Projects
Wiring up your home for networking
Jose Chapa • Jul 13 2024
Introduction
Whether you’re video streaming, gaming, conference calling, or doing other productivity tasks, a solid internet connection is essential in the modern age. And although Wi-fi has come a long way, nothing compares to the minimal latency and reliability of old-fashioned wired networking. That is why I decided to set up wired networking throughout my house.
Is wired networking really necessary?
Although the latest Wi-fi standard, 802.11be or Wi-fi 7, has multi gigabit throughput, there are inherent latency and reliability problems still. Some of that is mitigated with the 6GHz band, the increased channel bandwidth, and Multi-Link Operation. But the fact is that an old-school copper connection is still better in most respects. And if you really need the throughput, you could do 10Gbps over copper, or more over a fiber optic connection.
In my home I have two separate desktop/office work areas that would strongly benefit from a wired connection. Additionally, I need to reposition the wireless access point, and I need dedicated network cabling in my work-in-progress server/networking closet. So in my case, wired networking is necessary.
A useful shortcut
If your home was built in the US less than 30 years ago, it most likely already has some form of data cabling in the walls. In the age of landlines / home-phones, cabling was usually run through the walls for the purpose of telephony. These cables present themselves as RJ11 or RJ12 wall plates in the most important areas of the house, where you might expect a home phone such as the bedrooms, kitchen, and living room. And if you are lucky, then inside those walls is actually cat5e network cabling, with only 2 or 3 pairs terminated. With cat5e you are able to re-terminate it and get 1gbps or even 2.5gbps. If you are unlucky and don’t have the full 4 twisted pairs of wire with cat5e, then you probably have something between cat3 and cat5. Although it is not optimal, you could still use it to get up to 100mbps depending on the cable.
Thankfully my house was built exactly like that. There are cat5e cables running to each major room and they are terminated at RJ11 wallplates. There is one important area that doesn’t have cabling, which is the network/server closet. So all I need to do is run a network cable down that wall, through the attic, and put the other end in the garage where the other cables all meet.
Cutting the cord
There is a telephony device just outside my garage that all the wires lead to. Seeing as I don’t intend on getting a home phone, and I doubt that any future buyers would, we are fine severing the cables just short of the telephony device and pulling them back into the house. In my case, this would be the garage. That should be a fine place for a cheap unmanaged network switch to connect all the cat5e wires to and actually create the network backbone. Humidity and heat might hurt the switch in the long term, but these things can be found for $10 online, so it is not a problem if it needs replacing later.
The severed cables that I pulled into my garage
Now, we will want to map out these cables. We want to know where they all lead and label them properly. If we determine we don’t need some of the cables, then we can ignore them and not waste work. To trace the cables, it is best to use a wire tracing kit. Some people call it a fox and hound, and there are many other names for it.
Fox and Hound
In essence, you take one end of the cable and plug it into the tracer if it is already terminated as RJ11 or RJ45. If it is not terminated such as mine, you can take the alligator clips and attach them to some of the individual wires within the sheath of the cable. When you turn on the tracer, you can then wave the tone generator wand around the cable and hear the tone get louder as you get closer to the cable. So, with the tracer on, go around to all the rj11 or rj45 wallplates in your home and wave the wand around until one of them produces a tone. Then label each cable appropriately.
Once you determine which cables you want to keep, you can terminate them as rj45. These will all connect to a switch that will serve as the backbone for the wired network. A cheap unmanaged switch will work fine, but you could get something fancier if it fits your needs.
Terminating cables
To terminate the cables, you will need a wire stripper, RJ45 connectors, a crimping tool, and wire cutters or some other cutting tool. There are two termination standards, 568A and 568B. Most people use 568B, but it does not matter which you use as long as all your terminations are consistent. In fact, you could create your own standard if you really wanted to. The current carrying the bytes is color blind, so it does not care the color of the wire as long as the order is consistent.
If you are using RJ45 boots, load those into each cable first. Then you need to strip the outer cable sheath a few inches. Your crimper or wire cutter may have this capability, otherwise you need to carefully cut so as to not expose any copper on the cables within. If there is a spline, remove it.
Untwist the 4 pairs of cables and flatten them and order them to the 568B or 568A standard. For the next part, if you have pass-through rj45 connectors and matching crimpers, it will be a lot easier. You can simply pass the wires through the connectors up until it hits the sheath, and then use the special crimper to crimp and cut the excess. If you don't have that, you will need to first cut the individual wires down to about an inch in length. Then load it into the connector, leaving minimal wire exposed outside of the sheath.
The wires did not come out correctly here.
In either method, you must make sure each individual wire goes into each of the 8 wire slots in the connector, in order. This is without getting bunched up . The connector should be transparent, so you can make sure they didn’t get out of order before crimping.
Terminating cables is hard at first, but it gets easier with practice. Once you terminate the other end, you can use a cable tester to make sure all the wires are in order and that they are intact.
Terminating in each room
We will need rj45 wallplates to replace the rj11 wallplates. Most wallplates will require a punchdown tool, but you could also get one that requires the cable to be terminated with rj45 first. Either way, you must remove the old rj11 wallplates, cut the individual cables so that you only have a few inches from the sheath, and make sure you have enough sheath coming in from the wall.
Then punchdown with either 568B or 568A, or terminate with rj45 if that is the wallplate you have. Once everything is terminated, you need to test the cable. With a cable tester, connect one piece to the wallplate and turn it on, and connect the other piece to the other end of the labeled cable, whether that is in your garage or elsewhere. If the tester says your cables are out of order or the signal is not coming all the way through, you will need to look at how it is terminated and fix it.
Making the most of your wired network
At this point you will have multiple functioning network cable runs in multiple rooms. Hopefully one of those goes to your router and to any other important rooms like an office. If not, you will need to run cables in your wall, and run it through your attic to your backbone switch. For my situation, I needed to run a cable to a coat closet which I wanted to convert into a networking/server closet. You can also add small unmanaged switches to any rooms that need multiple wired connections such as your living room or office.
Since the network closet is in the center of the house, I was able to place an old router combo unit there, in bridge mode. This setup allows it to be the only wi-fi access point in the house while still providing a strong signal throughout the whole house without having to worry abound overlapping wireless channels, or sticky clients. The access point also serves as a wired switch for the servers I want to set up there. In the top right of the image you can see my raspberry pi which is acting as a DNS server, DHCP server, and VPN concentrator. My virtual machine server and NAS are undergoing some upgrades and changes, so they will soon join the other devices in this room.
In conclusion, adding wired networking to your home is a great way to improve reliability and speeds. And with good planning, it can also improve your wireless set up. Now I have a fantastic connection whether I’m video conferencing for work, streaming movies, or playing online games.