Building A Better IoT - Rewiring For Data

**Choosing the Right Cable: Cat5 vs Cat6**

When it comes to selecting a cable for your networking needs, one of the most important decisions you'll make is choosing between Cat5 and Cat6. Both types of cables are widely used, but they have some key differences that can affect their performance and reliability.

Cat5 cables were once the industry standard for Ethernet connections, but they've been largely surpassed by Cat6 cables in recent years. While both cables support gigabit speeds, Cat6 cables offer several advantages over Cat5. For one, Cat6 cables have better noise immunity than Cat5 cables, which means they're less prone to interference and can maintain a stronger signal over longer distances.

Additionally, Cat6 cables are capable of supporting 10-gigabit speeds, making them an excellent choice for high-speed applications such as data centers and server rooms. Cat5e cables, on the other hand, are limited to gigabit speeds and may not be able to keep up with the demands of modern networking systems.

**The Importance of Termination**

When it comes to choosing a cable, there's another important factor to consider: termination. Termination refers to the process of connecting the ends of the cable to a connector or device. In the case of Cat6 cables, proper termination is critical for maintaining signal integrity and preventing damage to the cable.

The best way to terminate a Cat6 cable is to use a high-quality connector that's specifically designed for Ethernet connections. This can include devices such as keystone jacks or patch panels. When choosing a connector, make sure it's compatible with your cable type and meets the specifications of your network system.

**Using the Right Cable Box**

When working with cables, it's essential to have the right tools and equipment. One of the most critical pieces of equipment is a cable box, also known as an outlet box or electrical box. The MSB 1G outlet box I'm using today is one of my favorites – it's specifically designed for Ethernet connections and has features such as cutouts for different gauge wires.

The use of a high-quality cable box can make a significant difference in the performance and reliability of your network system. Not only do they provide better signal integrity, but they also offer improved protection against damage from moisture and other environmental factors.

**Mixing Different Types of Cables**

One common challenge when working with cables is mixing different types of cables together. This can be particularly problematic if you're using a mix of Cat5 and Cat6 cables in the same system. To avoid this issue, it's essential to use high-quality connectors that are compatible with all of your cable types.

The dewalt oscillating multi-tool I'm also reviewing today is an excellent tool for cutting out cable boxes without making a huge mess. This device allows you to cut through drywall and other materials with ease, making it an indispensable tool for any serious networking enthusiast.

**Tips and Tricks**

As with most aspects of networking, there are several tips and tricks to keep in mind when working with cables. One important consideration is the importance of using a stud finder when drilling holes in walls or ceilings. This can help you avoid damaging drywall or other materials that may cause signal loss or damage.

Another essential tool for any serious networking enthusiast is a Dremel drill bit. These specialized bits are designed specifically for cutting through plastic and other materials, making them an excellent choice for tasks such as patching cable boxes or repairing damaged connectors.

**Conclusion**

In conclusion, choosing the right cable for your network system can be a daunting task, but with the right knowledge and equipment, you can ensure optimal performance and reliability. By selecting a high-quality Cat6 cable and using the right connector, outlet box, and tools, you can build a robust and reliable networking system that meets even the most demanding requirements.

As I mentioned earlier, my local hardware store doesn't carry these boxes in stock, so I recommend purchasing them online or through a specialty electronics retailer. With the right equipment and knowledge, you can take your network to the next level and experience the benefits of high-speed Ethernet connections.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwelcome back to an old house linux edition definitely not the old house or this old this house which happens to be old but also is going to run linux so for those of you just tuning in you know everything's running fine at the office pretty busy honestly i mean all things considered for it but we're doing some home networking some home rewiring got some helpful hints for you this is my 48 port 10 gig switch it's heavy it's brick like 48 10 gig ports and four 40 gig ports it's the older standard i'd love to have a 25 slash 100 gig connection got a lot of stuff in my house that needs 10 gig connections truth be told it's home plus office so there's some you know office machines in there too but you think about it and it's like that's going to supply the backbone and that's going to be a lot of the stuff so when you're thinking about rewiring your house for data you've got to think about where all your computers are and that particular piece of equipment is loud and hot so you want to use a closet or maybe somewhere that's going to have a little bit better ventilation than a closet if you're dumping a lot of heat into that closet because there's not a lot of breathability not a lot of airflow a basement might be okay but maybe there's water or moisture issues you'd have to worry about although if you're running a dehumidifier this equipment can have a dehumidification effect because it's adding heat to your basement if you think about that but you also think about other devices poe devices now in addition to phones we also got poe cameras this is a hike vision that's been flashed to not be dangerous or anything like that also poe devices like the raspberry pi that i've covered before and the place where you put your poe switch power over ethernet switch may be different from where you put your 10 gig backbone switch because your computers may be in a different place than your dvr and some of your other networking storage that's totally fine as you think about where you want physical hardwired data ports you can also think about what location minimizes the amount of work and headache that you have to do even before you run the lines now you can run the lines through the walls i'm going to show you how to do that you can also run it on the outside of the building through chases or conduit i'll show you a little bit about that but thinking is the first thing that you do because you're going to make a mess you're going to look at some tools and like a horrible mess a lot of horrible messes and you can sometimes avoid making a horrible mess if you just think things through first up tools yeah welcome back to the old basement tools so many tools what do you need first you need a good tape measure a tape measure will let you measure distances of things and it is a lot better than guesstimating especially if you have to figure out where a wire goes now if you have attic access and basement access you are mostly going to have no problem wiring your house for data it's really not going to be a huge deal to run extra data lines i'm running data and electrical at the same time got an electrician friend helping me out we're doing everything to code as far as i know pretty sure not my area of expertise but hey i can at least learn a thing or two so running data it's not it's something i did in my teenage years yes when i was a teenager i was a wire monkey basically i haven't done that in a long time but hey i can do that during the quarantine and save a few bucks because uh it's time so this is a drill this is a three quarter inch drill bit which is more than you need for data but this is great for running electrical lines as well but it's also super long to get into otherwise inconvenient places because we're going to drill up through the floor inside the wall so that you don't see the hole and then we're going to meet it at a right angle through the wall so basically we drill up through the wall we can use a powerful magnet well not in this house because i've got an inch and a half thick plaster but normally you can drill up through the wall and use a really powerful magnet find this bit in the wall and confirm that you're in the place that you think you are the way that you start that process is with a tape measure what we've done is taken a tape measure and we've measured off of that wall and this wall is supported by a joist in the basement that runs the whole span now we can trust the carpenters from 1909 you know not everything was square but it's square enough and the distance is enough that we can use that as a reference so instead of drilling down i drilled up you use your stud finder to find your minimum and maximum distance and you shoot for the middle and if you're within a couple of inches or you get some obstacle or something in the basement come to the next column come up through the wall and then cut your box for your network outlet or your electrical outlet or whatever the case may be and you'll be all set it's really not super complicated it's just using a tape measure will really save your butt because a tape measure is an incredibly useful thing and so here the electrician and i have done a little bit of work already this is going to be an electrical outlet but if i wanted to put a network outlet here it's really the same process i'm going to measure off of that wall a certain number of inches or a certain number of centimeters or certain number of meters with fractions and then i'm going to drill a hole up through the middle of this wall hopefully i don't miss and and then i'm going to cut a box so that i can uh put in a network cable or in this case the electrician can put in an electrical outlet take a tape measure and you measure off of the benchmark and come back say you know four feet or six feet or eight feet exact an exact measurement and then you find the same reference point on the first floor now sometimes the walls aren't in the same place maybe the house will stick out over the basement or the basement like in my case the basement is not quite as big as the footprint for the house this is basically a glorified root cellar place to put some equipment stuff like that so the basement really isn't as big as the entire house and so if i measure off of say that wall down there it's not going to be exactly the same number as if i measure off the outside wall upstairs but you can look for something that comes through the floor things like air conditioner vents or pre-existing electrical lines or pre-existing conduit and say okay this piece of conduit is this many inches from that wall on the other floor it's this many inches from that wall you can do a little math and figure out exactly how far away things are from that piece of conduit so if i want an electrical outlet on the same wall i can come back say two feet from that and i can come down here and come back two feet from that as well but you can also measure from that reference and so you can drill up and go through now how do you get the wire through you just stuff the wire well wire is not super convenient these are fish rods this is fish rod and fish tape so fish rods are pretty cool because they're a little bit bendy and you can push them and you also screw them together so put my drill bit down so i've got two of these two of these bendy boys i'm just assuming they're gender they screw together like this so you can put them together in the wall or crawl space or anything like that and then that's pretty much it once you get these through you can grab a hold of it you can tie off a wire to the end they actually make little screw in things that will grab hold of data wires or even electrical wires you can run it through however you want this is fish tape fish tape's a little bit different than fish rods in that you can push it one way but it's super bendy the other way so depending on what what or where you're trying to fish and what you're trying to fish around this can actually be really handy plus you can also rotate it like this and if it's stuck on something this this end will just go super flappy bendy and you may be able to find a way around it so like the fire breaks which is the worst thing that you could run into and it's something i'll talk about in a second this is sometimes a useful tool because you might be able to find a way around the fire break if the fire break isn't perfectly you know through there otherwise you're probably going to be opening up the wall to drill a hole now i'm not going to cover actually fishing a wire through the wall from like the top or bottom if you need more information on that uh check out tom lawrence tech he's got a great video on you know like the easy and then like the insulation field where you can use fish rods and then he's also got another video where they have a fire break and then they sort of they like use the super long bendy rod to go straight through and if you there's a technique where if you back off maybe you won't do it but in this old house because the fire breaks are at an angle you're going to come through the plaster like pretty much so could be worse other tools that are useful stud finder so if you're measuring off of your benchmark and you want to be sure that you get it right in the middle of that stud cavity most studs are on 15 inch centers here in the us sometimes 24 inch centers you can use a stud finder and mark that off on your wall and measure where the studs are so that when you come down to the lower level where you're going to push your wire up through you can figure out what you're going to avoid now normally i recommend cutting a hole in your wall and then using a right angle drill bit or a long drill bit and going down through the wall that way that way you can't possibly screw up and if you do manage to hit something down here like it's usually another piece of wood you can back off and try it again the reason that doesn't work in this house is because every wall on the first floor is sistered to another joist in the basement so when we're talking about i'm going to come down through the center of the wall i've only got about three quarters of an inch to work with because they've got two you know 2 by 12 joists that are running to support all of the internal walls in the basement so check it out so here on the first floor right above this there's a wall and so my target is this tiny gap because you don't want to mess with these joists that are load-bearing again if you're completely lost you definitely want to consult a contractor or something but there's a really thick wall sitting on top of this mess on the first floor and so this target is too small for me to hit coming down but it's really easy to hit for me going up and i'm i've used the the measurements the tape measure to make sure that my wall does sit perfectly on this on this load bearing structure that's here and so just like that i'm able to drill a hole fish down my modern electrical wiring and i'm good to go now this is the corner of the basement where i've decided to locate my alarm panel which has a doubly redundant connection i've also got my fiber optics and new electrical to be able to support whatever we're basically underneath the stairs to the basement but this is out of the way of any kind of uh water lines or water seepage i've got electrical it's basically out of the way in case i ever decide to do any work down here to finish this up more you know to make it a little bit more habitable let's say the dust is pretty well controlled in this corner so i don't think the equipment's going to soak up a lot of dust and i think if there's a lot of heat generated in this corner it's got room to breathe so you know think about all those things it is it just so happens that i'm going to have my main switch and my poe switch and my alarm panel all in one place but again that's not something you necessarily have to worry about because you could put those things in different places and in fact i recommend it now sometimes you're unlucky so in this case we've opened up this wall because well there's a bit of plumbing to repair this is you know there was cast iron here now it's nice pvc because cast iron good lord but this this is a fire break you'll usually find these about 48 inches up it again varies and depending on where you are code you know check with your local licensed contractor and all that all the standard disclaimers apply even for running data if you drill a hole in this you're supposed to fill it with caulk or another material that will create an air barrier the problem the reason for this is because this can have a chimney effect if the building catches on fire this can turn into an air cavity which will actually cause hot air to come up through the wall and it just turns into a chimney effect things will actually burn a lot quicker so you see things like this inside the wall in very old and very modern construction but not a lot in the middle like they did away with it in the 70s and 80s it's like super asbestos is super flame retardant yeah it's also going to give you lung cancer so when you take it out fire breaks fire breaks are good stuff you don't want to take them out you want to keep them and especially you might be required to keep them so if you're going to drill through the wall with one of the long drill bits or using a fish rod and you you know have a sound like that you may have no choice but to cut at least a section of wall out so you can drill through it now sometimes the fire breaks are horizontal instead of being turned like this one is in this house i got super unlucky it's really hard to drill a hole through a fire break like this with a drill bit on an extension it's pretty much going to mess up your wall on either side so just be prepared for that now we talked about the first floor what about the second floor well that's where this old chimney comes in so this chimney is used as a cooking exhaust but in terms of like exhausting anything else not really most of the time in old houses next to the chimney is usually a safe or a safe-ish place that you can run a chase from the basement to the attic see the way that we're coming up through the floor in the basement to the first floor we can come down through the attic to the second floor so we run all of our wiring basically from the attic down but we've got to get all our wiring to the attic somehow this a chimney it's going to go all the way through to the roof so generally if you look around the chimney you can usually find a place to get a conduit if you don't you know have a pre-existing chase or just an open wall in my case i've got a 15 inch by 8 inch chase that used to be a laundry chute because this is the laundry you know there's laundry room on the other side well we don't really use the basement for the laundry anymore so we're going to use that chase to run electrical plumbing and a large four inch conduit for cat six cabling so the entire second floor cat6 no problem sometimes there's just no way you have to go on the outside of the building well there's stuff you can make for that you can put your wires in a plastic pvc pipe or pvc electrical pipe i mean it's gray or white and then put a metal box around it it doesn't look completely horrible it's okay and if you do it metal and you ground it you get a little bit of lightening immunity or you can use metal conduit of course but that's really expensive and a pain in the butt to paint and get paint to stick and also be all weather now with our data lines in the attic we can come down the wall just the same way that these electrical conduits are run it's either there used to be a wall here there's not now so there's an electrical conduit here you know all that's all the old wiring has been removed because it's super dangerous and it's all unhooked everything's going to be standard it's fine but because this conduit is already here we don't really have to open up this wall in order to do the electrical now the irony is for the video yeah the walls open obviously but that's because there's going to be a door here and also another data outlet sort of right there on this side of that stud so yay hardwired data i mean for any computer that you're at for more than 15 minutes run a hard line plan on hard lines for cameras wireless access points to give you good coverage and entertainment centers your tvs your stereo anything like that hard wire it don't make it wireless trust me on this with electrical work you definitely don't want to do electrical work without a permit or having your master hvac or anything like that you definitely want to pay attention to local codes there's different rules you have to follow that kind of thing but for data wiring generally there's not too much in the way of rules there are a couple one is if you run a wire through a space that breathable air goes through if you use a plenum coating that's because if the wire burns it won't give off toxic fumes so if you're going to reuse some duct work but you can run networking wire through ductwork if you don't have any other choice i don't recommend it but if you do that you've got to use plenum wiring that's code in just about everywhere but you may also have local code so double check that now 1909 1909 was a long time ago the national electric code the modern national electric code was not even a glimmer in the great grandfather's eye of the person who wrote the spec sometimes we get lucky though so normally a house like this would have knob and tube wiring which means that you could have completely got everything well the guy that built this was either a genius or very lucky because he put conduit everywhere so this light switch and a lot of the electrical outlets and some of the outlets that we're repurposing for data have a conduit that runs right where we need it to so i've been able to pull modern romex electrical lines to this light switch and modern electrical code requires that each light switch is not just flipping the hot wire on and off which is how they used to do it from like the 70s up through the early 2000s there needs to also be a neutral in here as well and get this the reason they change the national electric code is so that you can have smart light switches because otherwise it's hard for these light switches to have parasitic power because then they have to pull power from ground or complete the loop through ground and that's a story for another time short version is that sometimes you get lucky we don't have to open these walls at all not for data because we can drill through the wall and not make a huge mess but also not even for electrical because we can pull modern wiring through the existing one-inch conduit here's some of the pre-existing conduit i was talking about before so it's been really easy to just fish new modern electrical wiring through the old conduit and the boxes are still up to code so just get some wire nuts on this get it inspected we'll be good to go sometimes in a room like this you've got no choice so this room only had one electrical outlet and getting around the fire breaks is tricky one trick is you can come around the door jam sometimes because that's a little more open we're going to open up the bottom of the wall to be able to fish electrical line yeah the tv i don't know the tv was just sort of here it's just it's too hard to get down the stairs but you open up the wall like that it makes it easy to get your electrical and data lines in and it's pretty easy to patch with drywall sometimes accidents happen i'm going to go hang that access point and then there's not really sealing there anymore but a ceiling is a super convenient location for locating an access point because it's going to give you really good coverage even on a house like this where there's so much lath and plaster now once you get your holes cut neatly of course as neatly as you possibly can neatly with a reciprocating saw i'll talk about that in a second you need a box a box makes your work nice and neat now most hardware stores lowe's ace hardware your local hardware store sell these this is a warning low voltage class 2 use only this is a claron i think that's how you say that these are awesome because you comes like this get your cut out it's got a pretty good sized lip on the side it's like half a centimeter a quarter of an inch a little more than a quarter of an inch you cut your box out your hole you shove that in there you tighten these two screws these little things flip out in the wall and grab a hold of the wall and so these are actually pretty sturdy they work best with drywall they will work with plaster as long as your plaster is not super thick and 110 years old this will work fine for low voltage you don't want to put electrical outlets in this that's what that means class two again work with somebody who knows what they're doing don't don't don't diy that or you can diy the data but not anything other than data so this is great this will hold like six gang data outlets if you need six cat six lines this will do it and we'll talk about tools and termination for that but mainly you just got to run the lines for cat6 i want to recommend cat6 cat6 has better noise immunity than cat5 yeah you can do gigabit on them both and yeah you can even do 10 gigabit on cat5e on short runs but just go for the extra expensive cat6 this is going to be a headache you don't want another headache a few years from now you could do cat6a cas6a has slightly better lightning immunity but the lightning immunity from cat6 is so much better than cat5e at least in my experience that you should just go ahead and opt for the expensive of cat6 as opposed to cat5e this is my favorite old world box this is a msb 1g so this is a box that comes with two screws these are kind of pricey even in you know 20 unit quantities but these boxes are awesome these are strictly speaking these are meant for electrical but when you're talking about modern and relatively modern construction there's this idea of a vapor barrier you have you know plastic for outside walls you have plastic sometimes on the inside walls to control the flow of moisture this is a big open hole in your wall and even when you screw this down even with a face plate it's going to breathe a little bit around the hole depending on the construction of your home this is a lot more easy to address because you can put this in and you can do a little silicone bead around the edge of this this is much thicker plastic this is much better and you can also bead where your wire comes in your cat6 wire now you know you can use electrical for these it's got cutouts for both uh 14 gauge and 12 gauge and it's a pretty deep box so you get a lot of room for wires so you can get a nice bend radius without you know compressing your wires or doing anything crazy these boxes are also nice if you're mixing say networking wires with hdmi you can use a dremel tool or something like that to cut out the back and be able to fish an hdmi cable through the wall and then these big screws mean this is going to grab on to a stud not your drywall not your wall material which is you know in case a plaster is actually very fragile any kind of flex is eventually just going to cause it to fall out so this is a much better choice in almost all scenarios for data wiring anything like that i'll have a google link for these below but as with most things these are so nice mostly your local hardware store doesn't carry them or if you do if your local hardware store does carry these you probably live in a place where people aren't completely stupid so this is what the orange box looks like when it's in you know you got to take care to make sure that you're cutting the boxes straight and that everything lines up and if you do overcut you really should mud this little gap here at least a little bit of silicone if you use the gray box you're not going to have those kind of problems because it's going to be affixed to a stud it's going to be straight every time one tool i give an honorable mention that you don't have to have but that is nice to have is one of these dewalt like vibrating saws i don't really know what to call it cordless oscillating multi-tool so this little thing this is super easy to cut a really accurate and really you know just sort of uh idiot proof way to cut out boxes to cut out the wall to cut out the plaster although you will change bits a lot so you should have a plaster bit because otherwise your wood bits are going to get super dull and it's kind of hard to find a plaster bit but there's some you know cottage industry folks on ebay this thing is awesome for cutting out boxes without making a huge mess and if you do screw it up you can use the oscillating tool to put the piece that you cut out back if you use a regular drywall saw it can be hard to patch it and with this the cutout is so thin that you can use a little bit of patch tape and fix your hole in case you make a mistake or if you're in the fire break situation you can cut out right where the fire break is in order to do a notch like this or a drill or you know drill a hole whatever right in the wall and it does make patching a little easier because you can use that wall material that you got from cutting this out in order to repair whatever it was i'm wendell this is another episode of this house that happens to be old with you know linux edition i'm signing out i'll see in the level 1 forums\n"