage in the yard, and I can easily drop lines down into rooms on the 2nd floor from above by just drilling a small hole in the top of a wall and feeding the Cat6 down, or put one into a 1st floor room by going up from the basement. Cat6 anywhere I want it, basically.
It's something I've wanted for years and held off doing because I knew I was capable of DIYing it, and therefore I hesitated to hire it out. This was dumb.
It took him an hour or so using various specialized tools ("fish bits", "fish tape", tall ladders, drywall saws, etc.), when it would have probably taken me the better part of a weekend and I wouldn't have done as clean of a job. He also knew from experience where the easiest place would be to get all the way from the basement to the attic, given my house's construction style.
Definitely worth the two bills, and also now I have a "wiring guy" for future projects. I've already called him back to help run wiring for PoE outdoor cameras, another thing I've wanted for years but haven't bothered to execute on.
- sorum 4y agoSame here. Once you get used to having Ethernet ports in all rooms and wired WiFi access points...there's just no going back. If we move to a new house in the future, the CAT6 will be pulled into all rooms before the furniture arrives even.
- phren0logy 4y agoI've been making the same mistake. If anybody knows a good and reasonably priced "wiring guy/gal" in the Portland, Oregon area I'd be grateful.
- chromakode 4y agoI recently hired Integration Engineers (ie-pdx.com) for a similar job in PDX. They were fantastic to work with.
- mattst88 4y agoI used http://freedomcustomcommunicationsllc.com/ http://freedomcustomcommunicationsllc.com/ when I lived in Hillsboro. He ran 4 or 5 ethernet cables for $400 IIRC about 5 years ago.
- basch 4y agoAnother clean option is MOCA, if your house has existing coax runs. It has the nice benefit of not needing to be 1:1. You can have 3 MOCA devices on three floors that all communicate directly with each other, instead of needing a core switch. $100 to connect 2 drops. Plug it in and it works. (change the admin password tho!) https://www.amazon.com/Hitron-Ethernet-existing-Backbone-Streaming/dp/B08MQG6T61/ https://www.amazon.com/Hitron-Ethernet-existing-Backbone-Str...
- greggyb 4y agoFor home use, this is likely to be fine. MOCA operates as a broadcast network, though, so all bandwidth is shared among all connected nodes. The performance characteristics are closer to an old hub than to a switched network.
- basch 4y agobut its 2.5Gb. Each ethernet port is only 1Gb. You'd need have what, three pairs, all simultaneously trying to transfer their nearly their full 1Gb to saturate 2.5Gb. If you have 5 or less, it shouldn't be an issue. But yes, it would not necessarily work great in something in like an apartment.
- greggyb 4y agoEthernet (at least oveR twisted pairs) is a full duplex transmission medium, so two devices should be able to more than saturate the MOCA broadcast network. Additionally, >1Gbps is starting to become common on consumer hardware. Again, it is probably not going to be a concern for most home networks, and MOCA should still be better than mesh networks or powerline ethernet.
- basch 4y agoI suppose in theory, yes. I'm not sure how often, in my home network, I would have full duplex 1Gbps transmission, unless I've accidently caused a loopback.
- SheepSlapper 4y agoI built my house 4 years ago (with liberal use of subcontractors), and one of the things I knew I'd want is ethernet everywhere. So I ran the wire, bought a big patch panel, and now every room in my house has 2-4 ports for whatever I might want. As a bonus, if I (or the next guy) wanted to have a landline phone, it's in the same closet and it can be patched to anywhere in the house by swapping a single wire. Given the opportunity, even after the house is complete, it's a very useful thing to do.
- j45 4y agoA big+1 When building new, Running 2-4 Ethernet cables to each room is a must and cheap. Kitchen islands, garages, you name it. Between different devices, multiple Vlans, being able to run PoE equipment, it’s indispensable. Helps avoid a lot of small switches. Security cameras if they are your thing should ideally be poe and avoid wifi. There are some good Ethernet to HDMI adapters as well so prewiring ceilings with a double run for projector plus Ethernet doesn’t hurt.
- mikewarot 4y agoI also transitioned to a hardwired connection. It is so nice not having to worry if it's the wifi dropping connections, etc. It also makes it easier to experiment with Linux, etc.
- grassgreener 4y agoWould Ethernet become obsolete like USB soon?
- Phrenzy 4y agoUSB is obsolete?
- 1123581321 4y agoUSB-A wall outlets are. CAT5 is close to it, but I'm sure the OP ran 6, 6e or 7 which will be useful for a long time.
- agumonkey 4y agoI'm tempted to say a pair of PLC plugs instead of wifi repeater.
- p0d 4y agoI have been running Ethernet cable through my house for 20 years. I even have cable running to my shed office which is about 15m away from the house. I recently unhooked the shed cable as WiFi has got so good. I have an external WiFi I point now mounted at the back of my house. My pet project over Christmas was setting up a Windows VM on my Ubuntu Server in the attic. I teach in different locations and now have my own remote desktop. Rather than go VPN to access my VM I created a cron job on my Ubuntu Server to check my Dropbox account every five minutes for a text file. If the file exists it adds the ip address I put in the file, updates the server's firewall to allow the ip, and then deletes the file. Simple but effective.
- nbbaier 4y agoI've wanted to do something like this in my condo but don't know how to find someone to do it, how did you go about that?