I am considering moving into a space that has no Ethernet cabling at all.
I can probably get a fast FIOS line to the house. Everything after that needs to be done from scratch.
Does anyone have any experience in completely wiring a couple thousand square feet so that I may have a couple Audiofile-quality music zones? What products would be necessary?
Thank you!
(forgive me if I have missed a prior thread on this)
I ran multimode fiber to each floor into Cisco switches and separate runs of fiber to each room with a streamer. Luckily I was able to conceal the fiber and didn’t have to open up the walls which would be a $10k+ job. At this point running copper in walls is pointless. Not sure fiber is necessary given how rock solid our WiFi system is. You can buy a 200 foot fiber cable for $50 or less.
Hi,
I did this 12 months ago. Although your initial title made me laugh as we had a mini digger in last weekend and buried 200m of electrical cable and water pipe in the back garden.
But to Ethernet… really depends on the construction on the walls and how the house was built… my current property is solid walls so it has been really hard, we had floorboards galore up when renovating and laid a lot of cable, created up and downstairs comms cabinets as well as a switch cabinet in the garage and a Poe switch going out to the shed once the new power is live. Dry lining and it’s hard work but doable with cable rods. Solid walls Really messy and expensive.
I like the suggestion of running some fibre as then you can get a few more ducting options due to the physical media.
Jenny
One other thought re wifi, I largely agree it can be awesome but some construction techniques add challenges, dry lining with insulated foil backed plasterboard can make it painful, or in my case really thick old walls. I have a commercial wifi system but we ended up with an antennae on each floor and a 2nd on the top floor. Really helps to know the construction.
Thank you very much. These walls are completely solid, and so the only option is under the floor…(all electrical is currently under the floor as well)
Sorry but I disagree with the idea of running fiber everywhere instead of copper Ethernet wire.
First off basically all consumer products are using Wifi or Copper Ethernet. If you want a wired connection and all you have is fiber, you will need to use a fiber to copper transceiver.
Today you can run 10 Gbps on copper up to 100 meters using Cat6A cables. Hard to believe someone would need anywhere near this speed in their home.
The cost of installing fiber/copper is not the cable itself but the labor to do it.
The cost of network switches that are all fiber say with 24 ports or more are quite expensive. Sorry not sure what a Steamer is. If one is running fiber to all rooms I would guess they would need a high number of fiber ports on their switch.
I would design my home network to have great wireless coverage. Unless your home is as big as a castle I’m not sure what the fiber will get you.
Fiber has a diameter of angel hair pasta and took about 30 minutes to run cables up three floors. I didn’t even bother to put effort into concealing them but they’re still barely visible. The fiber is used as back channel for our WiFi. Next generation streamers will all have fiber inputs and other consumer devices will completely transition to WiFi.
When you say Streamer are you talking about a music streamer? Sorry I have no idea what an Ethernet streamer is, if this is what you are talking about.
Regarding running fiber vs. copper Ethernet, I was talking about putting it in walls like wiring up a house.
Thank you @Bryans
Maybe I should start with my system, as this will clarify the need. My desired configuration is:
Roon Nucleus (music server)–>Ethernet
dCS Rossini–>Ethernet
dCS Rossini–>Power amplifier
Power amplifier–>Speakers
dCS recommends (here and in numerous other forums) connecting their products to external sources via Ethernet.
Hence my desire to run Ethernet under the floor (walls are solid brick) to create multiple connection points.
Any further thoughts?
I was thinking: T1 line or FIOS to the apartment, then router to in-home Ethernet network?
Thank you!
Yeah music streamers.
I couldn’t even get a quote for running copper when we bought our house in 2012. The number was so large nobody wanted to put it on paper.
You just run 1 ethernet from router to hifi and use a good quality switch. If you’re tearing up the floors you might as well run a few along a few fiber runs. The Vivaldi replacement will certainly have fiber input.
I need to cover over 5000sq ft on two levels. I was able to get ethernet from a main level central connection thru the floor to my two channel room.(more on that in a bit) Getting wired connections to other locations where they were needed was going to be very difficult and costly. The option I am using is a Netgear Orbi Mesh network. One wireless router and two satellites. After some initial hic-ups my dCS/Roon set-up has been Rock solid for several years. Even in homes with solid block/concrete walls a Mesh network may be a viable solution.
Here is how my Vivaldi Upsampler gets a rock solid connection.
Cable Modem—ethernet–>Orbi Router—ethernet–>TrendNet Switch( with optical and ethernet ports)-----Optical Cable out thru floors to two channel room----->Small Green Computer Optical module----1m Shunyata Sigma ethernet -----> dCS Upsampler. All noise is removed with the optical run although in theory noise could be added in that last meter of ethernet.
Per Roon I also needed to get a wired ethernet connection to another inaccessible location where I have a system that feeds the 10 sets of speakers my whole house system. I placed one of the Orbi satellites in that location. It gets a solid wireless signal from the base station and I connect my Roon access point with 1 meter of ethernet to the Orbi. Again Rock solid.
My last need was to have access to Roon thru my Home Theater. The second satellite is placed near the home theater. Again I just connect a short run of ethernet between the Orbi Satellite and my receiver.
My SonicTransporter and dCS Upsampler show as hard wired to the Main Orbi. My Airport Time Capsule and Roon endpoint show up as hard wired to Satellite 1 and my Receiver shows as hard wired to Satellite 2.
I had many stability issues before swapping out ethernet for a fiber optic connection feeding my Upsampler. No longer.