User Panel
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My current house (built in 2007, we bought in 2017) came pre-wired with CAT5e. Unfortunately whoever installed it was a moran and didn't label anything, they didn't attempt to have any kind of organization, no patch panel, half the ends aren't terminated... I've been here a little over 2 years and still haven't gotten the motivation to fix it yet. WiFi is working fine for us as of right now. I have (3) Apple AirPort Extreme routers running, 1 as the main router and the other two as access points. They're all wired-in (I at least put in the effort to figure out which wires correspond to which rooms the APs are in) so there's no multiple wireless hops, at least. Works perfect for us. We can stream HD signals to multiple TVs at once without a hiccup. If we had a more extensive backup solution I'd likely fix the wired setup. Maybe one day I'll get off my butt and do it. View Quote I keep meaning to put something else in but the Apple stuff just keeps on working. Even have a backstock of used Airports that were pulls from my clients houses. |
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That rackable server sitting on its side in a rack makes baby jeebus cry And do you seriously power up a 7600 at home? In 2019? (Edit: Oh god, its a cat 4500! run away!) I have a 1RU switch with more capacity than a 7613 I just scrapped a half a dozen 7609's for sheet metal value View Quote |
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This has been a fun one to read up on. Personally, I don't see anything wrong with going with CAT6 (I'd do the same) as I can think of very few applications over the next decade where I will require more than a GigE LAN network aside from in-rack switching. Older construction (such as my house circa 1975) has a minor disadvantage with the existing CAT3 all being stapled to the framing so as long as one does not secure stuff in a manner where it isn't practically serviceable, I would not be too worried about having to upgrade runs in the future.
That being said, my area of expertise is RF and while wireless is the simple solution…it can also be an impractical solution especially if latency and LAN throughput are key concerns. Limited spectrum, powering issues, MESHing can all be problem areas of wireless networks. Also, when it comes to camera systems, wired is much more robust (and resistant to some fairly simple Tom Foolery). |
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Me and my 2 boys are currently running CAT6 and RG6 in our house (new construction). We've ran gray pvc in exterior walls that will get spray foam and two 2" pvc from the media closet in basement to the attic, with a 14" Leviton in wall cabinet in the first floor office to act as a midway pull-box.
Only got 9 cables pulled in 6hr today lol. It's fine tho, we're making good memories. |
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That rackable server sitting on its side in a rack makes baby jeebus cry And do you seriously power up a 7600 at home? In 2019? (Edit: Oh god, its a cat 4500! run away!) I have a 1RU switch with more capacity than a 7613 I just scrapped a half a dozen 7609's for sheet metal value View Quote |
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I have thinking of moving the router and network switch into a closet. Will they over heat in a closed space like that? View Quote |
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The house I just bought has 14 drops and 6 audio zones wired. ATT just did my data setup and toned everything out for me as part of the install. Plus we have gigabit fiber. I'm so happy I didnt have to run that cable myself. I also set up a Ubiquiti mesh system.
Now I just need to figure out what the hell to do with the audio system. I know nothing about multi zone audio. Anyone have any suggestions? All the zones have digital controllers built in to the walls with ethernet and speaker cable terminating in my office closet. The family room is set up with 5.1 surround, the other zones are 2.1 channel. |
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I always install smurf tubing so that I can pull other cabling in the future; but it is not necessary. Do you have access to a DTX-1800 to test the cabling after the cables ate terminated?
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A bunch of that stuff looks like serious overkill for home use.
Curious what all you guys with the expensive builds and giant racks plan on doing with it all. |
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I’ve got to believe you’ve done this a few times.
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I'm running cat5e everywhere in my new construction house. Every possible tv spot, IP cams (poE), everywhere I think I could use a LAN cable. All goes to the utility room in the basement. Security will terminate there too.
Seriously, cat5e can stream HD video. Why do you need more? With data compression only getting better, I just can't foresee what will need more data? Besides, I only get 25mb DSL out here in the sticks |
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Should have gone with cat6e or cat7. View Quote Cat6A is a waste of money. You really going to run 10GbE to 100 meters or at all? Cat 6 runs 10GbE to 37 meters which covers NAS or other storage to a switch. Cat7 isn’t even a standard and you only get an extra 100MHz over 6A. Cat 6 plain jane is just fine for home and 99% of business. |
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Quoted: That's beautiful! Essentially, that's the setup I wanted to build, with the addition of a 1U Synology NAS. I didn't really have a good place to mount the rack in this house though, so I just replaced the existing SMC with a larger one and went with a USG 3P, US-8-150W, and a UAP-AC-HD. I virtualized the controller on my Synology, which sits in another room. https://www.AR15.Com/media/mediaFiles/94506/20190413_122215small_jpg-920168.JPG ETA: After seeing everyone else's setups I'm almost embarrassed to show mine. Almost. View Quote |
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Spent a couple days hard wiring my main TV & Firebox. Where I wanted the wall box was directly above where my outside walls come together , sitting on top of a steel floor beam right under it.
After I got my cable run I fired up my UN-managed 24 port switch and re-routed a rats nest of cables. Picked up a new 3.1 cable modem and Linsys AC5400 router. |
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You guys are really killing me. I have a wall mount rack that was pulled.from a customer job and am listing over switches now. My network is a mess right now. The biggest needs are a switch and better access points. The house is fully wired. Then I'll be looking for a Roku with an ethernet port.
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Gigbit ethernet is fine up until the point you have a central storage location. Typical spinner can write 110ish mega bytes a second that there almost tops out a gigbit line. Add in remote program access installed on a nas, typical web browsing, a few vms and media streaming and your well beyond what gigbit can handle.
Now there are ways around some of that and most home users are not going to max out gigbit Ethernet today, but sooner than one may think. 8k streaming will be here eventually as well as 4k Poe cams are currently reasonably priced. |
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A bunch of that stuff looks like serious overkill for home use. Curious what all you guys with the expensive builds and giant racks plan on doing with it all. View Quote |
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Here is the real problem with these overkill setups.. https://i.imgur.com/yrnDW17.gif?noredirect View Quote For day to day home shit that I can more or less forget about, the Unifi stuff hardly uses any power. Well, not enough to notice on an electric bill, anyway. |
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I did something super similar OP, just before we had rocked the house. I put a rack in my basement and it goes all over the house. I have two cat6 drops in every room and IP cameras all around the house. It all comes into the room and into a patch panel like yours. I wish I planned out my home lab a little better, but it works decently well right now. Using Ubiquiti for my internet components.
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I have no clue what that stuff is, but it looks cool.
Although I did remove 2 floor sections at the Travelers Insurance data center once.................1 too many wires for me. |
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Wired when you can...wireless if you must. https://www.AR15.Com/media/mediaFiles/128059/KIMG0598_JPG-919664.JPG View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted:
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Waiting to find out "why wired?" v wifi https://www.AR15.Com/media/mediaFiles/128059/KIMG0598_JPG-919664.JPG |
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wifi is crap. its not about speed. View Quote I love people who try to use a VPN in a crowded wifi environment. |
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What do I win for having the crappiest wiring closet ever?
This is in the unfinished area of my basement, underneath a jetted tub. I like to live dangerously. https://i.imgur.com/hA3JRdq.jpg View Quote I should just get a small rack for the basement, move the cable modem down there, leave the router upstairs, and run all the ethernet from one spot in the basement from a 24 or 32 port switch. Unfinished basement is fairly easy to deal with, as I just staple (round staples) the cable to the rafters. I have mostly cat5e now, but would replace it with cat6 if I was going to redo it. |
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I have no idea(ok a little idea) what you guys are talking about in this thread, it's like you guys are speaking another language......yet I keep reading.
Carry on. |
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I really should finish the wiring in my place. Problem is I don't have anything that outruns my wi-fi, so I haven't really had the need. Good luck! The drops are for things like IP cameras (which as a practical matter, really can't be done wirelessly except in the most rudimentary form as more of a proof of concept - and they need power anyway) and for things like Network Attached Storage (having 10Gig available to a device that really needs it is damned handy). I'm sitting on my back patio right now, with my laptop. Even if I had a drop back here, I wouldn't bother plugging into it. The ~360Mbps throughput I'm enjoying at the moment is more than sufficient for what I'm doing. If I needed to move a TB worth of shit from here to somewhere else, I'd walk my happy ass inside and plug into the switch. But for everything else... There's a security aspect to it to consider, but with WPA2-Enterprise authentication (currently name/pass through RADIUS and soon to be certificate-based when I get around to it), I ain't real worried about it. Hell, I've seen people leave external/outside IP cameras (and intercoms, and...) on the same VLAN as the rest of their shit inside the house - with no port security whatsoever. It's easier to just plug into the drop conveniently located outside the house (wear a mask or walk up behind the camera ) than it is to sit there and hack on the wifi. |
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lol very similar to mine. although I just scored one of these from a job that was under construction. no idea where I can fit it. or what the hell I'm going to put in it but I have wanted a rack for a LONG time. kinda like this but its heavier duty. 1.5" solid steel slab on the bottom for ballast lol. https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-2ktyxsrgtc/images/stencil/1280x1280/products/22805/28606/383573-001__36998.1511984969.jpg?c=2 View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted:
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Looks better than mine. https://www.AR15.Com/media/mediaFiles/372211/36377A44-00FA-458A-9DA3-F3F17EC0C174_jpeg-919204.JPG kinda like this but its heavier duty. 1.5" solid steel slab on the bottom for ballast lol. https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-2ktyxsrgtc/images/stencil/1280x1280/products/22805/28606/383573-001__36998.1511984969.jpg?c=2 1. I never filled it. 2. I used to have a basement. 3. It's a pain in the ass when moving. 4. It really is a dick-measuring contest in a residential install. I kinda got over it at some point. When I do get around to putting a server in again, it's just going to get bolted to the wall. And it'll be a single (somewhat beefy for a residence, but nothing too crazy otherwise) server with a bunch of NICs running ESXi. It's a house, and it's there for utilitarian and lab uses. It's not a fuckin' data center. |
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Ubiquiti has a guide somewhere on their forums for using a free AWS instance. I use it for about a dozen devices across 3 sites. I manage to stay beneath the various consumption caps (to stay free) by a little margin every month. I started out with a cloudkey but - didn't want to deal with having multiple cloudkeys or configuring adoption over residential isp / dynamic. And running a cloudkey at each site means some of the neat stuff (like a two click site to site vpn which requires both sites be on the same UniFi server) isn't available. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted:
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Si seor. I use it for about a dozen devices across 3 sites. I manage to stay beneath the various consumption caps (to stay free) by a little margin every month. I started out with a cloudkey but - didn't want to deal with having multiple cloudkeys or configuring adoption over residential isp / dynamic. And running a cloudkey at each site means some of the neat stuff (like a two click site to site vpn which requires both sites be on the same UniFi server) isn't available. This isn't for my business, it's for my house. |
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I had to pay $200 extra to get 9 jacks put in. It was $25 per extra jack when starting a new fiber account. I know it might sound like a lot but I had to do it for a few reasons. 1. I don't fit in the attic. 2. My house was built in the 60's and it is a tri-level, the previous contractor couldn't even update all the electrical with all the sheetrock removed unless you removed a wall or two. 3. It took the guy 10 hours to run all of the cables and he had all the tools. The only thing is I only got Cat5e.. It works for what I need but in the future if I build a house it will be wired before the sheetrock hits the walls. View Quote As long as that dude didn't staple your Cat5e down (and I'm sure he didn't, since it's a retro job), you could easily pull new Cat6 by using the existing cable as a "pull string" of sorts. |
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I put a Ubiquiti EdgeMAX PoE switch in my parents attic a year ago (central Texas)...still running and solder hasnt flowed yet. In a more serious note, I've got several routers deployed that live in Texas barns and haven't failed yet. Some equipment is quite robust. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted:
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I have thinking of moving the router and network switch into a closet. Will they over heat in a closed space like that? Anyhoo, my master bedroom walk in closet is climate controlled (like the rest of the house...), and won't even come CLOSE to getting too hot. Even Cisco gear is more resilient than you think. For a few years (when I lived in Ohio), I had a Cisco 2811 ISR in my home office. The fan noise was unbearable, so I popped the case an unplugged them all. Fuck it. Turns out, a residential load ain't shit on one of these, and it ran just fine (bitching about the fans in the logs the whole time) for a good 3 years, until I moved and stopped using it. I kept an eye on the internal temps using SNMP, and the hottest it ever got it was 34C (at 25C ambient, which is like 77F). That was trying my damnedest to tax the thing, which still only amounted to like 54% CPU utilization on it. Like I said, there's only so much you can do with a residential workload. And even there, I had a site-to-site VPN tunnel going to my office, and I was purposely trying to shove a bunch of traffic over it (without an encryption accelerator, so as to tax the CPU). Didn't matter. My current house is over the top energy efficient, and electricity is dirt fucking cheap in Texas, so I keep it at 68-70F during the dog days of summer. I'll be fine. |
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Should have gone with cat6e or cat7. View Quote Cat6 is good for 10gig, up to 55m (180'). I live in a single story, 4d 2ba, ~1,900sq ft ranch. My longest drop isn't even close to this. 6a is a waste of money in this application. Cat8 will be a thing eventually, buy only in data centers. Anyway... |
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You're paying a lot for that Snap AV wire. Are you 100% retrofitting the house or is wiring already in place? Are you wiring for WAPs while you are pulling wire? View Quote I'm wiring for a couple of AP's in the ceiling, yes. Honestly, I could more than get away with one (it's not a big house and the radios are pretty damned decent - actually they're fucking amazing for what Ubiquiti charges for them), but...2 is one, and 1 is none and all that. |
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I'm wiring for a couple of AP's in the ceiling, yes. Honestly, I could more than get away with one (it's not a big house and the radios are pretty damned decent - actually they're fucking amazing for what Ubiquiti charges for them), but...2 is one, and 1 is none and all that. View Quote |
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Attached File
I pulled 14 cat 6 wires at through an old air duct from the basement to the attic on the second floor to the closet in our office. Half the basement is unfinished, so I had access to the main floor runs that way. I also ran 10 drops to the bedrooms upstairs. I plan on setting up an almost identical rack in the basement and will connect the two with a LAG. I already have the rack, switch, and patch panel. I also have one cyberpower 1500 watt UPS. I used monoprice CAT 6 cable and cable matters patch panels and keystone connectors. |
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