How

to Install a Data Network at Home

by M Laurence

Table of Contents

1. Welcome
2. Equipment Needed
3. Where to Situate the Patch Panel/Hub
4. Moving the Router
5. Cabling the Network
6. Connecting the Sockets
7. Patch Panel or RJ45 Plugs
8. Patch Panel Cabinet
9. Scanning the Network
10. Signing off

1. Welcome

Hi there and thank you for taking a look at my ebook.

My problem was that I was trying to use a Mac upstairs in my house, a laptop in the living
room and a laptop in the garage - but i had very SLOW Broadband speed thanks to my
Wi-Fi being blocked by thick walls. I wanted fast Internet because I also do video editing
and upload files in my spare time, i also wanted a possible laptop position in the garage as
i fix cars. Using Youtube to see how something is taken apart is extremely useful in the
garage. Wi-Fi was terrible out there.

Wi-Fi is roughly 50% slower than hard-wired networks.

Wired connections with an Ethernet cable run at 100mbps (mega bit per second).
Unless you have gigabit hardware (NICs & Router) and gigabit approved cabling
(Cat6A),
then you are looking at 1000mbps [1gbps].

Wireless connections at their Maximum speed can run at the following;

G rated routers - 54mbps MAX
N rated routers - 300mbps MAX

So if speed is important to us then a wired network is the ONLY option.

My solution was to install a hard-wire a local data network in the house and garage and
bring it back to a central location in the house - connecting it to a hub and router and have
total freedom.

Fast-forward and now the work is complete and I can access the net from all my rooms if
needed, guests can even log on, and I can use the laptop in the garage when working on a
car and getting Internet-based information fast.

Being a Telecommunications Engineer of 15 years made this a relatively easy job, and I

wanted to share with you the method of doing this. I felt my experience would be really
useful to many people and this led to me writing this book.

Cabling inside a house can be very tricky due to neatness being of high important plus the
location of the network patch panel and equipment can make all the difference between a
very hard job and a relatively easy job.

I wanted to give someone a simple How to to work out where to site the equipment,
cabling, connecting, whether to use a patch panel or RJ45 plugs and even whether to use a
Cabinet.
Im going to throw the guff and tech-talk out the window itll be an easy to follow guide
with no nonsense.

Lets max out that super speed from your Internet and get cabling!


Martin

2. Equipment Needed

Lets jump straight into the equipment youll need to complete the work. This is the best
case scenarios and im sure you can borrow the odd tool from a friend over a weekend to
complete the work.

Basic Tools:
(available from any tool centre)
Cutters
Flat-blade Screwdriver
Philips (cross-head) Screw Driver
Punch Down Tool connection tool (connecting the modules)

Battery Drill
Masonry drill bit 10mm
Wood Drill bit 10mm

Power Drill (SDS is usually the best)
Mix of heavy Masonry drill bits

Hammer and clips
Clip-gun
Black Tie-Wraps
Electrical Tape

Data
Back Boxes
Front Plates
Modules
Patch Panel (Optional)
RJ45 plugs (instead of Patch Panel)

RJ45 Crimper

Testing Equipment:
Label Machine
Cat5e Scanner

Cable:
(Available from an electrical wholesalers)
Both Cat5e and Cat6 are twisted pair cables that use copper wires, 4 twisted pairs in each
cable. The specification for Cat6 features more stringent specifications for crosstalk and
system noise.

Cat5e performs up to 1000mbps.
Cat6 perform up to 10,000mbps.

So you can use Cat5e which is perfectly workable for the avaerge Broadband speed and
Infinity etc, Cat6A gives it a longer life and some added future proofing.

This comes in boxes of 300 metres so one box is more than enough for a typical house.

Hardware:
(Available from an electrical wholesalers)

Hub
Your Broadband Router plugs into a Hub with a Cat5 or Cat6 Patch Lead and gives you
additional capacity. Most come in sizes 10, 16, 24. It seems overkill but Id probably go
for around 16, although the differences in price are minimal, and youve got stacks of
capacity.

Patch Panel
This is optional, you can use one of these which you will terminate the cables to the back
of.

OR

You will need an RJ45 crimping tool, which clamps the RJ45 plugs to the ends of the
cable. These will plug straight into the hub.

Patch Panel Cabinet
This is the next level of tidiness. You can a unit the size of a set or drawers all the way to a
floor standing unit which you can situate all of your equipment.

A 6U patch panel cabinet can make everything neat and tidy by mounting this on the wall
or on top of a small platform in the roof and have all the equipment inside. These usually
come with the nuts and bolts used to fix the patch panel and hub into the cab. Some have
cooler fans and you can buy power trains that fix in like the patch panel for added
neatness.

3. Where to Situate the Patch Panel/Hub

How this works if youre not familiar:

1. You have your Broadband Line coming into your house - this connects too
2. With a RJ45 or RJ11(Which ever is provided) Patch Lead to
3. Your Router - this can handle about 4 computers - if this isnt enough you connect
too
4. With a RJ45 Patch Lead to
5. AHub which has 8,16, 24 ports and connects to
6. With a RJ45 Patch Lead for Every port to
7. Your Patch Panel which is all your socket cables terminated
8. These go out to the rooms in your house


An engineer I worked with used to tell me that you should spend an hour looking around
before you actually do any work.

A data network is cabled individually to each socket and goes back to the patch panel. You
cannot loop anything on. Each point you want needs a separate cable.

While looking around your house you are looking for a central location to site your data
equipment - the place where all the cables will come back to and terminate. Somewhere
that will make your life easier when cabling to the sockets. Are all the sockets favouring
one side of the house? Can you site the kit on that side and run down the walls or into the
ceiling and drop down?

You will also be cabling your main broadband line to this position too.

The key point here, is you want to run as little cable as possible in the neatest way
possible.

Things that will help:
Can you site the network equipment in the basement? Do you have access to your ground
floor rooms through the basement?


Many houses site everything in the basement and some houses have large basements so
that you can literally drill through the floor to where you need the sockets.

Attic:
The attic is another good location, again if the roof spans the whole house you can use this
as your method to cable to the various rooms and drop down through the eves and down
the outside of the house.

A cupboard:
If this has access to an outer wall or roof/basement this again can make a great place to
situate the network.

Power:
Something to bear in mind is you will need at least 2 power sockets for your equipment.
This is to power up the hub and router.

Where not to situate the equipment:
Places to avoid are where heat and humidity will be an issue. Anywhere where it will be
30 Degrees C is certainly somewhere to avoid like the airing cupboard, anything near
heaters.

Also you want to avoid the fuseboard/powerboard/mains power which can interfere with
the date equipment.

4. Moving the Router

You will need to get your Broadband connection to where youre situating the network
equipment.

The line jacks that come into your house will look like this:

This is the old style of BT mainline box. So you will need to run a length of cable from
this socket to your new location where your data equipment is going. You are paralleling
the line to the new place. That means this socket will continue to work.

Once cabled unscrew that front plate on the BT jack and connect your new pair of wires to
the rear. I would use the BLUE pair. There are 2 connections 5 and 2 and you will connect
to those. You are in effect looping on this socket and wiring a new socket in parallel.

A line is made up of only 2 wires, so while you can use a bigger cable, you are only
connecting 2 wires. You can use telephone cable or the Cat5e. So you will need another
linejack to connect to the other end and again you will connect to 2 and 5. Below is the
Broadband Splitter that you will use to connect your router too and you should already
have this.




This is the newer style box:

This is the newer style box and actually doesnt need a Broadband Splitter. The front plate
does it for you and so you already have your speech and data split. This is actually easier.
The port we want is on the left with the little image of a computer screen.

We will be using our Cat5e or Cat 6 which ever one you are using and are cabling from
here to our new network equipment and patch panel.

We will need an RJ45 plug and a RJ45 Crimper to attach a plug to the end of the cable and
to plug it in.

The other end of this cable plugs into your Router which in turn will plug into your new
hub.

So you need to follow the same approach to cable this as cabling the data sockets which i
will come too.

5. Cabling the Network

So from where all the equipment is located, we have a patch panel where all the data
cables terminate - they run out separately to each socket in your house.

When I went to a clients house to install more phone or network sockets neatness was of
paramount importance. No one wants to see cables tram-lining skirting boards. In fact in
many cases they didnt want to see any cables. You obviously cant magic cables inside
walls but theres many tricks to help conceal and hide cables and use the house to your
advantage.

Instead of me going through every possible scenario and how to overcome it, Im going to
break it down into simple situations. I will assume you have or dont have access to the
roof, same with the basement and outside wall. The outside wall being the last resort, if
that is all you have then you will have to use that. The other option is surface cabling and
really no one wants to do that. But if you live in a flat where you have no attic, no
basement, and no walls then there is still an option. So without further ado lets get started.

I will start with the best-case scenarios and finish with the worst!

Situated in the Basement
This is the best-case scenario You situate the whole Patch Panel cabinet down here. The
best thing about this place is we have access to all of the ground floor or at least most of it.
So I would drill down from where you want your socket on the ground floor through the
floor into the basement. I would then drop the cable down the hole rather than poking it
up. You will be drilling through wood most likely so will need a wood drill bit (available
from a hardware shop) and a battery drill. Try to avoid drilling into a beam as these are
usually very thick.

Situated in the Attic
This is another great place to locate the network, so long as it doesnt get too hot up there.
So the problem here to how to drop the cables from the roof. Depending on how high your
roof is 1 or 2 floors you will need a ladder/step-ladder and someone to hold it for you.

So you need to work out which rooms need a network point and then look at routes to
cable across the roof void and then out through the eves. Below is a route coming out of
the eves.

You can come around the eves clipping it under the roof tiles using the hammer and clips
and then down the side of the house to the room you want to install the socket.

A cable being clipped down the wall can be a little unsightly so the best place to come
down is behind a drain-pipe. So if you can drill into the eves behind the drain-pipe then
that will be even neater. You can use black tie-wraps to hold the cables to the drain-pipe
and conceal them behind it.

Then youre looking to drill from the inside of the room to the outside wall. Ideally you
want to drill above the skirting and site the backbox covering the hole you have drilled.
Then you can bring the cable down behind the drain-pipe and use a hammer and clips to
cable to the hole in the wall.

Wire Coat-hangers that are cut and bent straight make great rods to poke through a drill
hole. You can use electrical tape and tape the cable to it.

Trick:
I have used a fake drain-pipe to conceal cables when the routing has been really awkward
and this works a treat if you really dont want to see cables at all.

Using both Routes:
Also sometimes you may end up using both the attic and basement to get to awkward
positions. If your cabling from the basement left corner and there are a couple of points
needed on the second floor of the right corner it maybe easier to rise up behind a drainpipe and get into the roof void go across the roof attic and drop down. If this is the case,
I would cable the roof first and drop down so youre not fighting gravity.

No access to roof or Basement:

This is relatively frequent and means youre into drilling on an outside wall and surface
cabling either at low level or high level. Once you cant hide cables youre really into
surface cabling. Ideally you want to get up high to the eves and cable along the wood. If
all the points are on the ground floor then it may make sense to drill out and cable along
low level. You can tie-wrap the cables together so they form a tight bundle.

Using the Carpet:
If none of these are options are available then the other possibility is using the carpet to
hide cables. When you pull a carpet up there is a small gap between the gripper and the
wall. This is a great place to hide 1 or sometimes 2 cables at a push. You can also pull up
the gripper and hammer it down giving yourself some extra room.

For this work you will need a chisel to take notches out of door frames just to give you
some extra space for the door to close. You need to take special care that you have allowed
enough room for the carpet to go back and the door can open and close properly without
pinching or damaging the cable.

6. Connecting the Sockets

Once you have mounted the back boxes on the wall with a drill, 2 plugs and 2 screws you
will need to connect to the modules themselves.

The modules you connect to can come in various forms, but essentially youre connecting
all 8 of the cable wires. You will need a punch down tool.

Here is the tool you will need which again comes in various forms:

Here is the back of the module which you will need to connect to. The wires come in
pairs, blue, orange, green and brown. The have a white leg and a coloured leg. These have
to be in the exact order that the colours designate on the module.

Finally this is what the socket should look like.

7. Patch Panel or RJ45 Plugs

So we have the sockets all done, now we are based at the Patch Panel end. Theres two
ways to connect your Cat5e. The first way is the cheapest and requires you to connect
RJ45 plugs using a Crimping device to the ends of the cable. This is a little tricky as you
have to trim the casing off and slide all 8 wires into the RJ45 plug. Then using the
Crimper below crunch all the cables into the plug.

Its a good idea to use a patch lead to copy the wiring colour order. Ive attached a diagram
below. Things to watch for are that the crimper has properly crushed the wires, so give it
three good squeezes.

This with your RJ45 plug with the pins top-side and the plug facing away from you - slide
the wires in as shown below:



Once you have connected all the plugs youre ready to scan the network.


Patch Panel

This is the second way into the back on a patch panel. You connect the all the cables to
the back of a patch panel. Again like the module there is a colour code that you have to
follow and you use a same tool the punch down tool.

If we look closer at the connections:

Again they are all coloured coded and you use your punch down tool for this.

This is a much neater method and you would then use 0.5 metre patch leads to plug from

your Hub to this patch panel.

8. Patch Panel Cabinet

This is going to the next level of neatness. This is a 6U patch panel cabinet and you can
make everything neat and tidy. By mounting this on the wall or on top of a small platform
in the roof you can site all the equipment inside. including the Broadband socket, Router,
the Patch Panel and Hub would screw into the from of it allowing patching between the
two.

These usually come with the nuts and bolts used to fix the patch panel and hub into the
cab. Some have cooler fans and you can buy power trains that fix in like the patch panel
for added neatness.

9. Scanning the Network

So now we have everything installed we come to the final test and we want to be sure we
have all 8 wires in every cable going through from Patch Panel to Module. That way we
can be 100% sure that the network is fine. If something isnt working for whatever reason,
we can say the network has been scanned and is working.

If you can borrow a scanner from a friend great, if not, then you can buy very simple LED
scanner from around 6/$10. They come in two parts, one is the sender and one the
receiver and you plug these things in each end. The receiver has 2 sets of 8 sending and
receiving LEDs and is looking to match all 8 lights up. If you have wires crossed/not
coming up, simply re-terminate each end making sure the colours are correct.

I would then use the label machine and label the sockets up corresponding with the patch
panel number. This way when you patch something out you will know exactly where
youre patching too.

Now youre ready to patch out.

So if you have used RJ45 ends you simply plug these into the Hub or Router if youre not
using a Hub. If you have a patch panel you will need as many 0.5 metre patch leads as you
need sockets.

At the socket end you will need 2-3metre patch leads to plug into your computer/laptop.

Youre all done!

10. Signing off

We have reached the end of installation so congratulations! I hope the information i have
provided will be of use and solve your Internet speed problems. If you havent got any
problems at least you will be using your Broadband to its maximum potential.

Thanks and good bye!

Martin