Hi y’all,
I’m getting a new house built and builder has asked me if I want cat 5 connections installed. I am thinking of having these cat 5 ports installed where the tv’s will be and where my office will be. Wifi for rest of the devices. It’s a three story house. Would cat5 wiring be run separately from each port to a central location in the basement? Im guessing that my main internet line to the house will come into basement.
Would I install modem in the basement and individually connect all these cat5 wires into the modem? Do I require anything else from the builder side? Does a wifi booster need a cat5 port? Anything else you guys foresee I should get before the drywall goes in?
Sorry for the noob questions. House is in Canada if it matters (we have optic)
Thanks!
Yea the wires should run to a central location. Wifi boosters typically repeat a wireless signal, but you can install wireless access points that are plugged in and can form a cohesive wireless network with proper handover and mesh, but you’d need to hire someone as that’s more of a prosumer /professional thing. The wireless whole home coverage from your ISP is probably just going to be wireless repeaters.
If you don’t have enough ports on your ISP modem just add a switch.
Thank you for the response. If a add a router, would all the wires have to run to the router? I’m thinking of running all the wires to the modem in the basement and then have a router on the third floor through cat 5 port. Am I thinking about this correctly?
Not at least by the terms used.
A modem converts say cable/dsl/fiber to ethernet.
A router plugs into that and does NAT to hide your internal network from the world. Technically it’s a firewall but typically misused term is router in home networking.
A switch plugs into that.
Wireless AP’s plug into that along with any wired devices.
Your ISP will often give you one box thats all of these things in one.
The modem in the basement connected to a router with one more more AP’s around the house. I have 4700 sqf on 3 levels it’s 3 AP’s to get excellent coverage.
That makes sense! Mine is 2200 sqft. I think with modem in the basement and AP on the main-floor via cat, I should be good
It depends on the wall materials and thickness. It may not reach the far corners on upper and lower floors.
You will likely also see significantly reduced wireless speeds. At the moment with best in class wifi you may be able to reach 1.5Gbps near the router, but that could be 200Mbps or less a few rooms away.
I agree with others that you should run cat6a to all rooms. But atleast run to each floor so you can connected wired access points for better wifi.
You should never use a wifi extender, and mesh may not work good if distances and building materials attenuate the signal too much. Nothing beats wired for reliability.
Not even close. Think of everything else you will want hard wired for. Extenders are not worth the trouble if you can get a good wired AP to various locations.
It all really depends on what your ISP gives you, if they give you a modem-router combo device then that has to stay in the basement, and all the home runs connect to it or your switch and then to it.
If they give you a modem and a separate router like an eero or something, that separate router could go anywhere as long as it runs back to the modem over one of the cats. You could also connect your own routers WAN port to one of the combo modem-rourers LAN ports and then ignore it from there, unless you need to change port rules or whatever. But your switch needs to be connected to your router not the ISP one, which ignores those home runs you put work in for.
The hierarchy is modem > router > switch > device.
Another thought, if your additional router is just for wifi then plug in via a LAN port not its WAN port, then it’s just for wifi and won’t do any routing. You’ll want to disable DHCP on it so it won’t fight with your ISP router.