Wiring House For Lan Company Recommendation?

[negreanu]

Can anyone recommend a networking company that will wire a completed house with LAN cable and wall junction boxes in every room. Obviously wires would have to be in walls and ceiling's and invisible.

[Langsuan Man]

If you are lucky and your builder used aluminum studs and plaster board for your walls it will be a relatively easy installation, other wise it is going to be expensive since the Thais channel out the space for conduits and junction boxes in the cement block walls prior to the final cement coat

If you have drop down (removable tile or as the Thais call it, T-bar ceiling ) the CAT 5 cable would be easy to run above. If it is a sealed ceiling you will have to have access holes cut out and then have them re-sealed and re-painted. The hardest part is going to try and satisfy your invisible requirement. IMHO the closets you are going to get will be square conduit that can be painted to match your walls

Most electricians can do this type of job but many will require that someone else cut the channel into the walls

[Tywais]

Any reason not to go wireless (WiFi)? My house, large 2 story, has all connectivity via WiFi and works brilliantly. This gives you a lot of mobility as your tablets, phones etc. can be used anywhere. Even my Plasma TV has wifi on it.

[negreanu]

Any reason not to go wireless (WiFi)? My house, large 2 story, has all connectivity via WiFi and works brilliantly. This gives you a lot of mobility as your tablets, phones etc. can be used anywhere. Even my Plasma TV has wifi on it.

Server located upstairs office. Lots of walls and floor to passthrough to get the TV room. Streaming Blu-Ray 1080p 3D movies over wireless N does not cut it.

Even tried Extending Wireless with second Airport extreme downstairs. but loss around 50% of wireless speed doing this. Although fine for browsing non 1080p streaming. etc.

Powerline 500mb also not stable enough.

Only solution is CAT5/6 unfortunately. Need a solid 8-12MB/s which I just cannot get stable enough on wireless / powerline.

Edited November 11, 2012 by negreanu

[Tywais]

Where are you located? I know a company in Chiang Mai that we used to wire one of our university research buildings.

[wpcoe]

Most electricians can do this type of job but many will require that someone else cut the channel into the walls

Cutting channels in traditional rendered brick walls is extremely dusty, to put it mildly. And, noisy, but you can leave while they're actually cutting.

[Langsuan Man]

Sounds like the easiest solution will be to run the Cat 5 line in conduit from the upstairs to the downstairs on the outside wall of the house

[User3]

I had same problem with the last house we bought in that I wanted hidden LAN cables (and also wanted many more electrical sockets than they normally install). Indeed, when they put in the channels to run the extra electrical wiring it created an amazing amount of dust. Fortunately we did it before moving in so 'all' we had to do was refinish the upstairs floor (hardwood) where the dust had settled onto the still-tacky finish...

But make sure you get someone that understands running LAN cables if you do a local install. Cat 5/6 cables are a lot more delicate than they look and will not tolerate any sort of pulling on them. When we got the cables pulled we used the local builder's electrical guy (so they said) and out of 6 cables, 2 do not work. One did for a while then quit. No amount of pleading, cajoling, begging, threatening could get them back to re-pull the wires. Now I am also looking to find someone to do this as I want to replace the duds and put in a few more. Like you, I am streaming 1080p to projector, TV and now want to add another TV in the guest bedroom.

None of the places I emailed (LAN installers) ever responded to my emails. There is a place in Panthip that has all the equipment but 'no time' to do any field work. I'm guessing they just don't think it is worth their while.

One thing to try is an alarm installer. When we got the alarm put into this house the people that installed it did an excellent job. The sensors are mounted in the corners of the rooms and the wires are run above the (sealed) ceiling to the control box which is also mounted at ceiling height. Those guys had no problem at all getting the wires to the the devices/junction box.

Also at Panthip I noticed that they carry the weatherproof CAT 6 cables so if you get desperate you can run them outside the house (tucked under eaves or something) but I'd put them inside conduit just to be safe. That is actually something that I am considering, given that I can't find anyone spry enough to crawl around in my attic and re-pull the cables.

In any case, good luck.

[JoePai]

Can I ask why you do not do the actual wiring yourself, so they do not mess up the wires, and leave them to do the 'physical' building work ?

[wpcoe]

But make sure you get someone that understands running LAN cables if you do a local install. Cat 5/6 cables are a lot more delicate than they look and will not tolerate any sort of pulling on them.

Any chance you can find flat LAN cables? While they might seem more fragile than regular CAT5/CAT6 cables, I think they would be less likely to damage when pulling them through conduits since they are much more flexible.

I haven't seen any flat cables in Thailand, but surely someone sells them. I used to buy mine in Tokyo when I visited for work -- any computer store in Japan sells them. Compare the white traditional cable with the blue and silver flat ones:

[Crushdepth]

If wireless signal strength is the main thing stopping you from using it, you could try adding a couple of directional antennas. Might work out to be a lot less hassle. Also you can often increase the throughput by choosing unused/less used channels, if such exist at your place. You can also often increase throughput by not running the wireless in mixed b/g/n mode, fix it on n or g if you must.

[electau]

Surface wire in white PVC ducting with surface mounting blocks. Each outlet 8x8 RJ45 on a mounting plate. If you have T -Bar ceiling cabling can be run in this area. Maintain clearance from power cables. Cabling 4 pair Cat5, 5E or Cat 6 data cable. terminate using a 110 displacement tool ( Krone). Test using a low cost cable tester to make sure all connections are correct and there are no shorts or opens. Flex patch leads should be same Cat. rating as cabling for best performance.

Use screws to affix ducting and blocks to wall using 6mm wall plugs.

[User3]

But make sure you get someone that understands running LAN cables if you do a local install. Cat 5/6 cables are a lot more delicate than they look and will not tolerate any sort of pulling on them.

Any chance you can find flat LAN cables? While they might seem more fragile than regular CAT5/CAT6 cables, I think they would be less likely to damage when pulling them through conduits since they are much more flexible.

I haven't seen any flat cables in Thailand, but surely someone sells them. I used to buy mine in Tokyo when I visited for work -- any computer store in Japan sells them. Compare the white traditional cable with the blue and silver flat ones:

Indeed, I do have some flat cables that I got from Panthip but really have no confidence in their quality. I'm sure they are fine in other places but these look a bit...er.. off. Seem to work on 10/100 side of LAN but so far have not tried them on 1GB side.

[User3]

Surface wire in white PVC ducting with surface mounting blocks. Each outlet 8x8 RJ45 on a mounting plate. If you have T -Bar ceiling cabling can be run in this area. Maintain clearance from power cables. Cabling 4 pair Cat5, 5E or Cat 6 data cable. terminate using a 110 displacement tool ( Krone). Test using a low cost cable tester to make sure all connections are correct and there are no shorts or opens. Flex patch leads should be same Cat. rating as cabling for best performance.

Use screws to affix ducting and blocks to wall using 6mm wall plugs.

I love it when you whisper Swahili in my ears.....

[User3]

Can I ask why you do not do the actual wiring yourself, so they do not mess up the wires, and leave them to do the 'physical' building work ?

Well... Given that to hide the wiring one has to enter the attic of the house, and given that I am +66 yrs old and don't exactly bend like I did in the past, and given that I have accumulated some extra padding (never know- ice age could happen and if so I'm 'way ahead of you thinner guys) and given that the chances of me falling off a roof beam are about 98.4% which puts me right through the ceiling and onto whatever was underneath me at the time......

Somehow it does not seem a desirable path for me.

But we are doing a kitchen reno at the moment so I'm sure there is someone in the crew of what looks like 300 people that can crawl around up there and who knows.. it might get done.

or not.

[User3]

If wireless signal strength is the main thing stopping you from using it, you could try adding a couple of directional antennas. Might work out to be a lot less hassle. Also you can often increase the throughput by choosing unused/less used channels, if such exist at your place. You can also often increase throughput by not running the wireless in mixed b/g/n mode, fix it on n or g if you must.

Actually no, it isn't signal strength per se that stops me. It's security.

Call me paranoid....

My Wireless signal (restricted to N) is ok, and I've restricted access to router so that only MAC addresses that I enter are allowed on, but I'm still a bit nervous.

I'm in a housing development and there are really no unused wifi channels here so I can't do much in the way of optimizing. I thought there was supposed to be a recession on so where are my neighbors getting the money to buy all these routers and all.

I was going to do the parabolic reflectors on the router antenna, but my router doesn't have external antennas. In fact, nor do the PS3s that I use for movie viewing have external antennas...

This makes it a bit difficult!

But it will sort itself out eventually.