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Comment by djhworld | Hacker News Reader

> A new house bought today could have 10 phone sockets and 0 Ethernet sockets. There is still no regulation that requires new build to get Ethernet wiring (as far as I know).

I think this is true in the sense of there's no regulation it's just up to the developer, but my house (new build, 2021) has an RJ45 patch panel downstairs with 4 ports that lead to 4 areas of the house.

This was actually a surprise to me when I got the place because when I was speaking to the sales associates they had 0 clue what I was talking about when I enquired about network cabling. If I had known they were installing it as standard I'd have asked for more ports in more rooms, but hindsight...

But yeah, there's also 4 phone sockets as well, which I don't use. This solution might be interesting to try out, but phone sockets are in the same place as where the ethernet sockets are and I've no real need to expand in those rooms right now.

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My new build (2023) would have had 0 ethernet if I didn't request it. It's so cheap to wire it in and so useful for the future I don't know why it's not just standard.

It had phone sockets though, for whatever reason.

When I was configuring the house the person I was with to do it didn't even know what ethernet was.

One thing I wished I could have picked was where all the ethernet terminated. It's all gone to a little cupboard where the fibre enters the house. That's convenient I guess if you had just one socket in the living room where you stick your Wifi router. But when I've got ethernet to all the rooms, I'd rather have it all in a back bedroom so I can stick a server rack in there. I guess I can still do that, it just means I need 2 switches now.

The vast majority of people don't care and would never use ethernet sockets, as long as they can get a good enough wifi connection to their smart TV for Netflix etc. then they're happy and most of the time wifi can do that.

It's only really gamers who are likely to consider using ethernet and avid online gamers don't make up a significant percentage of the people who buy new build homes

Which is a shame, because it puts a huge support burden on ISPs. Every time some WiFi interference slows someone’s internet down they’ll end up blaming the ISP and calling support.

When looking at new build houses a year or two back (in the UK), I saw some stuff that made no sense to me: they installed some by default, but ran it to only the lounge and bedroom 1, the house also had a dedicated study (labelled as such by them) which did not have an ethernet run to it, and they refused to let you option in any more, very weird.

It's for the TVs, to provide network for live TV boxes.

It might be worth pulling off those phone sockets and seeing what the cable is. Quite often it'll be cat5e and if so it's a simple upgrade to change to an rj45 keystone. Especially if it uses Euro module faceplates.

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