Does anyone have any advice for putting together a home network for phone, cable TV and ethernet? I noticed that Home Depot sells a package from Leviton that allows you to home run all the necessary cables to this unit where you can patch everything in, but wondered what experiences other people have had. Can the same CAT5e cable carry both an ethernet AND phone line at the same time using separate pairs of wires? Thanks.
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Michael,
You can't run regular phone lines over the same cat5 cable as your Ethernet runs on. You need to run a separate cat5 for the phone line(s) and one for the network. The leviton stuff from HD is a generally higher priced than what you can buy it for online.
For my structured wiring, I ran three cat5e cables to each room. One blue one for phone, and two gray lines for network. I currently only have one of the network cables terminated in each room and the other line is there if I need an additional network connection. Or it can be used later for some other purpose such as video.
In my structured wiring panel, I have a telephone distribution block which receives the incoming phone line, then punch down connectors to connect the cat5 for each room's phone line. This type of distribution block also supports multiple incoming phone lines and since you aren't using all the wires in the cat5 for one line, the single cat5 to each room will support multiple phone lines.
Also in my structured wiring panel I have a punchdown network distribution block where the cat5 lines from each room terminate. From there I have short cat5 lines running to a network switch which is fed from my cable modem and wireless router.
All of my structured wiring stuff is OpenHouse and Clear Channel (for video). The leviton stuff is nice also and all of my wall plates, jacks etc are leviton.
regards,
Dennis
You can't run regular phone lines over the same cat5 cable as your Ethernet runs on.Well, you can....but it would bea PITA to terminate.......
OK there are two free pair in a 10base-t or 100base-tx network which could be used for phone. But as you mentioned terminating them properly would be tough. This would also rule out gigabit connections which do require all four pairs. Also by doing this you also rule out using any future products that would need the extra pairs for power over Ethernet (PoE) like maybe Voice over IP.
Regards,
Dennis
Didn't know Giga used all 4 pairs....learn something new every day
Guessing it's more likely to see use in a LAN...don't expect Gigbit down the telco pipe anytime soon...
'though Verizon is rolling out FIOS (brand name) up here in White Plain (my current job site),
if the guy I was chatting with in the local ComUSA was right, it's fiber to the house....
be interesting to see that install...
Power over ethernet would be sweet...no more trying to figure out where to plug in all those baby bricks......
FIOS is supposed to be amazing (15mbs/2mbs) for something like $50/mo.
Thanks for the input. One of the replies leads me to another question -- I currently get my phone line over my cable from Cablevision/Optimum. I currently have one of those 5-in-1 phone splitters plugged into the back of the cable modem so I can have two phones in the house (same phone line). Is there a way to breakup this phone line if I wanted to run a line to every room in the house?
don't expect Gigbit down the telco pipe anytime soon
Not sure why anyone would even need or want that kind of bandwidth to their home. While Verizon's FiOS is nice and certainly attractive in price, I am not sure what consumers can use it for in terms of data-traffic transmission. The sale of FiOS at this time is almost 99% data, with reserved bandwidth for video & voice.
Interesting enough, 'to the home' bandwidth requirements all depends on the the type of system the provider seeks to deploy, be it telco or cableco. The common implementation, though, for something like IPTV doesn't require a major amount of bandwidth for providing data, video, and voice over the IP network.
If you troll the home network, interactive media, and phone forums, you find out that the real issue that will come up for the cable companies is called ingress.....which is leakage of RFI back into the system from the consumers house
Apparantly this isn't a problem when the data flow is all from the main office to the subscriber, but when you start gettiong interactive it causes problems.....
As far as VOIP, IPTV, and data....that's going to require some bandwith, don't you think....
All conventional broadband service, whether provided to the client by telephone company or cable operator, is given a Qualit of Service (QoS0 of Unspecified Bit Rate, or UBR. This goes hand-in-hand with the marketing notion that its a 'best-effort service', but what it really means is that in a condition in which a network node is congested, broadband data packets can be tagged for drop elegibility.
So, if an ATM switch, for instance, get's congested, you could find packets getting dropped. In order to attempt this doesn't happen that often, the subscriber is asked to insure a two-way minimum broadband service capable of ~192Kbps both upstream (to the public Internet) and downstream (from the Internet to them). And some of the independent VoIP providers have broadband modems that attempt to apply a QoS on the users local network (LAN) so voice packets are not in competition for Internet-surfing packets. Unfortunately, its not always a success once it leave the home as its all UBR, and competing with your neighbor's surfing data packets.
Currently, there has been effort made to be able to provide different levels of QoS by the WAN owners (cable & telco). This is a requirement for them, because of the following need to deliver more than 'best effort' Internet service. For instance, they wish to provide VoIP, too, but in a more reliable fashion than the independent VoIP providers like Vonage and Packet8 (examples).
Now, to do this, they must tagged the packets containing voice information as being more important than the conventional Internet-data containing packets. Hence, the need for a QoS known as Constant Bit Rate (CBR). This CBR QoS gaurantees sufficient bandwidth will be reserved so that data packets tagged as CBG will never get dropped. They can do this, because they own the network that runs from their clients into their own network.
Additionally, the cable and telephone industries wish to emply IP-based video services. This is a multicast service, meaning that its only in one direction. Sure, its considerably larger in bandwidth consumption, but only in areas where it is needed in aggregated form. In order for you to not see dropouts in the picture on your TV, the QoS also needs to be CBR, but this is ok since its only in one direction, and the direction is downstream--where you usually have a large bandwidth amount available to begin with.
One network topology is to deliver all IPTV channels to the last switch downstream and no further, and then only channels being watched from that last switch to the end user. Also, they are implementing much more aggresive video coding to reduce bandwidth requirements. For instance, let's say I am watching football in HDTV and the wife watching an episode of M*A*S*H in standard definition. The bandwidth requirement downstream to the user would be about 9Mbps + 2Mbps, or about 11Mbps total.
Theoretically, the ADSL2+ can deliver up to 12Mbps downstream on a single copper pair of phone wires, but someone like BellSouth will be bonding pairs for 24Mbps. SBC will be using VDSL2 for up to 100Mbps (doubtful they'll see over 60Mbps), and verizon's fiber substantially more. But, the CBR requirement downstream for bandwidth is based on the number of IPTV channels being watched simultaneously, plus any VoIP calls goingon.
Upstream CBR requirements is only based on VoIP calls being made. That is all. Remember, video is one-way, from provider to consumer. Everything else is a UBR service and is the lowest man on the totem pole in terms of priority or data packets. But, the biggest consumption of any data transmission is when the telephone or cable provider distributes the IPTV from its headend to its last-mile switch.
For a 200-channel makeup with 180 standard definition channels and 20 high-defintion channels, the simultaneous multicast (one way) bandwdith is ~2-3Mbps for standard and 8-9Mbps for high defintiion channel. That's 2.5x180 + 8.5x20 for a collective bandwidth requirement of 620Mbps. But this is nothing since the infrastructure being put into place is based on Gigabit Ethernet, which is fiber for 1,000Mbps.
Now, how close is the last distribution switch? Well, that veries and depends on the specific network topologies being employed, but its as close as 5,000'. And in busy households with four children watching SDTV and two adults watching HDTV while all of them are on the phone and surfing the Internet can get 'busy'. Busy, though, is about 30Mbps, but this is across that last 5,000' network segment between the household and the last WAN switch closest to them. But 30Mbps is a lot less than the 620Mbps illustrated above.
Very nice explanation, thanks...I'll remember to ask you next time I have a head-scratching network question...
I notice you didn't mention video on demand service....how does that affect the bandwith needs....
VOD isn't that difficult, because the VOD servers is replicated at every network node on the provider's local WAN network (remember that last switch closest to the resident?). Its not multicast, because its a rarity that more than one consumer fed from a neighborhood distribution server will commence to watch movie X at the same time. So, multiple instance need to be planned for, on for each starting time you or I choose to start watching (i.e. the On Demand aspect).
This is also why the telcos have not yet really planned for VOD, and why few cable operators plan for it. But in reality, it can add up if the quality of the VOD is good, or in HD. What is interesting about the original idea of telco+IPTV was that they were shooting for rapid channel changes as a means to differentiate themselves from cbale and satellite operators. Unfortunately, this is difficult without multicasting all channels simultaneously to every home, and then cacheing Y seconds worth of every channel for instataneous channel-changing performance.
With fiber, it would be possible to multicast all channels simultaneously, and its something I've given Verizon credit for (deploying fiber). Unfortunately, Verizon started making FTTH promises back in 1985 and began in 2005. Hah! Even BellSouth tried the FTTP solution (from Marconi), but it got expensive as fiber driven into ROW of neighborhoods and dense commercial areas is often fought. Remember that women in Florida tried to run over someone putting fiber into the ground on her property, but in the right of way?
> the simultaneous multicast (one way) bandwdith is ~2-3Mbps for standard and 8-9Mbps for high defintiion channel.
Is that using statistical multiplexing? Or just more compression than ATSC?
-- J.S.
Its using a different video codec than what DVD and ATSC-DTV uses, which is MPEG-2. For instance MPEG-2 for broadcast Digital TV is 19.1 Mbps transported in it compressed form. Using h.264 (MPEG-4) or VC1, its half this value because of codec efficiency. Uncompressed, one would need considerable bandwidth (~1-1.5 Gbps) for a single channel.
BTW, don't look at it as 'more' compression, but rather more-efficient compression. The difference is that one is not compromising on what they see after its decompressed and displayed. MPEG-2 is fine when the computing horsepower to decompress it was liited ten years ago, but today the more efficient codecs require moe computing power to decompress which is now relatively available.
Getting back to the topic at hand, one could invest (if they or your client had the money) in an optical system. While multi-mode is cheap (for fiber), single-mode is still a little pricey for me to consider. Still, I could imagine a 10-Gbps in-home PON system for distributing ucompressed video/audio from a single source location and make display-only locations throughout the house.
Can you post a picture of your setup please?
HD and the most electrical supply houses sell "structured cable", which usually contains 2 phone, 2 CATV, and 2+ network cables in one cable. Makes wiring easier, only drawback is your working with a 1" - 2" cable, which can be difficult. I did a different approach, ran 3" conduit from the basement to the attic right in the middle of the house, and ran feeds through it to each room.
Renaissance Restorations LLC
Victorian Home Restoration Services
http://www.renaissancerestorations.com
> Does anyone have any advice for putting together a home network for phone, cable TV and ethernet?
By far the best advice of all is to put nice big conduit and boxes in the walls, running up to the attic and/or down to the basement or crawl space. Your house will be around a whole lot longer than any particular technology or standard, and with conduit you can pull in whatever they invent whenever they invent it.
-- J.S.