Walls – How to connect coaxial cables to the wall

If your wall is closed up then you don't have to worry about it. It looks like class 2 wire is rated to go into walls. Only use wire that is rated to be in the walls for uses like what you have. The only things to worry about with class 2 or class 3 wiring is:

1. Class 2/3 should never be used in the same electrical box (without a low voltage divider or in the same conduit with your house wiring.
2. Class 2/3 should be kept at least 10" away from house wiring. Try to run in a separate bay.
3. Remember when crossing house wiring with class 2/3 it should be at 90 degrees.

If your wall is open then if you can spare the money for ENT or smurf tube (bendable, corrugated, PVC that is usually blue) then that will give your wiring more protection. It is sold in 10ft lengths or 100ft coils. You can run low-voltage class 2/3 or regular house wiring, but not at the same time. It will also give the transmission that is carried on the class 2/3 less interference when around house wiring.

If you just want to extend your network you can use your existing electrical system.

This is called power line ethernet You get various version- The simplest being point to point. and more complicated ones that allow for mulitplexing/switching across several units like the one in the image below.

And you can get very advanced and slick ones called power line sockets that are switch traffic across your whole house with these stylish wall plates...

Speeds vary from products but usually start at 55mbs (55megabits = 5mega bytes per second) and I have seen speeds reaching up to 500mbs (50megabytes per second)

Cable is ALWAYS allot more reliable especially if you want to use it for you home multimedia systems, like streaming HD movies from a NAS, playing world of warcraft with ultra low latency so you don't get owned by a noob because of lag. Wireless is good for watching youtube on your smartphone, placing orders from your fridge or letting your guests leach some of your bandwidth. (Trust me- I had Wirless N on my media centre that was 3 meteres above- put in a 100mb cable and now i can watch movies without stress)

Obviously running LAN cable is the cheapest option - I would suggest using some cable conduit.You get various sizes and shapes - and you paint over plain ones if you want to camouflage them into your wall.

But be careful not to land up with something like this.. it is easy.

Some technical benchmarking and limitations

^{Some more reviews on the netgear 500mbs reviews}