KnIgHtCoM

Speaking of FiOS, Verizon has finally setup their infrastructure and brought it to our street. My parents are planning on hiring an electrician to redo their coaxial cable in the house. When the house was built, they had RG-58 installed for cheap because they didn't know the local cable company (Charter) would install RG-59 for free.

While the electrician is pulling new coax through the house, I wanted him to pull CAT6 as well. But should I be considering pulling fiber as well? How expensive is fiber? Can it be used as an alternative to CAT6? I want to future proof the wiring in the house and take full advantage of all that speed.

Rudy

While I won't say you should pull fiber, you may want to but not as a substitute for CAT6 twisted pair cabling -- the two are not easily interchangeable. Also, the coax should be RG-6 (used to be called RG-56) not RG-58 (?) or RG-59.

There are some companies that sell wiring pre-bundled to include a combination of coax, unshielded twisted pair, fiber, etc. How crazy you get is up to you though. For now, I don't think you'll be using fiber at all, it'll just lay dark until some future date when it might come in handy. Keep in mind that if you pull fiber now, you're betting that if and when you do need it, it'll be located in the proper place and be of the right type. You might be better off installing some sort of conduit in the walls to make it easier to install whatever cable you need down the road.

Finally, make sure the installer isn't just an "electrician" who's offering to pull the stuff for you. CAT6 as well as fiber needs special attention when it's installed and many electicians who are used to pulling romex or BX will not do it right and you'll have issues down the road...

DINAN530i

How come no interest in DTV HD with over 90 channels and great picture quality

KnIgHtCoM

Thanks for the insight Rudy. I think you're right and I'll probably hold off on setting up a fiber network in the house and just setup conduit instead like you suggested. I trust this particular electrician, he's done work for me before. He takes his time and the installs are clean (which is hard to find these days in service oriented labor ).

Would it be cheaper/cleaner install to run the combo wiring you're talking about? Or is it cheaper to run coax and CAT6 independently? Is CAT6 the fastest Ethernet wiring out there?

Rudy

A couple things...many electricians are patient, neat and take their time, etc. but many of them aren't familiar (or have no respect for) the standards set forth in the specification of UTP cabling installations. In other words, just because you pull CAT6 cable doesn't mean it'll meet the CAT6 specifications for transmission of data -- you have to follow all the rules of the spec before it will meet the spec. If the electrician has the tools to certify the installation afterwards (the testers are quite expensive) then great. If he doesn't but says "don't worry, I've done a bunch of these installs and have never had a problem", I'd still be worried because most of his installations probably aren't pushing the wiring to the max yet but when they do, there could be trouble and the wiring could be like a time-bomb ticking away.

The combo wiring can be very expensive per foot so unless you're going to be pulling all the included cables, you might just run individual wiring as needed. The nice thing about doing it that way is that you can choose your jack locations with more flexibility. For example, you probably need more phone and/or ethernet jacks than coax jacks. Just pull what you need (or think you'll need) where you need it. This way there won't be a bunch of extra wires that you're likely never going to use (like a kitchen wall phone jack, etc.)

KnIgHtCoM

I've pulled my own CAT6 wiring before (about a 400 ft. run) and set up CAT6 punch blocks and individual heads without any issues, but I don't believe the electrician I'm using is "certified" to setup CAT6 cable. Can you inform me on what the process/testing that is required to maximize CAT6 data transmission?

Rudy

The installer usually isn't certified, the installation is. The better installers (or the ones specializing in data communications, not electicity) will be a bit more expensive but they will thoroughly test the wiring after it's been installed and terminated using a cable certifier like one of the one's offered by Fluke on the following page:
http://www.flukenetworks.com/fnet/en-us/pr...tegorycode=CPTT

If you feel that an installer is familiar with the proper pulling techniques, the minimum cable bend radius the spec calls for, etc. but doesn't have a certification tool, you might still be okay and be able to save some money. Basically, I'm just warning you that there are different rules that need to be followed when pulling data cable and many electicians simply don't know about these rules or don't think they're worth adhering to since many "uncertified" networks will work fine for the average consumer.

Pulling your own wire and terminating the ends can seem like a simple DIY project and many people are doing it but again, your mileage may vary...

KnIgHtCoM

Interesting, I did not know that. Thanks for sharing. Do you have any links to tests/reviews of how much one's mileage may actually vary? Are we talking a small percentage in performance loss? How much bandwidth throughput would be required before you start noticing bottle necks in the network due to poor cable routing?

Rudy

There are probably some networking experts here who can help out (I'm not really much of an expert) but I'm going to bet that there's no real concrete answer to your question.

The performance loss could be minor or major, depending on the problem. If you have a wire that's running too close to power lines (or running parallel to them) you could have no problem running network packets at 10 or 100 mbps but a ton of problems at 1000 mbps or faster. Also, the magnitude of the problem could be directly related to how much interference there is, etc. If a wire was kinked during pulling, the twists in the pairs can be disturbed which can lead to issues like crosstalk between pairs, etc. If the wire's minimum bend radius isn't followed or if it was pulled with too much tension, the precision properties of the cable will be sacrificed but there's really no way to project what the impact will be on performance except to say that it may still work and it may not...

beaker

Add one more: lighting. I had a client that was dropping packets, and I had a hell of a time finding the problem. Finally decided to follow one of the runs in the ceiling, and it turns out the installer (I'm guessing an electrician) just draped the cable over the florescent lights instead of securing it to the top of the ceiling.

Moved the cable and presto! Everything's groovy.