Router recommendation for 2020

[Soultribunal]

How long/hard was it to run ethernet? I’m buying my first house soon and want to run ethernet everywhere... I’m just not sure of the feasability.

That is quite possibly the best time if you can get access to the house early with it being 'empty' of your stuff. Do a whole bunch of home runs to wherever your Demarc point is, and then you are golden. I did it with my brother (had to open up some drywall but still, with nothing in his house it took us 3/4 of day to pull 15 runs throughout his house).

Of course, that depends on the house design too and such, his was a new build so much easier than say a house (like mine) that is 50+ years old lol.

-ST

 

[FreeKnight]

How long/hard was it to run ethernet? I’m buying my first house soon and want to run ethernet everywhere... I’m just not sure of the feasability.

It kind of depends on the individual house and how old it is or what the layout's like.

I have an mostly unfinished basement so that gave me easy access to the cold air returns and I ran the wires up the CARs on each side of the house and then went through walls on the main floor and ran up to the attic in the second floor and then down into the walls of the rooms I wanted to wire. It's not hard but for example on the second floor I had to put two outet sized holes in wall I was adding a jack to. One for the jack, then one higher up to drill through the studs and fish the wire down from. Expect a decent amount of drywall patching and painting. Having a second person makes running and fishing the wire much faster.

If you get a fairly old house without cold air returns you'll probably need to look at what kind of construction and if it has an accessible attic vs crawl space, etc

 

[lcdguy]

I know when i ran ethernet in my place a number of years ago, we ran a large bundle of around 10 runs up the cold air return to the attic then fished the runs down from the attic into holes in the drywall.

i went with 5e plenum since i didn't really care about 1gbps certification and at the time cat 6 plenum was at best double the price of 5e plenum. I also was fortunate to have a semi unfinished basement to get a couple of runs to up the main floor where i needed them.

it was a lot of work but in the end worth while.

 

[Bapadaboopy]

That is quite possibly the best time if you can get access to the house early with it being 'empty' of your stuff. Do a whole bunch of home runs to wherever your Demarc point is, and then you are golden. I did it with my brother (had to open up some drywall but still, with nothing in his house it took us 3/4 of day to pull 15 runs throughout his house).

Of course, that depends on the house design too and such, his was a new build so much easier than say a house (like mine) that is 50+ years old lol.

-ST

Unfortunately we can't get access early. But that's okay.. we are moving from a condo, so we don't have a lot of stuff yet
What's a demarc point? central point for network equipment, etc?

It kind of depends on the individual house and how old it is or what the layout's like.

I have an mostly unfinished basement so that gave me easy access to the cold air returns and I ran the wires up the CARs on each side of the house and then went through walls on the main floor and ran up to the attic in the second floor and then down into the walls of the rooms I wanted to wire. It's not hard but for example on the second floor I had to put two outet sized holes in wall I was adding a jack to. One for the jack, then one higher up to drill through the studs and fish the wire down from. Expect a decent amount of drywall patching and painting. Having a second person makes running and fishing the wire much faster.

If you get a fairly old house without cold air returns you'll probably need to look at what kind of construction and if it has an accessible attic vs crawl space, etc

I'll look into the cold air returns for sure. I figure we will have to do a lot of patching of walls and re-paint everything.. I'd also like to put access points in the ceilings of a few rooms..

I know when i ran ethernet in my place a number of years ago, we ran a large bundle of around 10 runs up the cold air return to the attic then fished the runs down from the attic into holes in the drywall.

i went with 5e plenum since i didn't really care about 1gbps certification and at the time cat 6 plenum was at best double the price of 5e plenum. I also was fortunate to have a semi unfinished basement to get a couple of runs to up the main floor where i needed them.

it was a lot of work but in the end worth while.

I was thinking of running a few fiber connections to future proof.. but I don't think that's necessary.

 

[lcdguy]

fiber is likely overkill for anything other than backhaul/trunk links between switches on different floors or connections between storage arrays and 10gbps+ switching/fabrics. Not to mention fiber cables are a lot more delicate than copper and could be more trouble then thier worth for a home install. I currently just using a short OM2 to connect my router/firewall to my switch since i already had it lying around from a previous setup.

 

[FreeKnight]

I'd just stick with CAT 6. Fiber coming into a house makes sense, but fiber between is overkill. Hell if you're really worried you could double up on a few of your runs like I did to areas where you're going to have a couple of items (I had 2 to the master bedroom for TV and Shield, 2 to the living room for Shield and PS4, etc) and you'll still likely save a ton of money and never saturate those lines within the next 10 years.

 

[Soultribunal]

Unfortunately we can't get access early. But that's okay.. we are moving from a condo, so we don't have a lot of stuff yet
What's a demarc point? central point for network equipment, etc?


I'll look into the cold air returns for sure. I figure we will have to do a lot of patching of walls and re-paint everything.. I'd also like to put access points in the ceilings of a few rooms..



I was thinking of running a few fiber connections to future proof.. but I don't think that's necessary.

Sorry I use some telephony terminology in all this. Demarc is where the cable feed comes into the house from the exterior source.

I don't think fiber in a household is needed for anything for quite some time.

-ST

 

[Bapadaboopy]

Good to know, thanks guys. I’ll just stick with Cat 6. And like you said FreeKnight, I’ll probably double up on a few areas.

 

[Izerous]

Sorry I use some telephony terminology in all this. Demarc is where the cable feed comes into the house from the exterior source.

I don't think fiber in a household is needed for anything for quite some time.

-ST

but i have minigbic ports I want to fill...

In all seriousness my detached garage doesn't have a gas line it also is severely underpowered at the panel. When i do finally get the funds to trench the pipeline/upgrade the electrical I was seriously considering running a fibre line out the the garage instead of anything copper based. Not because of ground loops since the source of power is still the panel in the house but then I could run it inside the electrical conduit without concerns of interference (I think i'm allowed to run it that way) and I'd get away with having to run 1 less conduit etc.

 

[Soultribunal]

but i have minigbic ports I want to fill...

In all seriousness my detached garage doesn't have a gas line it also is severely underpowered at the panel. When i do finally get the funds to trench the pipeline/upgrade the electrical I was seriously considering running a fibre line out the the garage instead of anything copper based. Not because of ground loops since the source of power is still the panel in the house but then I could run it inside the electrical conduit without concerns of interference (I think i'm allowed to run it that way) and I'd get away with having to run 1 less conduit etc.

Hheheheh, Yeah I love fiber, we do it at work a bit now. But for a house, its so OVERKILL.
And you're talking to a guy with a dedicated 1GB pipe just for Gaming with an LTE Backup.

-ST