Ethernet

Before we plaster the walls, it's an ideal time to mess about with wiring in the house. We've sorted out switches and sockets as we've insulated the walls, meaning that there are more sockets (and in better places), and more logical switches. However, I also wanted to install ethernet cable, wiring the house up for a working LAN, because the walls (two feet thick sandstone) have always made wifi signals too weak to penetrate into the kitchen, or out to the garage (more of an issue now that's converted into a living space). That's been compounded by the insulation, which appears to have the effect of a Faraday cage (it is, after all, metallized PET), and has even caused problems with the wireless doorbell and smoke alarms. I had considered using Powerline adaptors, and using the power circuits to propagate ethernet connections, but our multi-fuseboard wiring makes me fear that this might never work well.

Secondly, although we have a broadband connection, it's not exactly broad broadband, as we're on the edge of a rural exchange. Because of that, I'm keen to maximise the capacity of the connection we do have, rather than throttling it by passing data through mains wiring, or too many wifi repeaters. It seems to me that the best way of doing so, long-term, is by hard-wired ethernet; and the best time to do that is now, before plastering the walls.

Thus, I've spent today, and we've spent this evening, putting in UTP cables emanating from the back of our dressing room and running to the landing/study, sewing room, sitting room (front and back), dining room, and towards the garage (to be finished later: I've taken them as far as the porch).

I need next to punch the cables into Cat6 sockets in each room, and then I can fix all the cables into a patch panel at the back of the dressing room. From there, I'll patch a few of them into the router, which is also a four-port switch—and later, when we need more than four active ports at once, I'll add a 24-port switch. The sockets in the sewing room, dining room, and garage will mean I can put wireless access points in these 'compartments', if range extenders can't get to them, so that there's wifi throughout the house. Similarly, the Cat6 cabling to the back of the sitting room and to the landing mean that fixed equipment (putative future smart TV, or NAS and printer in the landing office) can benefit from a fast, stable connection.

Now I just need to check that the cables all work...