Under floor cat5

[petemc]

After our house flooding 2 months ago during a torrential storm we've been told the floor is now dry enough to begin repairs. Our entire downstairs area is being redone with laminate n stuff. It occurred to me that now is the perfect time to lay some cat5. The WIFI reception in the kitchen is ok but could be better. We may never use it but it seems like good future proofing.

Probably would be easier just to get a few Airport express boxes though.

[Del Lardo]

If the floors are already up then it's a pretty easy thing to do. Helped a friend CAT5 his house a couple of years back and it involved digging a trench through the concrete in the back garden :'(

[divine]

I'm not 100% on the technical differences betwen but it may be worth considering CAT6(a) if future proofing is on your mind?

[Joe 90]

Yeah I wouldn't lay CAT5 anymore. CAT6(a) or whatever is most up to date. I'm not so up on networking anymore :/

[petemc]

See now I'm so not up to date with networking that I've never ever heard of CAT6.

Don't think the gf would let me dig up concrete though, not that I have any intention to :)

[divine]

I think there is CAT7 too but i've not heard of that being used domestically :p

[petemc]

Good thing my gf likes cats if I put all those in ;)

[Toby]

I remember running CAT6 down through the garage and into the living room as I needed gigglebit to the HTPC. Ripped up the carpet and tacked the cable along the inside edge of the tack strips at the edge of the room.

Of course the gf came in half-way through and screamed at me so I was like "I'll put it all back, you'll never know!" :)

[Jingo]

I entered this thread expecting a new meme along the lines of ceiling cat or floor horse :(

[leowyatt]

Have you considered flat Cat5? would probably work under laminate floors ok.

[Will]

Problem with cable design is that you can lose performance on long runs unless it's high quality cable. Cable runs should be solid core and ideally shielded (from experience) to prevent poor performance.

[petemc]

Hmm. The more I think about it the more I wonder if I really need cat5 into the kitchen. If I really do need to boost the networking in there I'm more tempted by Airport for its Airplay features and networking stuff.

I shall ponder.

[Toby]

Problem with cable design is that you can lose performance on long runs unless it's high quality cable. Cable runs should be solid core and ideally shielded (from experience) to prevent poor performance.

Indeed - patch cables use stranded copper cores whereas the stuff used for trunking in long runs is usually solid core.

I use Cat5E everywhere at home except for one long run from the office upstairs, down through the garage and across the living room. This run is probably 20-30 metres and I used Cat6 for this, although still stranded cores rather than solid and it works fine for gigglebit.

[petemc]

Ok so just to change topic slightly. Phone line under laminate. Is that going to work? Can I just buy an extension cable to run from the front room to the kitchen, tape it down and lay laminate? I won't be laying it as our insurance company will be. Next week.

[Zirax]

I don't see why not. However any runs or extensions will affect your internet connection (provided you use ADSL).

I removed an extension from the master socket to upstairs and gained 0.5mb download speed and a big noise reduction. Then got a set of 4 cordless phones for ~£50 from Argos :)

[petemc]

Oh? Even if the router is connected to the main socket and the extension is just for 1 phone?

[Zirax]

Oh? Even if the router is connected to the main socket and the extension is just for 1 phone?

For me it did make a difference, even with good microfilters on the other end.

[Mark]

Phone wire is generally unshielded and thus somewhat prone to line noise. So yes, even a 'downstream' extension socket could have an impact.

One way to (mostly) avoid that is to get an NTE5-style faceplate for your master socket and then wire the extension into that. The extension will then be after the filter and thus less likely to cause problems.

Mine was an early engineer install so I got an NTE5 faceplate as part of the package. I can certainly recommend them, though there are now some 3rd party versions that are even better.