Existing Ethernet wiring in my purchased home

[Mikec1231]

I know little about Ethernet except that it would be a faster connection to the internet for my home audio and theater network. Below the family room TV is a single rj45 female plug. All my home audio speakers are hard wired in this area as well as my AVR. I have looked all over the house for a panel or hub and the only other rj45 faceplate I can find is the 3 female connections plus the coax in the attached picture. Is it possible that this is where the internet router/modem should be located and that one of these 3, rj45 jacks will feed to below the tv? My setup is Apple TV 4 gen, Sony SN-1030 AVR, 65” Sony Bravia. I am looking for the least expensive way, with the best sound, to add a multi-channel amp to control 6 sets of In ceiling and wall speakers. We are retired and on a fixed budget.
thanks you for your help.
mike

 

[dolynick]

It's possible, if a bit unsual.

The easiest, no-cost way to test would be to hook up your router to the three jacks and then your TV to the one in its room. If you get connection lights (probably have to check the router status), then yes, the wiring in the house is run to that outlet.

That wiring might be old by the looks of it. If it's not at least CAT 3 (100Mbps duplex), then wireless could conceivably be better (if perhaps not as reliable).

 

[TLS Guy]

I know little about Ethernet except that it would be a faster connection to the internet for my home audio and theater network. Below the family room TV is a single rj45 female plug. All my home audio speakers are hard wired in this area as well as my AVR. I have looked all over the house for a panel or hub and the only other rj45 faceplate I can find is the 3 female connections plus the coax in the attached picture. Is it possible that this is where the internet router/modem should be located and that one of these 3, rj45 jacks will feed to below the tv? My setup is Apple TV 4 gen, Sony SN-1030 AVR, 65” Sony Bravia. I am looking for the least expensive way, with the best sound, to add a multi-channel amp to control 6 sets of In ceiling and wall speakers. We are retired and on a fixed budget.
thanks you for your help.
mike

The best way to trace the cables, is to use a cable toner, like this one.

How old is the house? For current gear the cable should be at least cat 5 and preferable cat 6.

Where does your Internet service enter the house? That is where you are most likely to find the hub. If that was not the hub, there should be a cable going to the hub from the entry point.

If you have a cable system does that coax go back to the entry point of the cable service to the house?

 

[TLS Guy]

Hi , I've just purchased a new house and before I move furniture in and clean up etc, I thought it would be a good idea to cable the house with Cat5e or Cat6. I would have loved to wire my existing house but structure proved difficult.

Any advice would be great. It's a modern 4 bed detached house. Floorplan is attached. Anything to give me a bit of a start would be great!

Ideally would like all rooms having ethernet wall ports. If that's not possible then at least Lounge and Dining/TV Room and Bedroom 3 and 4.

You can do that, but it will be expensive. Cables can fail, but more to the point cables have a habit of becoming obsolete over time. Therefore you have to have an easy way to change them. That means you put ALL Ethernet and AV cables in conduit.

Now, what you plan is a laudable goal, but it will mean opening up walls. So there will be some expense. So you will need a drywall crew to replace any drywall you remove and then of course paint.

What I have done, is to choose a central location for the Ethernet hub, and put in the router there, and I advise a mesh system. Any cable modems can be placed there. Then I advise a patch bay, and then hubs at the locations that require multiple wire connections.

There is a lot of equipment that requires an Internet connection, even appliances these days.

So I have a 19" patch bay and two 19" hubs in the AV room. I have hub in the family room, great room and the office. So only mobile units use Wi-Fi. Everything else is hard wired, and that is a lot of items. For instance the security system and standby generator have to have Internet connections, and then a myriad of AV gear, computers, printers etc.

This was planned during new construction, but in our former home I did open up walls and put in conduit. Then when the time came for updating the internet cables, it was done in less than an hour.

You probably will need more than one mesh transmitter unless it is a small home, and it is best to have them connected via Ethernet cable.

I can tell you one thing, that builders have no clue of what the modern home requires in this regard, so you have to run herd over them.

 

[dolynick]

Hi , I've just purchased a new house and before I move furniture in and clean up etc, I thought it would be a good idea to cable the house with Cat5e or Cat6. I would have loved to wire my existing house but structure proved difficult.

Any advice would be great. It's a modern 4 bed detached house. Floorplan is attached. Anything to give me a bit of a start would be great!

Ideally would like all rooms having ethernet wall ports. If that's not possible then at least Lounge and Dining/TV Room and Bedroom 3 and 4.

Having a hardwire drop in every room is nice to have if you can swing it.

Wireless is getting better but it's still a long ways off from being as rock-solid and reliable as a wired solution. Wireless speed ratings are deceptive too, in practice a wire is likely to be as fast or faster.

Cat5e is an older standard now. It was originally for Gigabit (1.0 Gbps) links but it's possible to do up to 2.5 Gbps on a decent run of 5e (although not guarranteed). 1 Gbps is somewhat pedestrian in speed these days but generally enough for anything except large file transfers (~112-120 MB/s or so tops).

Cat6e is a more modern standard. It's rated up to 10 Gbps. It is also more exspensive and a little bit more of a pain to work with in some cases. Still, if you can afford the extra cost (shouldn't be too severe), it is the more futureproof solution.

I would recommend network switches rather than hubs. They're much more efficient. 2.5 Gbps switches are starting to become more common now. Full 10 Gbps switches are rather pricey yet. Still, running Cat6e now means that you can always move up in speed later.

Another reason to run at least some cable is, even if you go mostly wireless, you still want to hardwire the wireless access points back to a central network location/controller. Having the drops in various rooms makes placing them in places for better coverage a lot easier. You can do mesh, where they pass along to each other wirelessly, but you're just congesting your APs doing that rather than multiplying maximum bandwidth downstream with seperate uplinks back to the core network.

 

[BMXTRIX]

Hi , I've just purchased a new house and before I move furniture in and clean up etc, I thought it would be a good idea to cable the house with Cat5e or Cat6. I would have loved to wire my existing house but structure proved difficult.

Any advice would be great. It's a modern 4 bed detached house. Floorplan is attached. Anything to give me a bit of a start would be great!

Ideally would like all rooms having ethernet wall ports. If that's not possible then at least Lounge and Dining/TV Room and Bedroom 3 and 4.

While similar to the original poster's question, if you have your own question, it is best to start a new thread with your questions in it so you aren't taking over a thread started by someone else. (thread jacking)

That said, there is no reason you can't add wiring into a new home. When I moved into the home I'm in now, I spent a few days with some friends and on my own putting in a ton of wiring. I had to cut some holes in drywall, but I had a unfinished basement which allowed me to get up and down walls on the main level far more easily and after creating a path to the attic, I was able to run wiring up there and then down walls on the top floor to get wiring in place there as well. It ended up allowing me to get network cable to all rooms in my home without creating a patchwork of drywall holes to repair.

I do like the concept of conduit being put in place, but the reality is that even the older cat-5e cabling which has been around for a while is more than enough to create a very stable wired network in most homes. More up to date cat-6 wiring would be the minimum I would go with these days in new construction as it doesn't really cost that much more and will be a bit more future proof. The reality remains that running conduit can be quite expensive to do, which may make it unrealistic to put in place. Frankly, I'd skip the conduit unless you are going from a display location to a equipment location and will need HDMI cabling put in place.

 

[BMXTRIX]

I know little about Ethernet except that it would be a faster connection to the internet for my home audio and theater network. Below the family room TV is a single rj45 female plug. All my home audio speakers are hard wired in this area as well as my AVR. I have looked all over the house for a panel or hub and the only other rj45 faceplate I can find is the 3 female connections plus the coax in the attached picture. Is it possible that this is where the internet router/modem should be located and that one of these 3, rj45 jacks will feed to below the tv? My setup is Apple TV 4 gen, Sony SN-1030 AVR, 65” Sony Bravia. I am looking for the least expensive way, with the best sound, to add a multi-channel amp to control 6 sets of In ceiling and wall speakers. We are retired and on a fixed budget.
thanks you for your help.
mike

Seems like you disappeared from your own thread. But, the answer is that this does look like a location which the network cabling was run to. The single cable (coax) connection there with 3 network jacks indicates that this was the central point for your router to be located and then you plug in three Ethernet cables to those jacks from your router and you should find that you have a wired connection to three network jacks located throughout your home. Beyond the one at your family room TV, I expect there are two more RJ45 connections elsewhere in your home.

Be aware, that there may be jacks OUTSIDE of your home. That there is a chance that one or two of those network connections run outside to a service panel out there.

 

[highfigh]

Seems like you disappeared from your own thread. But, the answer is that this does look like a location which the network cabling was run to. The single cable (coax) connection there with 3 network jacks indicates that this was the central point for your router to be located and then you plug in three Ethernet cables to those jacks from your router and you should find that you have a wired connection to three network jacks located throughout your home. Beyond the one at your family room TV, I expect there are two more RJ45 connections elsewhere in your home.

Be aware, that there may be jacks OUTSIDE of your home. That there is a chance that one or two of those network connections run outside to a service panel out there.

I agree, but I would use 'from' in "this does look like a location which the network cabling was run to", rather than 'to' since this is likely the basic head end. It's just semantics, but when searching for cables, thinking of this as the source can make it easier.

 

[highfigh]

And for anyone who might need to search for cables with a toner similar to the one in TLSGuy's link-

The signal isn't normally very strong and the wand won't pick it up from more than a few inches away but that can be changed by only clipping one lead onto the wire and attaching the other to any piece of metal- that makes the signal much stronger and easier to find. I have used one of the metal braces on my ladder for this.

That said, once the wire has been found, it's best to attach the second clip to one of the conductors in the cable because the louder connection can make conduit, electrical wiring and other things seem like they could be the cable that's needed.

 

[cpp]

I know little about Ethernet except that it would be a faster connection to the internet for my home audio and theater network. Below the family room TV is a single rj45 female plug. All my home audio speakers are hard wired in this area as well as my AVR. I have looked all over the house for a panel or hub and the only other rj45 faceplate I can find is the 3 female connections plus the coax in the attached picture. Is it possible that this is where the internet router/modem should be located and that one of these 3, rj45 jacks will feed to below the tv? My setup is Apple TV 4 gen, Sony SN-1030 AVR, 65” Sony Bravia. I am looking for the least expensive way, with the best sound, to add a multi-channel amp to control 6 sets of In ceiling and wall speakers. We are retired and on a fixed budget.
thanks you for your help.
mike

How far is the distance you want to "run " these Cat cables. But it appears he's gone.

 

[Rodela123]

Having existing Ethernet wiring in your home is a great advantage! It ensures reliable, high-speed internet connections throughout the house, perfect for streaming, gaming, or working from home. If you're unsure about the current setup, consider testing each Ethernet port to verify its functionality. You might also want to upgrade the wiring or switches if they’re older and don't support modern speeds like Gigabit Ethernet.