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Forum Discussion
New Construction - Best practices for wiring?
We're building a new house and we have the flexibility to run the electricity in any way we want. What are the optimal parameters for how to wire the house to maximize the performance for powerli...
Thanks again for replying.
To be clear - we MUST (according to code) have electrical jacks every 10 feet or so. They will be there anyway. The question is not 'Should we have electrical outlets?' the question is 'Should we have ethernet jacks?'
The answer for me is "If we can get good networking performance (solid reliability + 100BaseT or better) then I'd rather NOT have extra jacks all over the place, especially if I have the extra flexibility of using every power outlet as an ethernet jack"
Do you, by any chance, know the answer to my question from the OP?
In general, the most direct path through a common circuit breaker panel is common sense. But, I would obviously wire according to power needs over data needs.
Here are a couple of articles:
Any other services you want to wire in? TV (Cable or broadcast)? Audio?
PS Relying on Powerline seems perverse when LAN is so much better. Powerline is there for people who can't install LAN.
Thanks to both of you for responding.
Here's my 2 cents, maybe you can explain where I'm wrong.
We don't know exactly how each room in our house is going to be used. For example, we have a spare bedroom on the 3rd floor we'll probably use an office. Where will the desk go? I have no idea. Even if I had an idea, who's to say I'll like it there when I finish. Will my daughter want to move upstairs when she gets a bit older? How about moving downstairs to the bedroom in the basement? Where would she want a jack if she did? I have literally no idea at all.
For internet in general WiFi is good and getting better every year. Better top speeds, better coverage, longer range, lower power (look for 802.11ad and ax coming soon). All your IoT stuff is going to run off of it. Even your TVs and laptops probably can too. However, as reliable as they are, they still aren't as good as ethernet. Their top speeds are theoretically as good, but in practice you'll be lucky to get 50MBit (which is, of course, amazing even by 3 years ago's standards) and their stability is flaky at times.
To deal with all of this, I assumed that for the few instances where a wired connection mattered, I would buy Powerline equipment. It is also getting faster (Netgear has a 2GBit product out this year) and more stable every year. Rather than running cables and jacks over all the rooms of my house to have, at most, a 50% chance of getting their placement correct and marring the walls of my house in the process, I thought this seemed cleaner, easier, cheaper and more flexible.
Without a doubt, it will not match the top speeds of ethernet. But right now I don't need 10GBit throughput and, if one day I theoretically might, that would only be because products existed that would leverage it. Those products would be useless if they were for residential use and WiFi and powerline hadn't caught up. In other words, if I ever would need 10GBit, WiFi and Powerline would get me there.
If you want to say "But ethernet can also handle PoE and you can wire your house for DC in the process" that might make *A LITTLE* sense, but I'd sooner run USB-C cabling for that than ethernet. It's much more likely to power the devices of the next 10 years and, thereafter, we will hopefully be shifting to wireless power transmission anyway.
In short: I simply do not understand what future you are planning for that has me running ethernet jacks all over my house in the vain hope that I guess right on location and happen to need them at the time and am willing to have a large yellow cable snaking across the floor of my new house. Ethernet seems to be a non-starter and the wave of the past. Powerline is a bridge to the past as well, but one that is cheaply implemented and easily removed when it's no longer necessary.
What am I missing?
Don't get too hung up on Ethernet jack placement. You don't need to snake a cable across the room. You can always plug a Wi-Fi Access Point into the jack (superior to a wireless repeater) and go wireless in the room.
Yes, Wi-Fi is getting better every year but it's still subject to the laws of physics. 802.11ad is planning to operate at 60 GHz. 60 GHz signals will be unable to go through most walls. 802.11ad will essentially be in-room Wi-Fi. To get whole house coverage, you'll need a reliable, wired backbone off of which you can hang Wi-Fi Access Points. The backbone? Ethernet.
Powerline is getting faster, too. But 2 Gigabits? That's the link speed. I wouldn't be surprised if actual speeds are 1/10th of that. Read up on all the problems people have with Powerline speed and reliability. I also have doubts about the number of Powerline adapters that can be successfully used. Some brands claim you can go up to 64 nodes, but many recommend no more than 15. I found one that is limited to 8. Do some research and see if anyone is successfully running a Powerline network with more than 3 nodes.
My 15 year old house came wired with Ethernet. While I can get Wi-Fi almost everywhere, the speed at the furthest reaches of my house drops by about 75%. I still use Ethernet when I can. I recently plugged an Access Point into one of my Ethernet jacks. Ethernet is far from dead.
bobjase wrote:Thanks again for replying.
To be clear - we MUST (according to code) have electrical jacks every 10 feet or so. They will be there anyway. The question is not 'Should we have electrical outlets?' the question is 'Should we have ethernet jacks?'
The answer for me is "If we can get good networking performance (solid reliability + 100BaseT or better) then I'd rather NOT have extra jacks all over the place, especially if I have the extra flexibility of using every power outlet as an ethernet jack"
Do you, by any chance, know the answer to my question from the OP?You are not guaranteed to get solid reliability with Powerline. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's far from assured. With Ethernet, it's pretty much guaranteed, barring wiring mistakes (crossed wires or placement too close to a noise source).
Don't settle for 100 Mbps. Plan for the future, when bandwidth requirements will be much higher. Internet service via fiber, 4K HD video, a smart home with IoT (Internet of Things) devices, massive file transfers, etc..
You don't need jacks all over the place. One per room is sufficient. If you have plans to run coax, run Ethernet along side it, or get rid of coax altogether and use Ethernet.
Once the drywall is up, there's no going back. Heck, just run the wires. You can install the jacks later. Ethernet may even make your house more sellable in the future.
