Homes need to be built for better internet
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I have a chase in the middle of my house which used to be a chimney for a now decommissioned oil burner. I have all matter of cables going through there now, including, but not limited to two cat cables that provide ethernet to my attic and second floor. Not sure I would have been able to DIY it without that chase.
If each house had a couple of these chases that would provide a ton of flexibility in terms of remodeling.
Perhaps the tradeoff is that for any given house price, the time & money cost of planning and adding "hidden" features that buyers seldom think to prioritize, has to be offset by reductions in other value that buyers are more likely to notice. But, not necessarily space.
Either way I suspect they aren’t optimizing for living space, but salability and construction cost. That’s what buyers will actually use in decisions - ability to pay and perception of quality/value.
I put thought into long term maintenance and upgrades for my current house and for the first few years got nothing from it. As I’ve had to do repairs recently I’ve saved literally thousands of dollars because the wires, pipes, conduits and fittings are all easily accessible.
I guess my point is: You'll fail inspection unless you're extremely careful. It isn't obvious how to add generic future conduit without fire-stops being a huge PITA (since the same thing stopping smoke/fire also stops you running cable).
Keep in mind new construction is held to a higher standard (newer version of IBC/IFC) than grandfathering into existing building.
This is a hard/annoying problem to solve, "shove some insulation in the pipe" isn't in the ballpark of what a solution might look like.
It's definitely 'encouraged' to put in fire stops and seal the holes you make but very few states in the US, if any, will stop you if you choose not to because they won't know.
when we had an electrician dig new chases to completely rewire the electricity in my grandparents apartment in a century old building, i asked him to add an additional pipe everywhere so that i could wire ethernet as well. every room got at least one or two, some more. the key thing was that even though we didn't use most of those extra pipes, adding them barely cost more than the material, because the work to dig the chases didn't change.
Higher density housing can be extra frustrating. My single family home is in a community dense enough to require fireblock in the walls on upper floors, and it has made running my own ethernet an even bigger pain in the ass than usual.
Saw an ICF house a decade ago where they did some thin channel mounted on the wall & they ran everything through there instead of cutting into the ICF. Can't remember how it worked with the dry wall.
Would be nice to see interior walls built with such a thing.
40 years ago, the U of Minnesota built a new Elec Engg building. As I remember it, every single office for faculty and grad students, as well as every lab, backed up to a secure 6-foot wide hallway that was built specifically to be a cable chase. Brilliant idea. Experimenting with a new technology was a matter of changing out the access plate in the back wall of the office, and rounding up someone with a key to the hallway.
In standard suburban construction, this will never happen. These developers will cheap out to save $15 on a ventilation fan, they aren't going to run anything extra if people aren't demanding it.
To a 1st approximation, nobody (in the buying public) knows or cares.
This is both for safety (heat as well as cable breaks) and for actual noise issues.
This is something that should be done by an engineering firm no an architect, the architect should know it needs to be contracted out though.
Most property just isn't built to those kinds of margins.
My friend that is like me a network engineer just bought/building a new house, and was talking about getting a 8 port switch. I was like what, for a new, large-ish house? He was talking about just doing wireless, and I'm like ugh, but what about all your kids watching netflix on 8k+ tv's, all on wireless at the same time and complaining to you, you'll wish you had wired their tv's. Not to mention security cameras, doorbells, multiple AP's potentially, ethernet-based sensors for things, etc, all things that need Power over Ethernet too, or at least benefit from it. It got him thinking at least.
Then he went back to the builder and the builder gave him 2 options, take what they give, which is an ethernet drop in each room in a random spot back to a closet of whatever cable they happen to have that day, or nothing. I'd have been pissed, and he was at that point. I told him better luck next time on his next house.
It shouldn't take a network engineer to build a decent home network, but apparently it does and any home builder worth a damn should in the modern age should consider it.
Unfortunately if you want a decent network - then do it yourself.
I'll never get 10G from my basement to 2ed floor office. I can run fiber along the chimney, but there is no way down that doesn't disturb the vermiculite insulation.
I love old houses, but they present a whole different set of engineering challenges and DIY skills.
It does mean that costs frequently balloon, but you should expect that when you do any form of home renovation, and just budget an extra $100K or so for it.
Yeah, I can't believe everyone isn't jumping right on that.
Edit: probably higher than that in certain locations where homeownership is impossible
Also, "nice" things continually transition to being expected "basic" things. Especially when many people find the upgrades not too onerous. Other people feel natural frustration if happenstance makes the transition to a new norm more difficult for them.
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It took work to get good WiFi signals throughout my home this year. But an 80+ foot tree fell on the roof, centered directly over me in bed without killing me, during a tremendously dark and stormy night. So I won't complain about the signal resistant materials! Too much! In a closely adjecent "verse" I won't be complaining about anything.
My place has two separate drops per room. One for Ethernet and one Ethernet that is setup as a phone line. I picked up a couple used enterprise grade AP’s with traffic shaping and all is good.
Was talking to my dad over Thanksgiving and that's precisely what he did every time we bought a new house. He would go over to the new house after work and install conduit to the house so he didn't have to tear up the house installing it after drywall.
The first time I think he just did a giant PVC pipe from top to bottom, that's what he said. Seems like there was more to that installation that I should ask about. I was quite a young child when we lived at that house so hearing it had ethernet was surprising.
The second time he actually did all the ethernet runs while the house was unfinished and I remember it because he'd bring me along.
And if you are retrofitting a cable run, yeah it probably will be 'just hanging freely behind the walls'.
From builder's perspective it is "controversial" to run conduit because they're trying to tick boxes as cheaply/fast as possible and conduit is the exact opposite of that goal. If you want conduit, I'd assume you have to pay for it as a bespoke upgrade.
In my previous house an upstairs leak resulted in a downstairs ceiling coming down which was a boon for wiring up most of the house and adding in ceiling speakers and can lights.
Often you can't use the old (unwanted) cable to act as a "fish tape" or "mouse" to pull a new cable because the old cable is routed through many small holes in 2x4 studs, ceiling plates, or joists. The path usually has several tight 90 degree turns, with staples, and some of the holes are even spray foamed. There would be too much friction inside the walls to pull a cable for non-trivial distances.
If the old cable was inside of conduit, pulling a new cable could work but that type of install is very rare. Conduit for networking cable is typically only used underground to bury the cable between buildings rather than inside the walls of a single home.
My options are either a guy that does all the big projects (churches, restaurants, houses for people that won’t blink at a 100,000 dollar late-construction review) or myself.
There’s simply no in-between, because it’s not in the mindset of the general population. Most one-man electrician shows probably have enough issues keeping their phone going.
Over my lifetime I think 10 -> 100 -> 1000 -> 2.5 maybe 10 is usually doable.
arguably not as good as fiber, which has been reused in steps of orders of magnitude each tech jump.
When my aunt moved her custom sewing shop last October I put more effort into planning the network infrastructure for her modest storefront than homebuilders do for half a million dollar homes.
Unfortunately, many TVs only have 100Mbps ethernet, and sometimes that ethernet port doesn't even achieve 50Mbps because of software issues. People workaround that by using a USB Gigabit Ethernet adapter with the USB 3.0/3.1 port.
https://www.howtogeek.com/763255/how-to-add-gigabit-ethernet...
(scholar of building sciences)
Option 1: I chose this path. I used this company [0] for convenience. They were easy to get a quick quote and found a person local to my area (I'm located in the mid-Atlantic) to do the scan. For < 4000 sqf homes - it takes about 3 - 3.5 hours to fully scan. Cost is dependent on size of area scanned and was in the 3 digit range. Post-pandemic, I suspect with a bit of hunting on gig websites, you can probably find local 3-d scanners who usually are hired by realtors for home-sale scans - but are equally willing to do other scan jobs as well. Many of them use Matterport equipment and from my small anecdote sample - scanning was a hobby which then got turbocharged into fun gig work by the realty virtual tour boom during the pandemic. They own the equipment ... and do scans for some side money.
Option 2: Buy the scanner camera equipment and DIY.[1]
At the end, I received a matterport model that was transferred to my free hosted account - limited to 1 model. While I have no need for more than 1, I did want to archive a backup of my model locally for safe-keeping. This project pointed me in the right direction [2]
Closing thoughts. I love being able to travel back in time through a 3-d render of my home when it was still just the skeleton. There needs to be better ways to achieve archiving of the model - given its value in terms of cost to acquire and security. While I didn't appreciate it at the time, using the model for quick virtual measurements of areas within rooms has also been handy when looking at furniture and rugs. If I forgot to measure before going, I can pull it up on my laptop and get a quick ballpark measure within the house. I'm thinking of doing another scan after I'm fully settled in ... to easily capture and annotate my stuff for insurance purposes.
I would love to be able to just "walk through" and look around in 3D my house before the insulation & drywall went up. I wouldn't want to pay for those 3D house tours that realtors are using now if I built another house and wanted to do something similar.
The 360 camera was hugely helpful because I could take one picture of a room instead of 5-15. I could walk through 3K square feet and take pics of everything in about 15 minutes.
Ended up just taking a video as I walked throughout every room of the house which has generally proven to be helpful a number of times. In retrospect I probably should have looked into picking up a 360 degree camera.
The only time we had to use it, we had both an inside and outside view that just missed the one key place we were about to work on. :)
It was good enough to still be helpful (we were able to guess based on the likely path of the NM-B (“Romex”) in the spots we could see), but it was amusing how we missed the key spot by inches twice.
* many new homes use metal "structured cabling" boxes (which block wifi signals)
* the box is not in a central location (eg: usually in a corner of the basement near where cabling comes in)
* Most people use their ISP-provided combination wifi/router
* The wifi is then located inside the metal structured cabling box
For most non-techie houses, if the access point is centrally located, it'll solve the vast majority of problems. However, to do this, practically, at least some of the following have to happen:
* The router and wifi need to be separate units, with ethernet cables to the wifi location
* The structured cabling box needs to be redesigned to be plastic or mount the router/wifi combo externally
* All the in-house ethernet and outside connections need to be run to a location near the center of the house, such that there are minimal walls between it and each living space
This isn't hard, it's just an incentives problem. Most houses don't sell for more money by doing this, so the builder has no incentive to fix it. ISPs have clearly decided that having a single modem/router/wifi combo is most cost-effective for them, and just let their customers deal with a less-than-optimal experience. In many cases people have little or no other ISP choice, so it's not like they lose the business.
If we're just talking wifi like 99% of people will do, this is literally one cable that needs to be planned. Shouldn't be hard, but like you said the people responsible for setting it up would need to care.
Which are not meant to house a wifi access point, these are fine for (wired) network routers and the modem, but if you have this setup, your wireless access point should really be on the ceiling.
For the majority (I assume) of houses built without Ethernet runs, what's in there? Just the fibre/copper entry and modem if required? Or does it also house circuit breakers and meter etc. typically?
The apartment has Ethernet wired to each room, that also runs back to the same closet. However, all of the ISPs issue a standard modem/router combo. If I leave the router in the closet outside, I have basically no signal inside, but I could wire up the Ethernet. But then I need extenders plugged in and taking up my wall jacks just to have wireless in my 75sm apartment.
I ended up using the plugging the router in inside and running the WAN connection over the cable to the outdoor closet. So I have no Ethernet but at least the wireless speeds are acceptable. On my M1 MacBook Pro, I get about 750mbps symmetrical in the living room and 600 in my office. Good enough I guess. My game console is plugged into the router directly.
Electricians are the closest match, but usually telephone wiring is the closest experience they have to running Ethernet. They know nothing about properly setting up APs and the RF considerations.
So when building houses, builders don’t bother, because getting that labor is specialized and homeowners are satisfied with the equivalent of a port-a-potty from Comcast in the living room because they don’t know any better.
I think it's more a matter of cost and that people wouldn't think to do it if their internet mostly works.
You're typically doing this once every what-- 20 years-- so you don't have a "default guy" and odds are you're one of maybe 3 households in your block of 450 houses who are even considering the problem, so it's not like you can ask your neighbours.
What the market needs is a national franchise, maybe implemented as a co-op model-- enforcing some basic level of "predictably not great, but not terrible", and offering a one-stop pricing and quoting system. You know they won't be the cheapest or best, but the franchise structure sells confidence. If they try to take you for a ride, you can escalate to the brand, who has leverage over them, to get satisfaction before having to duke it out with the local Contractor Licensing Authority.
In this case, yeah, it would be unprofessional and they'd be pissed :)
I still use wireless a lot but quite a bit of the higher bandwidth gear is wired.
Everything gets faster and more reliable when you limit crosstalk. If anything, I’d want my future home to have WiFi-blocking walls and access points everywhere.
Any standards-compliant 802.11 access point will support basic roaming, even across different vendors, since it can be entirely client/station-driven.
This is too expensive, how about a correct placement of a one router and refusing to use a vacuum cleaner with spyware?
> If anything, I’d want my future home to have WiFi-blocking walls
You have no choice since anything except some nasty plastics does this, even wood according to the article.
10Gbps at 55m (180ft) is plenty for residential when the top-end residential internet offerings cap out around 1Gbps. Unless you have a buzzing internal network, you are wasting your money going above Cat6/Cat6a imo.
Cat7 is no speed increase over Cat6, only distance and cross-talk improvements. Cat8 is rated at 4x Cat6 for throughput and costs 3x more than Cat6 (~$530 per 1k ft vs $170 per 1k feet).
There's no reason to buy a Lambo if the speed limit is 35 mph.
I embarassed myself accidentally in my first apartment when I was mistook an RJ11 for an RJ45 from a distance when I commented to the agent about it having ethernet. I knew what RJ11 were, I just forgot that ethernet wasn't a normal thing to have.
I remember finally getting permission to touch the home server rack in my sophomore year of my CS degree. That was a milestone.
Install Cat 6 and if you need any speeds higher than 2.5G install SM fiber and eat the little extra cost.
Even Cat6a doing 10G within the standards distance is flaky, there are far too many factors that will degrade it.
So far in networks in general we've increased the size of data we're interested in moving at roughly the same rate as we've increased the throughput available. It's repeatedly been 'fast enough', and then not.
Airtime contention is a big thing - anything with low signal takes a disproportionately large amount of airtime to carry the same amount of data. You might be able to do it, but everything will suffer (even things close to the AP/router).
We’ve got 4 UniFi APs inside, one outside, and there are still some devices with poor antenna design that are clinging on.
https://www.nist.gov/publications/electromagnetic-signal-att...
Because this has it's own set of limits. Especially if you're the in tech living in suburbs type that doesn't have a tiny house.
I had Cat 6 dropped to the TVs/media devices because I don't want constant streaming devices "using up all the wifi". The offices where computers are have network drops too.
This leaves a few wifi units around the house to service truly mobile things like phones and the assorted device that uses wifi that doesn't make sense to network.
If you're going to try to fed 2+ TVs across a sizeable house with a bunch of other wifi capable devices off a single wifi router don't be surprised when your latency is high and or your speed suck.
Cat6 and PoE to each room. Unifi Dream Machine Pro in a rack in the garage and Unifi In Wall APs (with ethernet out) in each room.
They were easy enough to swap out and upgrade to Wifi 6 when that launched.
(1) We need 240V outlets for EV charging (costs cents at construction time, costs $3000 - $8000 later)
(2) We need electric panels and wiring future proofed and can also seamless upgrade to solar, battery, complete electrification of home with heat pump water heater and heat pump instead of a separate gas furnace (fridge and AC use heat pump already), induction stove.
(3) Home electrification should allow power intake from car, eventually everyone is going to have electric cars. This will serve as emergency power, no need to buy a separate gas generator.
(4) Indoor air needs a lot of work, in addition to heat pump for heating and cooling, we have to consider heat recovery, enthalpy recovery, humidity, UV and most importantly particulate matter. And mold prevention. Recent discussion on mold, lots of people reporting problems: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38543229
(5) Homes can be built with solar shingles. Right now, we install a roof, then we install a structure to support panels and then panels. If we can just install solar shingles, it is just 1/3 of materials and far more importantly 1/3 of labor and a lot less than a third in time. We now have nailable solar shingles: https://www.gaf.energy/timberline-solar/
(6) Electric utility (or the city) can lay electric and fiber at the same time. Either the city or electric provider can provide internet or give equal access to providers. We don't need any gas connections, homes can be completely electric.
(7) Ongoing discussion on 48V POE for cars (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38557203). Wny not 48V POE for most of home wiring? Most everything can be smart by default.
I'm sure there are a lot more, but nobody is asking for these. Builders can just build these if people start asking for these as standard. Its a tragedy that people buy 50+ year old homes for 500K - 1 million USD, moldy, rickety, poorly insulated crap homes with so many ongoing issues and will cost hundreds of thousands to retrofit and make it livable.
I suppose that 25,000+ cents is technically cents, but that’s pretty far outside the ordinary use of the phrase.
That sounds good in theory and I know it's only for emergencies but I don't think that's going to last that long or be that beneficial. At least not right now.
> (6) Electric utility (or the city) can lay electric and fiber at the same time. Either the city or electric provider can provide internet or give equal access to providers. We don't need any gas connections, homes can be completely electric.
Do they even get buried at the same depths? My understanding was electrical lines get buried deeper than communications lines.
Having a large battery is useful in many, many ways and not just for emergencies. Be it for power cost decrease, emergencies or load balancing, all of these are very much expected consequences of electric cars being in most households.
A recent volts.wtf podcast guest spoke about being able to run their entire house for more than a week on their Rivian truck. Now imagine that in a more generalized, non emergency, scenario. That opens up plenty of opportunities.
Is it important for all that to be replaceable when solar technology improves?
Aren't those less efficient than panels?
Because the economics matter, we have to understand if it's a better value versus asphalt + solar, or asphalt + ground fixtures, or asphalt + a solar farm.
If the GAF nail-on PV shingles can approach or beat the price of a roof + PV panels, then they will be a good solution. Hopefully with their standard nail-on format, GAF shingles will have similar labor cost of installation to regular shingles, vs the specialized labor needed to install Tesla solar tiles.
Cents for an outlet vs thousands for an EVSE retrofit is comparing the cost of different things.
The $3k-$8k isn't paying just for an outlet, but for the labor required to run a suitable gauge conductor from a suitable breaker to the outlet, including opening and repairing any walls.
In new construction, it won't be as high, but it will be around $1k (depending on your labor market) when you include electrical design and installation labor. I know this because I've done both retrofit and new construction installation of an EVSE.
> (4) Indoor air needs a lot of work, in addition to heat pump for heating and cooling, we have to consider heat recovery, enthalpy recovery, humidity, UV and most importantly particulate matter. And mold prevention. Recent discussion on mold, lots of people reporting problems: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38543229
Even beyond mold, there's allergens. Since living in an air-quality controlled home, my seasonal allergies have greatly diminished, which directly translates to better sleep.
> 1 million USD, moldy, rickety, poorly insulated crap homes with so many ongoing issues and will cost hundreds of thousands to retrofit and make it livable.
There is a general problem with the real estate market that, lacking regulations that require disclosure, buyers aren't educated about energy/air-quality issues they might be getting into, and sellers are incentivized to cover up any such issues (i.e. by throwing open windows and running air filters during open houses). Simply requiring a disclosure of a summary of energy use over the last year (at monthly granularity) would make a big difference.
My understanding is that there needs to be some kind of upgrade on our grid so everyone can charge their cars. This would likely involve increasing its capacity to handle the additional load from widespread EV charging.
> (2) We need electric panels and wiring future proofed and can also seamless upgrade to solar, battery, complete electrification of home with heat pump water heater and heat pump instead of a separate gas furnace (fridge and AC use heat pump already), induction stove.
I remember seeing a social media post urging people to check their electrical panel and if it was a specific name, “Federal Pacific Electric” for instance, to call an electrician and plan to have it removed because they were known to cause fires. I absolutely agree though. The future is all electric and the sooner we can drop natural gas to homes, the better.
>(3) Home electrification should allow power intake from car, eventually everyone is going to have electric cars. This will serve as emergency power, no need to buy a separate gas generator.
Ideally, we would all live close enough to free-of-cost to the rider public transit but yes, we should allow power going back and forth between car and house. Maybe we can skip the battery in the house altogether, send all power from house solar panels to (in order of priority) the car if connected, the grid if car is not connected, the house locally if grid is not connected. This could be implemented practically with the right infrastructure and technology.
> (4) Indoor air needs a lot of work, in addition to heat pump for heating and cooling, we have to consider heat recovery, enthalpy recovery, humidity, UV and most importantly particulate matter. And mold prevention. Recent discussion on mold, lots of people reporting problems: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38543229
I don’t have a link but I remember reading a few years ago about how in places with low pollution such as Colorado and where days are hot but nights are pleasant in the summer, perhaps one way to cut costs could be to over ventilate at night in the summer (after measuring temperature) forcing (filtered) cold air from outside into the house and forcing the existing warm air out. This would also require a good insulation system to maintain the temperature balance. Thoughts?
> (5) Homes can be built with solar shingles. Right now, we install a roof, then we install a structure to support panels and then panels. If we can just install solar shingles, it is just 1/3 of materials and far more importantly 1/3 of labor and a lot less than a third in time. We now have nailable solar shingles: https://www.gaf.energy/timberline-solar/
I am all for it if solar shingles are cheaper than solar panels on top of roofs. While the upfront cost of solar shingles might be higher, the long-term savings and aesthetic appeal could make them a worthwhile investment.
> (6) Electric utility (or the city) can lay electric and fiber at the same time. Either the city or electric provider can provide internet or give equal access to providers. We don’t need any gas connections, homes can be completely electric.
Yes, absolutely agree. I used to love gas until I learned that gas leaks and gas connections going to homes leak A LOT. Now, I am all for all electric. And yes, we need fiber everywhere please. High-speed internet access for all is especially important in the context of remote work and online education.
> (7) Ongoing discussion on 48V POE for cars (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38557203). Wny not 48V POE for most of home wiring? Most everything can be smart by default.
Does this mean we don’t need step down transformers? Is it simply moving the step down transformers from the street into the house? The potential benefits of 48V POE could include increased efficiency and safety.
Setups like this are fairly common, especially in commercial construction. There are “economizers,” various forms of “whole house fan,” and a few HRVs/ERVs with a built in bypass feature. Also windows. HRV bypasses are not especially high flow.
Sadly, most whole house fans are designed quite specifically for houses with vented attics. While most house do have vented attics, there is very little excuse these days to build a vented attic, especially in wildfire-prone areas.
It might help that most home EV charging will likely occur at night, when home power use tends to be at its lowest.
A home level 2 charger has a load comparable to an electric clothes dryer plus an electric water heater, and so is comparable to someone in an all electric household doing laundry. The average such household even does laundry for about as many hours a week as a typical EV in day to day use needs to charge.
That suggests that at least the parts of the grid nearer the end users, which would probably be most of the grid in most cities, should be fine as least as part of the grid's maximum capacity goes. If laundry during the day doesn't push them over, then home EV charging at night probably will not.
There may not be enough total power available per week to handle the EV load, but at least for that where upgrades would be needed would be at the power sources and maybe at some long distance distribution parts of the grid.
That's probably good news if true. I'd expect "we need to upgrade or build some long distance transmission lines" and/or "we need to upgrade or build some power plants" is probably going to be more feasible than "we need to update most of San Francisco's electrical system".
6/2 (plus ground) cable is not that cheap. And current code actually requires EV-readiness in many places.
> Wny not 48V POE for most of home wiring? Most everything can be smart by default.
I would take regular #12/#14 wiring, so long as the neutral is wired up correctly (which it almost always is with NM-B or any similar factory-made cable) over some 48V let’s-hope-it’s-still-useful-in-10-years setup.
The technology ecosystem just doesn't historically mesh well with the physical structure of homes at all. The whole success of Wifi is it allows us to be non committal about things. That we use it to connect TVs and doorbells to the network is really quite insane.
I would like to see something in this space emerge and evolve, but it seems to be fundamentally incompatible with the VC backed tech industry at this point.
* Guess what I'm trying to build.
Maybe whole home audio with zones and voice communication?
Perfect, good, etc.
I've been amazed watching contractors cut out a slice of drywall, make mods, and replace the drywall. In under an hour. But you need to paint afterwards.
We should also do this for city infrastructure, eg. have conduit runs under the street that are a public right-of-way, and then any new company that invents a new telecommunications/energy/etc technology can pay the city to run its lines through existing infrastructure instead of having to dig up streets or beg the electric company for space on poles.
https://www.lowes.com/pl/Electrical-non-metallic-tubing-ent-...
You don't even need wire pulls, you can just push cat5 through 3/4 ENT tubes and expect it to pop out the other side.
I'd imagine HDMI would be mostly shorter runs (or using cat5/6 extenders) due to the limits/requirements of the cable.
It seems like 2" smurf tubes are relatively rare (I can find them but seems like they aren't interested in selling them in 100 foot rolls) so 1" are more common. According to conduit guidelines, 1" conduit for 40% Cat6 is a measly 6 cables while 2" is 22. So even at 2", I would still need 2 - 3 two-inch conduit runs.
Is this off-base or do people generally hunt down 2"+ conduit?
I was considering PVC as well.
My house is old and had multiple additions so its layout is all topsy turvy and there are no straight cavities so I might just run lots of flexible conduit at least up from the server closet into the attic. At least then it will be a little easier to run new drops.
Cat5e has been the standard for decades, and can run gigabit speeds as well.
We have a chicken/egg situation for home networks where normal people only see them as useful in the wifi sense, so we fail to exploit the potential we could have if things were wired.
List a thing and I could likely give you a product that will solve your problem, it may just be out of your price range because it isn't mass produced or doesn't look the way you want again, it's not mass produced.
There are also decent products for not very expensive in this market.
I am living in one of the worst place possible for Internet. I have over 400 2.4GHz APs accessible from my apartment. And it was built pre-Internet age with absolutely no forethought.
And yet I have perfectly working Internet.
Yes, when the network operator installed their AP it absolutely sucked. But I turned it into modem, put on my own pfSense box. Configured traffic shaping to reduce bufferbloat and ensure bandwidth is always reserved for things like zoom calls.
Then I put on a decent (Ubiquiti) access point in every other room. I have reduced power of those access points so that they fall off naturally, this helps clients who move about the large apartment to roam. It does not make sense to have the AP radiate much further than the puny phone modem -- it just keeps the modem stuck to that AP while the AP struggles to receive signal from the phone. And so on.
I have also upgraded almost all devices to 5GHz. 5GHz has much shorter range but it is actually a benefit -- it means less interference from devices of my neighbours.
For security, I have separated VLANs and WLANs (separate for my work, for network management, for my family and their unsafe devices, for some legacy devices like printers and finally for guests).
Everybody who visits me notices how well the WiFi works.
I don't see how you need to build for "good Internet". "Good Internet" is just function of knowing what you are doing.
It may cost a bit more to set up networking like mine. But this is drop in the ocean compared to trying to somehow improving your wifi coverage by chosing more expensive materials to build your house.
I would also say that your last note: "a function of knowing what you're doing" does unintentionally I think really well at illustrating the problem. I do not have the slightest clue how plumbing works, but my home came designed from stock with working toilets and showers. I also have a fair bit of knowledge about electricity (enough to change outlets and switches anyway) but not enough to really build out circuits, and my home came designed from stock with appropriately placed (mostly) outlets ready to be used. My point being: people shouldn't have to know how their infrastructure works, and I would argue while a new entry and one that could use some standardization, Internet absolutely belongs in that category.
Additionally, you're using some pretty top-of-the-line consumer electronics there with Ubuquiti APs. I looked into those some years back and to replace my Google Wifi's that I had at the time would've cost me about $1,500, which, I can afford and did consider, but ultimately never pulled the trigger on and I wouldn't be upset in the slightest if Joe Consumer looked at that price tag and had fit, since bottom-shelf wireless routers on the market do the exact same thing (distribute internet OTA) for like, $70.
Now, I don't use bottom shelf personally, I have a mesh network too but mine doesn't allow me to tweak the power of the transmitters nor really do traffic shaping or service prioritization. This is, in my mind, akin to someone saying "there's nothing wrong with the highway, I have a Ferrari and I can get to work in 10 minutes if the cops aren't in the way." No kidding. You've bought one of the best answers to the question at hand, but not everyone can have that. And this is made worse by the fact that there are absolutely tons of shit quality routers built and sold every day that do a bad job of this task, and the only way to avoid that as a customer is knowing a decent amount about network administration so you know what to avoid.
If a home fittings company made faucets that worked as badly as many routers out there do, they'd be sued into oblivion if not fined by the FTC for selling lemon products. I think we need more regulations on Internet-adjacent hardware so customers can have a baseline level of expectation that these things will function at the task they're built to accomplish to at least a certain level of reliability.
While I don’t yet have a professional’s opinion, this is likely to be somewhat involved and expensive as it seems that walls will need to be cut open and in one place, floorboards pulled up. It could turn out that some of the existing wiring has conduits that could be used but I’m not betting on it.
Unless it is low voltage in the conduit, you don't want to mix 120v with low voltage wiring.
In residential, it's not a huge deal but does come with the risk of data loss along with, to my understanding, an extremely minimal chance of fire due to inducing voltage. The chance of fire increases as the voltage goes up so generally it's only a risk in commercial or industrial.
You don't have to get inspections or follow code to my understanding but the rule of thumb iirc is 8 inches minimum between low-voltage and 120v. So if 120v is in one stud 'bay', you go to the next one.
The APs are going to get replaced more than once a decade I think. We’ve been in our place 16 years and I’m on the third generation of APs, one Netgear that I moved here with, a set of UAC-AC-Pros, and a set of UAC-U6-LRs.
I am currently about $600 in the hole and I haven't even bought conduit, new drywall, or another switch. I am guessing it will be in the $1,000+ range when I am done. That's assuming I don't need to go get another 1,000 foot roll which I am guessing I might (doing 48 drops + PoE)
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While interesting, I don't think the article really was for me. It felt shallow and like an info dump rather than a real opinion piece.
The solution to "I have bad internet" is ethernet yet the author seems against or as if it is stepping back into the past. We rely on wires to get it into the house generally, why are you advocating for getting rid of wires then being confused when your coverage sucks.
The technology is there to have good wireless internet (wifi mesh driven by ethernet) but the author seems like they want to complain rather than looking at the problem rationally.
It feels like the author has a self-induced problem where she indeed knows better. But she's trying to emulate what she thinks a non-techie would do, and getting that quite wrong by limiting herself to fewer pieces rather than widely available off the shelf products meant to solve the problem properly.
Obviously the metal box is meant for modem+router+switch, and then you hang wireless APs off of where the ethernet cables run to. When I was in an apartment that had a similar setup, I found it a bit limiting and still ran various ethernet lines under rugs and whatnot, but it was much better foundation than draping cables in hallways and stairways.
If the author had dug deeper and reached out to experts, the article could have been great.
With that in mind, when we built our house a few years ago, I went for a combination of wired and wireless. Heavy users, like the television and the PCs in the office have dedicated cables. But running cables everywhere just didn't make sense - so most devices are expected to live on the WLAN. Since WLAN doesn't penetrate between floors, there is a central plug on each floor for an access point (or mesh satellite).
What are these alternative Wi-Fi-penetrating materials? And what trade offs do they have? (Cost is mentioned, but there many aspects other aspects to building materials besides cost and wi-fi penetration.)
I’m thinking the author should start by not putting their wi-fi router behind a metal plate.
I used to work for an ISP here in the southeastern US and there were entire neighborhoods that had permanently shitty service because the housing developer decided to do the wiring on their own for the extra profits and did a terrible job of it.
Then the individual communities never want to pay to have the work redone properly -- they think the ISP should eat the bill, even though we gave the developers the opportunity to do it right the first time. Doing hundreds of reworks of the last mile of service at once is expensive.
Often we would come to some arrangement and heavily discount the wiring work down to like $30k from the community in exchange for exclusive contracts. The communities that wouldn't spend a dime were just permanently SOL.
But annoyingly, it's all Cat5e! Sure, it's fine for gigabit, but now that I have proper networking equipment, I wish they'd have spent the extra few bucks and put in Cat6A or Cat7 so that I could get 10Gbps to my office from the rack in the basement...
I wonder if this person has any idea of the amount of infrastructure the average house contains such as cable runs, pipes, chimneys and so on. Or they imagine things just "happen" magically when you flip a switch.
Buy existing tech that can arrive tomorrow, google: “Wi-Fi mesh”. Pick from a half dozen options.
Problem is people expect to put in a single WiFi-router-modem and be done. Radio doesn’t work that way.
And if it does work (e.g. due to access points having better antennas and maybe positioning), it wastes spectrum like nothing else, which exacerbates that problem in high-density apartment buildings.
While I use Ubiquiti non-mesh now that only gets 600 Mbps max even with WiFi 6e NICs, hardwired works and provides dedicated, point-to-point bandwidth.
Yea, the Unifi is nice because it will show you that. In theory if you're in a moderately noisy environment you can setup the hub to scan once a day and move channels around to maximize what you have.
But in your case, you need to do the opposite (which if you rent you probably can't) and block as much wifi from outside as possible. Everyone getting wifi units and cranking them up to 100% radio transmit isn't great.
(Or better: buy one which fits)
Presumptive industry lobby says to spend money on what they make money on.
I don't like the phrasing that we need to make better wifi signals in a home "instead" of replacing lead pipes or repairing bridges.
But yes, I wish homes were a bit more repairable, with chases as another commenter calls them. Currently in my apartment, I have an Ethernet cable running along 60ft of baseboard to wire my desktop to the router, with WiFi for the rest of the place.
(This is the time of year where I think of my idea that fridges and freezers should be built to draw in outside air, for climates where ambient is cold enough for fridges without additional processing).
Forget "better internet" — many of us can barely afford any shelter, much less one that we can 'own'
Running 10g+ on copper is expensive and consumes too much electricity.
My shittastic apartment has Cat 5 wiring to 4 plugs while I can get 5 Gbps internet I can't use.
Not having to think about the speed of your internet.
3 people remote working. 2 of them have streaming TV going at all times in their room. Then if the kids are home there are likely 2 other tvs going plus what they are doing with their phones.
Remember all the people who spent big money running CAT5 to all the rooms? Then we got in-home WiFi and all of that cabling was just forgotten.
Those folks just plugged APs into all that “forgotten” cabling and ended up with the best backhaul for their WiFi possible.
In your design my house would have around 40 drops, rather than 7. 40 makes no sense.
Yea, every one I've seen recently. Of all devices they are the number one device to put on a network drop as they will use more bandwidth more consistently than any other device in your house.
On my TV wall I had a singular network drop to the TV wall. When I built a faux fireplace for it, I put a switch there in the access hole and now have it split out between the TV and all the consoles.
I dunno 'bout that- seems to me someone who knows enough to run Ethernet also knows that WiFi is a collision-detection protocol; I retrofit CAT6 into my current place just a couple of years ago, and while I have a mesh WiFi6 network at home (with Ethernet backhaul, of course) I also ensured all the TVs (most of them 4K) and as many computers as possible were on Ethernet.
We can't anticipate what will be obsolete. But fifty feet of ethernet cable or single strand fiber is quite cheap and easy to install during construction. Honestly, so what if it is obsolete in a decade? I doubt my parents are regretting the money they spent running now-obsolete POTS into their house in 1950.
Mains electrical and plumbing are about the only things that will remain as-is for a good while.
What I'd be happy with is a few ceiling drops for APs in common areas.