I'm doing a bit of renovation at my home and as part of that I'd like to better hide my internet cable.
The current situation:
- The cable is an old one, installed in 2003 or something. It's a bog standard Cat5E without shielding.
- The cable comes into my condo through a hole in the wall and runs all the way up to the router. It's currently sitting on the surface, not hidden anywhere.
- I'm currently getting full duplex 100MBit broadband (one of the nice perks in my area), although faster speeds are available even now via optics. If in the future I decided to upgrade my internet speed even more, I'd need to change this cable.
What I want:
- After renovations I'd like to hide the cable beneath baseboard and (for a few metres) run it through a shallow channel ("through"?) in the concrete. So it won't be that easy to replace in the future, thus I want it to be high-quality and future-proof. (The location where it comes out and connects to my router I judge to be pretty optimal and unlikely to change in the future)
- I'm slightly worried that the insulation plastic on the old cable might start to fail simply from old age – plastic isn't forever, especially on cheap ancient cables. That doesn't seem to be happening yet though.
What my problems are:
- Looking at the current cable standards it seems that Cat6A should be the best currently available, probably with some sort of shielding. However I have a hard time finding anyone selling such a cable by the metre. At best there are some who sell whole rolls of 300m or so, and that's waaaay too much for me.
- But there are plenty of factory-made patch cables, which makes me wonder if constructing a proper high-speed cable like that could be beyond what is possible at home? Like, maybe it requires some special connectors that need to be soldered on, and the regular 8P8C connectors that I can attach with a simple crimping tool won't cut it?
- And to make matters (potentially) even worse, I don't intend to get rid of the current incoming cable. Instead it will be rolled back to near the point where it enters my condo and there I will connect it to the new cable, via some sort of connection (either a coupler, or just by adding a female end to the new cable). This connection point… I understand it's a risk, although I don't know how large. The overall distance between the provider's switch and my home router is probably going to be less than 50 metres, so there shouldn't be any signal issues… I guess? But I just don't know.
My question:
So, what I want to know is – is this a good plan? And if not, then why not? Or if it is doable, then is there something I should keep in mind which I haven't already described?
Best Answer
Using patch cables, whether manufactured in a factory or made at home, for long runs is not a good idea. The ends will inevitably get messed up and then you will have to put on new ends, which is not an easy job. It has gotten worse with each upgrade (CAT 3 -> CAT 5 -> CAT 5e -> CAT 6) and the tolerances now are extremely tight.
The proper solution is to terminate each end in a standard jack. That is done with a punch tool (generally less expensive than a decent crimper, and a lot easier to use to create good connections). Then you use factory-made short patch cables to connect to the router, switch, etc.
I have never seen a problem with CAT 5e insulation except due to physical damage (chairs rolling over it repeatedly, staples in the wrong place tacking to walls, pinched under furniture legs, etc.). So the main concern is simply keeping it out of harm's way.
The best thing though is that CAT 5e (terminated properly) can provide a Gigabit connection. So you can definitely get past the current 100 Megabit limit. In fact, I often put in Gigabit switches together with a (default until recently) 100 Megabit router so that computers within a building can communicate with each other at Gigabit speeds over standard CAT 5e cables, even if the internet connection is far slower.