running network cable in wall
Hi, I have two story 63′ long rowhouse with 2 floors and basement. I want to have wireless connection throughout the house. I put the wireless router in the top floor front room. But the tin ceilings do not let radio waves to penetrate to the back of first floor or basement. I want to…
Hi,
I have two story 63′ long rowhouse with 2 floors and basement. I want to have wireless connection throughout the house. I put the wireless router in the top floor front room. But the tin ceilings do not let radio waves to penetrate to the back of first floor or basement. I want to put the WiFi access point at the back of the first floor and connect it to the router upstairs.
So the main question is how to run the CAT5 cable from upstairs to the first floor. I plan to drop it between beams from the 2nd floor to the basement, then attach a conduit on the basement ceiling and bring it back to the first floor.
A few questions:
– do I need to put conduit for the part of the run where the network cable is inside of the wall?
– can I put network cable and power cable in the same conduits?
– do I need to call inspectors to look at my setup after I finish? (this is a bit silly).
SJ: I do not have hard facts, but I know theory. Basically you need to transmit very high frequencies over the wires and wires have tendency to become antennas and transmit all these wave energy away. To deal with this CAT5 is designed as twisted pairs. So the waves actually travel between the wires not through the wire – similarly to the coaxial cable. And the power lines are not built like this. Power lines are bunch of the parallel wires, which radiate radio frequencies very easy. Maybe the conduit of the power line will help a bit, but I doubt. So then LAN over power line must use multiple frequencies or do some sort of crazy high energy in the waves or slow down the transmission rate. It probably works for 10Mb/s but will not work for 100Mb/s.
Thecomputerguy,
Out of curiosity, what are the drawbacks to powerline networking?
thanks for answers. I still will go with CAT5 run. Sounds like most reliable solution.dropping cable between beams of the walls should be easy and running conduit on the ceiling of the basement not that hard… To bad I do not have BX equivalent of CAT5 🙂
I do this kind of work professional so I’m writing from real-world experience.
There are several different ways to get around running this cable. Don’t use them. Just run the cable so that you’ll have a reliable system today and in the future.
To answer your specific questions:
– do I need to put conduit for the part of the run where the network cable is inside of the wall?
No you don’t HAVE to.
– can I put network cable and power cable in the same conduits?
No. Its very bad for the quality of the signal in your data cable. If you are running power to power the access point, just look for an access point that uses “PoE” which means that the energy needed to power the access point is carried in the ethernet cable. This is possible because there are several unused copper wires in every data cable. You’ll also need a POE injector to add the energy to the cable at the other end.
– do I need to call inspectors to look at my setup after I finish? (this is a bit silly).
No. But only because the city hasn’t written low-voltage rules yet.
“this would work, but I did not like the idea or having relay. It suppose to make connection much slower. Or maybe I did not understood you correctly. I do not use Mac.”
Posted by: bobjohn at March 16, 2009 11:29 AM
My Mac Airport base-stations are 6 years old, 802.11g. I see no drop off in signal from one to the other. In fact I sometimes get better results off the second hop, I think because it is bringing the signal to a more confined space with less interference.
Could just be me though.
Talk to someone at Staples or CompUSA or some place like that, I’d imagine DLink/Lynksys systems these days should be able to daisy chain routers with little to no loss of signal.
As long as the power you are running is low voltage you can run them together without conduit. You do not need permits for this work.
Thought of another option…
… drop drop lines straight down from your current router. One stops on the 2st floor, one goes to the basement.
Set up a router in each floor.
Routers are $50 these days and dropping cable straight down to extended access points might save a lot of cable runs.
And I suppose the ultimate in low tech would be to run the CAT5 along your baseboards like they do with the cable tv lines to the rooms/floors you need.
this would work, but I did not like the idea or having relay. It suppose to make connection much slower. Or maybe I did not understood you correctly. I do not use Mac.
There has been extensive discussion of this issue previously on this forum… Your best option is probably to run the signal through your existing electrical power lines to your desired location for the wireless router. See http://www.dlink.com/products/?sec=1&pid=533