[Dog Face Pony Soldier]

Should we even bring up the different types of coax cable? Standard vs Quad Shield... Copper-clad aluminum vs pure copper are options that impact the performance of the cable. Most contractors I've supplied don't go for quad shielded pure copper, but those that do swear it's worth the money and wouldn't buy the cheaper stuff when that was all we had that particular day. They'd wait for me to bring in the good stuff.

[Dog Face Pony Soldier]

If we're going to get in the weeds of category cabling, I'd demand the contractor not use "EZ-RJ45" connectors. They're quicker for the installer, but these connectors are known to introduce crosstalk across the conductors. This will cause intermittent problems that can make you and your installer nuts trying to troubleshoot issues. I've had contractors have to literally put new traditional RJ45 connectors on an entire job because they were losing their shirt in troubleshooting and dealing with upset homeowner.


https://www.platinumtools.com/produc...45-connectors/

[zx10guy]

Originally Posted by glennQNYC

If we're going to get in the weeds of category cabling, I'd demand the contractor not use "EZ-RJ45" connectors. They're quicker for the installer, but these connectors are known to introduce crosstalk across the conductors. This will cause intermittent problems that can make you and your installer nuts trying to troubleshoot issues. I've had contractors have to literally put new traditional RJ45 connectors on an entire job because they were losing their shirt in troubleshooting and dealing with upset homeowner.


https://www.platinumtools.com/produc...45-connectors/

That's interesting. I've lately been using the EZ-RJ45 connectors in wiring some of the cabling in my house. Haven't had an issue. But even though these connectors are supposed to make cable termination easier, you do still have to practice care when using them. But I can only say this anecdotally because I don't have a Fluke cable certifier to verify the cabling I've terminated meet IEEE spec. I can only go by looking at the port statistics on my networking equipment to see if there are any errors such as CRC errors, frame retransmits, runts, giants, etc.

[pennsiveguy]

Originally Posted by zx10guy

That's interesting. I've lately been using the EZ-RJ45 connectors in wiring some of the cabling in my house. Haven't had an issue. But even though these connectors are supposed to make cable termination easier, you do still have to practice care when using them. But I can only say this anecdotally because I don't have a Fluke cable certifier to verify the cabling I've terminated meet IEEE spec. I can only go by looking at the port statistics on my networking equipment to see if there are any errors such as CRC errors, frame retransmits, runts, giants, etc.

I've always used the modular jacks where you press the wires into the individual slots, with 4 slots on each side. Keep the untwisted length to the absolute minimum you can get by with. I've never had a single problem, though I can't claim that I've done extensive analysis of dropped frames and the like. I have done thorough verification using iperf, however, and I've not found a circuit where I can't get ~935Mb/s which is right at the theoretical wire speed, minus TCP overhead.

[Dog Face Pony Soldier]

Originally Posted by zx10guy

That's interesting. I've lately been using the EZ-RJ45 connectors in wiring some of the cabling in my house. Haven't had an issue. But even though these connectors are supposed to make cable termination easier, you do still have to practice care when using them. But I can only say this anecdotally because I don't have a Fluke cable certifier to verify the cabling I've terminated meet IEEE spec. I can only go by looking at the port statistics on my networking equipment to see if there are any errors such as CRC errors, frame retransmits, runts, giants, etc.

EZ-RJ45 are popular because of the time savings, and most of the time they're not an issue. However, I know numerous manufacturers that want you to remove these short cuts as soon as you call them seeking tech support. Some say these void their products warranty. The worst part is usually the problems incurred are sporadic and intermittent, but the problems go away as soon as you use conventional RJ45s. Keep this in mind if you experience anything wonky.

A quick web search brought up this topic on the Control4 forum, but I'm confident you can find others. https://www.c4forums.com/topic/19045-ez-rj45/

[TheWatchGuy]

regardless of what you use, not having cable and internet wiring in your house is going to be a no go for a lot of future prospective buyers when you go to sell.

at a minimum get the main rooms wired up and preferably bedrooms/office.

[UncleWede]

And consider a lift in the garage!!

[zx10guy]

Originally Posted by pennsiveguy

I've always used the modular jacks where you press the wires into the individual slots, with 4 slots on each side. Keep the untwisted length to the absolute minimum you can get by with. I've never had a single problem, though I can't claim that I've done extensive analysis of dropped frames and the like. I have done thorough verification using iperf, however, and I've not found a circuit where I can't get ~935Mb/s which is right at the theoretical wire speed, minus TCP overhead.

I do that too at the wall/floor jacks I have around my home. They're keystone female RJ45 jacks that are punched down. There are areas of my network where I had to terminate the cabling to male RJ45 ends. An example are the drops for my security cameras.

[JasonCSU]

Originally Posted by glennQNYC

Corn, make sure you're having them run at least 2 (I'd run 3) CAT6e to every TV location. You don't want to be relying on WiFi for streaming video. This should be considered a standard setup in 2020. I'd go so far as saying I'd be concerned if your low-voltage contractor didn't recommend this without your suggesting it.

I had this discussion with a friend and his wife when they were building a new home, convincing them that a wired home network has many benefits. They initially thought WiFi was the answer for everything.

[zx10guy]

Originally Posted by glennQNYC

EZ-RJ45 are popular because of the time savings, and most of the time they're not an issue. However, I know numerous manufacturers that want you to remove these short cuts as soon as you call them seeking tech support. Some say these void their products warranty. The worst part is usually the problems incurred are sporadic and intermittent, but the problems go away as soon as you use conventional RJ45s. Keep this in mind if you experience anything wonky.

A quick web search brought up this topic on the Control4 forum, but I'm confident you can find others. https://www.c4forums.com/topic/19045-ez-rj45/

Yeah. I've read all about the issues you've pointed out. But never heard of actual cross talk/interference issues using these jacks. I'm just really careful of making sure the conductors are pushed down correctly into the individual wires and the ends are cut off appropriately.

I had a bunch of headaches using the traditional RJ45 jacks where inevitably one wire isn't seated all the way into the end of the channel of the jack and I would have to redo it. It's not a problem if you don't care about keeping wiring twists as close to the RJ45 connector. But I'm anal about that.

[zx10guy]

Originally Posted by JasonCSU

I had this discussion with a friend and his wife when they were building a new home, convincing them that a wired home network has many benefits. They initially thought WiFi was a answer for everything.

WiFi is important and it's going to be more and more the majority of what people use because of the devices being used on a home network and the convenience factor. As more and more wireless mesh systems hit the market at ever cheaper price points, this is going to drive more of the wireless everything.
I have to say the majority of the time I spend is on my laptop connected wirelessly.

But as you are aware and have been discussed ad nauseum on this thread, wired still has its place.

[ipilcher]

A question for those of you using 10g at home ... Why do you need it (or are you just future-proofing)?

[TheWatchGuy]

Originally Posted by ipilcher

A question for those of you using 10g at home ... Why do you need it (or are you just future-proofing)?

You know how frustrating it is to have porn buffer mid stroke?

[UncleWede]

Originally Posted by TheWatchGuy

You know how frustrating it is to have porn buffer mid stroke?

#whippersnappers Never had to watch a .gif slowly appear over 9600. . .

[JasonCSU]

Originally Posted by zx10guy

WiFi is important and it's going to be more and more the majority of what people use because of the devices being used on a home network and the convenience factor. As more and more wireless mesh systems hit the market at ever cheaper price points, this is going to drive more of the wireless everything.
I have to say the majority of the time I spend is on my laptop connected wirelessly.

But as you are aware and have been discussed ad nauseum on this thread, wired still has its place.

I certainly don't disagree. My use case to them was for other network items other than their phones, laptops, and streaming video. They eventually want to set up security cameras, so I had to explain why wired PoE is the way to go for camera use. Their new house is also pretty large, so I also informed them multiple WiFi access points may be necessary. Once they understood the benefits of having some things wired, they figured it also made sense to have drops where TVs and game consoles may be.

[zx10guy]

Originally Posted by TheWatchGuy

You know how frustrating it is to have porn buffer mid stroke?

And how am I going to make Whack off Wednesday epic if I have to stop mid stroke because of buffering......

[Dog Face Pony Soldier]

Originally Posted by UncleWede

#whippersnappers Never had to watch a .gif slowly appear over 9600. . .

Shiiit. I'm old enough to remember people trying to make out what was on a scrambled Cinemax channel.

[Dog Face Pony Soldier]

On an entirely separate note... The pro surveillance camera guys I've done business with almost universally avoid IP camera systems. They've poo-poo'd them as something only rookies chose. Not my area of expertise so I'm just sharing what professional installers and manufacturers have shared with me.

[pennsiveguy]

Originally Posted by glennQNYC

Shiiit. I'm old enough to remember people trying to make out what was on a scrambled Cinemax channel.

An uber-geek friend of mine had a home-built satellite de-scrambler back in the '90s. It ran on an old PC. He'd have the screen pointed towards the viewing area so we could see the console output, which was a blizzard of text. We usually made him turn it off, it was so distracting. That's some Grade-A geekery right there.

[zx10guy]

Originally Posted by ipilcher

A question for those of you using 10g at home ... Why do you need it (or are you just future-proofing)?

As an experiment, I installed the workhorse of business class 10Gig NICs (Intel X520) into my gaming PC running Windows 8.1 (now upgraded to Windows 10) to see if it would work. To my surprise it did without having to play driver roulette.

Some of the activities I do which is more about my IT hobby and work is moving around large ISO and OVA/OVF files building out new virtual machines in my vSphere cluster. Being able move around/load those files with 10Gig connectivity saves tons of time.

In addition to that, my MD3800i iSCSI array requires 10Gig connectivity. I haven't leveraged this but will when I get my 2 Cisco UCS240 servers up and running is FCoE...more specifically leveraging the features of DCB (data center bridging).

Also, I have a few connected devices running on my PoE access switch where that traffic gets distributed to other parts of my network. If I ran that through even bonded 1Gig links, performance would be worse than running over a single 10Gig link. I have 10Gig running between this switch and the top of rack switch in my server rack.

Truth be told, the server I run 24/7 is my physical host for about 24 VMs of which about 8 VMs run 24/7. Because of the traffic going in and out of these VMs, the server is 40Gig attached to the top of rack switch.

[UncleWede]

Originally Posted by glennQNYC

Shiiit. I'm old enough to remember people trying to make out what was on a scrambled Cinemax channel.

THIS is what I was expected when I clicked on the category of Adult on the new Beast we have on Fire in the kitchen. When it came thru clear and LOUD, I was scrambling to move to another channel/mute the TV

[zx10guy]

Originally Posted by glennQNYC

On an entirely separate note... The pro surveillance camera guys I've done business with almost universally avoid IP camera systems. They've poo-poo'd them as something only rookies chose. Not my area of expertise so I'm just sharing what professional installers and manufacturers have shared with me.

I'd really would be interested in their reasonings. Respected companies such as Bosch and Axis have IP cameras which are not cheap.

Having run my Hikvision camera system for years, I don't see their issue with it. I've actually been in a operations center for a to be unnamed Federal Agency and was horrified by the picture quality of their camera system (closed circuit based) which didn't even come close to the quality of my system.