Wiring a new house recommendations

I'm so excited! We finally found a new cabin plan that we all love. Demolition on our old place will start next week. Currently those fabulous 500 sq ft are being served by DSL coming up through the floor to a wireless router that I put in the window to share with my in laws across the street!

I'm looking at options for wiring the new house. I'm newly addicted to streaming Netflix and Hulu Plus, and so are my kids. I'm planning on wiring an ethernet jack close to every possible TV and computer location and also setting up the wireless again. I've said for years that I would wire every house as a smart house, didn't realize it would be for entertainment to this extent.

The cabin: 1800 sq ft main floor plus loft. Basement will be a built out walkout with a media room and my office. It's primarily a summer cabin and we have lots of company. I often have several guests connected to the wireless sitting on our decks or across the street at my in laws. Everyone is at the lake all day so in the evenings everyone is online at once.

Questions:
Would you use Cat5 or Cat6? Is the Cat6 worth the extra money? I understand the technical differences. I find that some technologies are fantastic but when applied to a real world setup their gains are mostly not being used.
Would you home run all of this to one place, probably in the basement? Run each floor to it's own switch? Break it up more to keep the cable lengths to a minimum? Any other considerations that I'm overlooking?

 

Hey, handygal.

Ooooo...house wiring - what fun!

No recommendations on the CAT wiring - you probably know more about the subject than i ever will.

My question: are you doing the electrical wiring, also? If so, if you have any questions, give a holler - I've done a few houses over the years.

Good luck - sounds like a dream project! :drink

 

I have personally found that the Devolo system negates the need to run extra cables, every where you have a power outlet you can connect to the internet.

I now live in an apartment but earlier we had a two story house and it worked like a dream.

I still use it now and my Telephone and TV are both activated with the same system.

http://www.devolo.com/consumer/dlan-mains-supply-network-via-powerline.html?l=en

 

Thanks! I plan on doing my fair share of that when it's done! :drink

I will not be doing any wiring myself, I'm leaving the whole project to the professionals. I won't even be in the same state! I can replace a bad light switch or outlet, move a telephone jack, but that's about it. No romex, no aluminum wire, that's the full extent of my knowledge there. I learned enough to keep my DIY projects going but hopefully not enough to get into trouble. I think I applied my hard lessons from computers -- better to call the professional before creating a bigger problem.

FANTASTIC!!

Not only is that very interesting equipment, it would solve a problem I'm having at my house right now.

And here is the super bonus! You just identified what in the world is in that box at the top of my office closet. :celebrate I keep meaning to take it down again and google it. Now I remember! About 10 years ago I tried a system like this. It's probably 10baseT so now I can get rid of it and try to newer, faster one! Saved me the time to identify it, realize I need something just like it now, and researching what happened to that technology!
Thank you.

I guess I will call my techs. One will say cat5, one will say cat6. Probably won't matter for the next 10 years anyway. Thanks for the input!

 

Regarding which CAT cables to use. It all depends on the hardware you have. If you have a cheap router, then the router will be the bottle neck. If everything is top of the line, then the cable will be. But chances are it isn't worth the money.

 

When the house is done and we get a chance to test it out, I'll post it in the Off-Topic area. It will be in cabin rentals on the lake if anyone wants to take a peaceful mountain vacation with some good internet.