Adding 10 Gigabit Ethernet to my 129-Year-Old House!

ah these gen z kids ringing my don't oh hey that's an annoying bell isn't it are you done anyways welcome to my home i'm quinn of snazzy labs and yeah this is the new place okay so it's not new it's over 120 years old but it's new to me yeah we got moving boxes everywhere and it's kind of messy but we love it except for one thing that really bothers me my wife couldn't care less but it's right here that's the state of our networking in this home no that's not an old school either now jack that's a telephone jack there's two of them in the house and that's it now you might be thinking hold on quinn it's 20 21. surely the people that lived here before you had the internet yeah probably up until the mid-2000s they had dial-up like most americans and then also like most americans upgraded to something like this a cable router with a modem a router and a wireless access point built in here's the problem though that's not ideal wired devices are much more reliable their speed is much higher and when you want wi-fi in your home you really ought to have multiple access points having one of these and jamming it into the cupboard in your basement is not going to provide a good internet experience but there is no ethernet cable in my house there's nowhere to run access points and those mesh networks are fine but they're not ideal so in this video i am going to retrofit my crazy old house with ethernet cabling in almost every room i'm going to put modern advanced wireless access points in most of the rooms and last i am going to get gigabit fiber so that this 120 year old house can feel blazing fast and i'm going to show you how to do it so if interested you can do it to your kind of old home it's not hard it just takes a lot of work so let's begin now before you do anything you need to consider step number zero the planning phase i'm generally a measure once drill twice type of guy but when it comes to networking i am not not because it's dangerous or because it's hard but because well you're going to run into issues and if you don't anticipate those issues before they happen they're going to add up you're going to become very frustrated and you're going to question why you did this at all and why you even own a home and you'll consider lighting it on fire which is insurance fraud and you will not get your money back you'll go to jail anyway as a general rule of thumb there are three ways to do this the first one and the easiest one by far is through existing cable drops in your wall if you've got telephone wire somewhere or if you've got coaxial cable inside your walls that you don't mind abandoning well just take that old cable cut off the connector tie the new ethernet cable to it go to your crawl space or attic pull the old cable up you've got the new cable there you're done go celebrate at texas roadhouse you lucky son of a second way and this is a way that i'm going to take advantage of occasionally in my retrofit is to be a little lazy and to instead of try to trifle with wires inside your walls well to just go outside of your house that's right you punch through your foundation or through your attic space you go down or up along the exterior wall of your home and you punch back in where you want that ethernet cable or access point it's actually less disruptive than you think you're going to want to seal them with silicone caulk or whatever but it's a really good way to do stuff and it is very very simple the last way and it's not very fun but it's doable is to go through interior walls now interior walls generally don't have insulation so unlike exterior walls you're not going to have a really difficult time pushing the cable down or up to where it needs to be so you can grab it in the hole you've pre-prepared and don't worry we'll do this but it's much easier if you have drywall because you just pick a couple of studs you drop the cable down in and you're good my house is problematic because i don't have gravity to help me i have a crawl space not an attic so i gotta push it up and then my walls are made out of laugh and plaster which is really sucky because it's really rigid and there's nails and all sorts of stuff inside my walls that'll snag onto the cable at any instant so i'm gonna show you how to do mine but those are the three ways think about how you're going to do them crawl in your crawl space crawl in your attic and figure out where you're going to put the cables and how you're going to make it all happen before you do it what better video than this to talk about our friend and sponsor private internet access look if you're watching this video you know what a vpn is but if you need an endorsement i have been a pain customer of pia for a long time before they ever decided to sponsor the channel as expected they don't do any logging ever they have a wide swath of apps for just about every platform you can imagine and their accounts support up to 10 simultaneous connections which is a gotcha 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have the fiber coming into my house and then it terminates inside of this little box and changes to copper rj45 ethernet cable then for my router or for my gateway i have selected a ubiquiti dream machine pro now i bought one of these last year for our office when we moved everything to 10 gig networking and it is fantastic we love it it's really great and that was a no-brainer in my mind for this home it is a server rack mount product it's kind of intended for you know small businesses not really intended for homes but i think its price to performance is really great it's an excellent gateway and i generally really recommend it and the best thing about buying one of those is that you can use ubiquiti's excellent security cameras which i'll be putting up on the house as well as their amazing wi-fi access points these things all they do is wi-fi nothing else and so it's kind of like a mesh network but it's way better because you wire every single one of these in they don't repeat the signal they broadcast the same signal so these are their in-wall hds which just sit flush on your drywall and then we've got these nano hds which are a little larger and kind of more access pointy looking here's the thing though i didn't know how many of these i actually needed because this house is old it has really thick walls there's a lot of brick but i didn't want to overdo it because if you put too many wireless access points in your house handoff actually gets pretty difficult to do and wi-fi gets worse so i discovered that unify has this really handy design center tool you upload a floor plan of your house and if you don't have one like i didn't i was able to use an ipad app called magic plan i think it's on the iphone too and it uses ar and lidar if you have that on your device to measure the dimensions of your home and create rooms i went a little overkill because i wanted it to be exact and used a bosch laser range finder as well which works with the app really really cool and handy but yeah in general it was pretty easy to make a floor plan and then i uploaded that to ubiquiti's design center and then i basically tell it what walls are super thick like brick or concrete what walls are interior walls and then where are my windows and that generally will recommend to you how each of their wireless products will perform in your home which is really handy and they also tell you when you have too many so i went through and decided based on where i could actually reasonably run my cable drops well this is where i can put an access point what happens if i put this one here what happens if i put this one here and for the best five gigahertz coverage in my home i decided to go with two in-wall hd's and two nano hds and i think it'll work out really really well so that's the equipment now we need to actually do the hard part and that is running the cables okay but what type of cabling should i be using you're wondering well that's easy ethernet cable okay so it's not that easy because it's a little more intricate than that you see all ethernet cable in general in design is built the same if i strip the jacket off of this inside you will see four twisted pairs four colors with a corresponding striped wire and so long as they're in the same order on both ends of the cable well the cable will work however your real world performance and the length of cable run you can do is determined by two main factors the category and the rating cat5 or cat 5e is by far the most ubiquitous cable you'll see around and it's been around for decades it carries gigabit speeds very reliably i don't recommend that in a new deployment like this because while gigabit is awesome theoretically in the next 10 or 15 years the likelihood of us using 10 plus gig networking is well it's there there's reason to install this cable if it's not that much more money and it's really not this is category 6 cable and cat 6 in my opinion is pretty underrated there are newer standards like cat6a cat7 and there's even a cat eight on the horizon now cat6 6a and seven are all rated for 10 gigabits per second however cat6 is only rated for 10 gigabits per second at less than 55 meters of a run now 55 meters is still quite a bit and in your house you're likely to not have a single cable run over 55 meters the reason i recommend cat6 and the reason i'm going to use it is because like cat5e it is extremely easy to work with it's very easy to terminate and crimp and your life just goes better cat6a and cat7 have all this crazy shielding and these difficult jackets that make it a real hassle to work with and the performance in your home likely won't be any different now if we're talking an office building sure but in a home no so cat six is what i'm doing it's what i recommend now let's talk about the rating there are a bunch of ratings cmr cm cmx cmp really you don't need to know any of them this is cmr this is rated for indoor usage cmp is rated for plenum usage so inside air ducting and then cmx sometimes it's also called heavy duty is rated for outdoor usage so i'm using cmx outside for running my cameras when i have cable runs on the exterior of my home those are only rated for a single gigabit but that's fine the rest is 10 gigabit capable cat 6 that's just chilling in my basement so let's talk about how i'm going to fish it around welcome to my creepy crawl space where pennywise and the hantavirus definitely do not reside i did find this really really old sears newspaper advertisement however for a 138 dollar two speed kenmore washing machine this is probably my insulation okay so i took a two inch hole saw and cut a hole right above where i intend to place my server rack and then i fished all of this pre-cut cable down through the wall i have the lengths already measured out for where i intend to send each cable and i've made sure that it's the right category and rating for its intended use so this one right here i can tell this is outdoor rated cable and yep it says front camera right here so you can choose to do this like i've done i want each ethernet port in my house to have its own 10 gig dedicated link back to the switch back to the network but you may choose to use uh you know five port switches that's okay too just depends on how much time you're willing to spend cabling but i figure if you're down here crawling in your grody basement you might as well do it right from the get-go now i have to put it to where they're actually going they're all spooled up but it doesn't do any good here so i'm going to wire these to where in the crawl space they need to go just below because again this is my house we're gonna drill through the subfloor down into this basement and i'd like to have the cable in the right spot now rather than just wiring it all on the ground i would suggest you get one of these this is a stapler they're not too much money and what's cool is they're rated for ethernet cables so i can go to my floor joist right here and snap and check it out my cables held up but what you might notice is that it still is able to slide that's because the spacers there don't allow the cable to pinch the ethernet cable and that's good because if you pinch and severely kink these cables you can affect your 10 gig speeds so yeah get a stapler like this get the cables out of the way organize them a little bit and put them where they need to go now let's go back upstairs and drill down through our floor i'm here in my home's only room that has drywall because that's likely what you have in your home and i want to demonstrate that but if you do have latin plaster like me you're in an older home the process is pretty much the same it's just it's a lot messier step number one regardless of wall type is going to be identifying your studs uh oh i'm a stud if you have drywall that's really easy just use a stud finder if you have laugh and plaster it's a little trickier you can buy a pricier magnetic stud finder that will actually identify the nails that your lath is nailed into or you can use a neodymium magnet if your plaster isn't too thick to identify the nails attached to your stud interesting after you've done that you're going to need one of these this is a low voltage old work box old work because it's got these little ears on the back and so it attaches to the wall without any um you know screws and then the other thing that it does is it has a big cavity in the middle unlike most boxes which are enclosed now for low voltage wiring like coaxial cable ethernet and the like you don't need to have a back of a box and so these are so much easier to work with it's easier to route cable they are awesome and they're like a dollar so get a couple of these then you are going to take a pencil and stick it through the four holes that are around the corner of the box and this will give you four reference points for where you need to make incisions in your wall i usually take the box itself and then just make straight lines so that i know where to cut and then using either a multi-tool if you're lazy or a drywall saw if you uh don't have a tool like this or you know want to use tools intended for the specific task you're performing these are great then we have a hole in our wall pretty easy all we have to do after that is well get a drill bit through the floor yeah one of these these are designed to well create cavities inside of your subfloor when you have an existing framed wall in the way they are kind of a pain to use there are a bunch of brands that make them i will link the few that i've used that i enjoy and a few of the ones that i would recommend staying away from but basically it's just an auger your standard kind of drill bit with a little threaded screw at the beginning to really grab into your subfloor and then a long flexible shaft and the purpose of this is to allow you to drill straight down inside of the wall from above so you're going to need one of these bits you're going to need a cordless drill you're going to need one of these well you don't need one of these but i find them useful basically what it does is it just ensures that your drill bit stays 90 degrees from the floor while you're in the wall to make sure that you don't drill at an angle all right i have a couple of techniques and suggestions for you suggestion number one make sure that when you begin drilling your drill bit is at a square second suggestion is if you hear the auger struggling it is they do not handle nails or screw heads very well and so if it sounds like you're hitting one stop back the drill out and try a different spot the great thing is who cares no one can see behind your wall so if you need to make a couple holes and see which one works you can lastly and this is the most important it may seem counterintuitive but go slowly if you run your auger fast it'll heat up it'll get gunk stuff stuck in it and it's going to struggle continuing to drill downward slowly 90 degree and well a lot of patience here we go okay there's our flexible auger bit it made it through the subfloor no problem and now we have to get the ethernet cable up through the wall again now i could try to fish this up manually by hand but that would be ridiculous and so i'm going to use pulling line pulling line is just basically really inflexible string it's strong string but it doesn't stretch and the great thing about it is you can tie it to the end of the auger here and then i can duct tape or electrical tape the string the line to the cable and then i can just pull the bit out of the wall this string will pull the cable up through the wall and then i'm done so let's do it except for we're not done because look we just have two bare cables there are two common termination types and i'm going to show you how to do both of them but sitting at the table my legs are tired there are two common connector types and you've no doubt seen both of them before an rj45 ethernet connector and then a keystone connector which is what rj45 plugs into now you can choose to have either in your wall i've elected to use keystones because they look really flush and you just plug a patch cable something like this from your device into the wall but that does require more ethernet cabling it is a little more tricky and you introduce an additional point of failure so a lot of people and i don't blame them just like to run the ethernet cable right out of their wall directly into the device that they want to provide connection to either method works there's no wrong way you'll just choose what you want to do and go with it okay you are going to need a couple tools regardless of method if you're doing rj45 connectors you're going to need this a crimper and if you're doing keystones you're going to need this a punch down tool both methods are really easy and i want to show you with just a pair of cat5e how to do each go ahead and strip the outer jacket off you can use a fancy little stripper like i have i'll link them down below they're not too expensive or you can just use scissors if you want you'll notice that inside there are the four twisted pairs and then there is this hairy white little cable this is called a pole line and you can actually tear on it and it will rip the jacket further down but we need that out of our way and so we're just going to go ahead and chop that off now that the hairy bits are out of the way we've got our four twisted pairs there's a little trick that no one tells you that's pretty handy untwisting these pairs especially with cat6 is pretty tricky but if you use the ethernet cable jacketing you just stripped off you can actually stick it in between the two pairs and then just twist okay once you have your four colored pairs all separated you need to put them in order now like i mentioned earlier it doesn't necessarily matter what order they're in so long as they're in the correct order on both ends but you should really go with a standard because technically and jury's still out on this one some of the pairs are twisted more tightly than others and so putting them in the correct order you just you'll want to do it there are two standards t568b and t568a a used to be very ubiquitous up until probably 15 years ago now pretty much everyone uses b it doesn't really matter which one you choose again just make sure that whatever you pick you stick to most of these punch down tools will have a little guide on the back that tells you what order to put the cables in so this one is white and orange and then orange and then white and green and you just you know you can just kind of pull these cables as you see fit there's not that much of a reason to stay careful with them then we've got blue which we will bring that one to the front okay and now we've got stripy blue now we have green now we have white and brown and then brown okay so these are all in order and generally i like to kind of pull on the cable and you know run them back and forth just to make sure that they correctly stay in place uh are so we're going to go ahead grab our little scissors here and just punch these down so that they're all the same length and then you grab your connector and there are two types of connectors there are push through connectors which is what i'm using and it's great because you can push the cables all the way through make sure that they're in the right order before you crimp them and then your tool crimps and trims them or you can cut them down to the proper length jam them in make sure they stick and then go ahead it doesn't really matter i've gotten pretty comfortable with both of them but punch down is generally recommended for beginners because look at this i just stuck the connectors through i push the jacket all the way in as far as it'll go and then i make sure that my order is correct which it is and then i grab my punch down tool i stick my connector through and then i just crimp [Music] i'm done that's an ethernet cable pretty easy okay now on the other end we're going to do a capstone these are very very very excuse me a keystone these are very very simple so on the front here i'm just going to stick my cable in and then you just wire them down in between these cavities and the great thing is is they are the right color so you know whichever color is there you have the solid and the striped on the same side so once you've lined all of your connectors up and they're in the correct spot you need to grab your punch down tool now there are two different types of punch downs there's 99 and 110 pretty much every modern thing is is 110. so you stick this into your punch down tool this one's kind of cool because it has an impact sensor on it and so you just push it until it clicks i would recommend getting one of these they are a little more money but it's better than just playing the game of did i actually push it in or did i push it too hard and break the jacket these tools are handy and then you seriously just take the punch down tool stick it in the cavity and punch pretty easy once you're done you can take the excess connectors you just spin them until they break off and now we're done we have an ethernet cable rj45 on one end and a keystone on the other now if you want to make sure that these work you can buy one of these this is a cat 5e or cat6 tester now this is a fancy one with a display and it will actually tell you what pins are incorrect in case you did mess up but there are basic ones that do the same function you basically turn it on you plug one end into the keystone or into the one end of the rj45 and then you plug the other ethernet cable end in and then you push test and our cable passes we did it right and that's it and with everything installed the house is complete now look i can't say that it was fun or that i would want to do it again ever but i'm getting great speed in just about every room stay tuned for a future episode where i will talk about what i plan to do with this 10 gig lan and how all my smart home gadgets even the unsupported ones will reside inside homekit on their own isolated network gets up for that one because it is going to be an exciting and a nerdy one that you will not want to miss if you enjoyed this video please give it a thumbs up if you disliked it well send it to someone you hate thank you so much for watching and as always stay snappy [Music] you

Channel: Snazzy Labs

Views: 1,280,078

Keywords: snazzy labs, quinn nelson, snazzyq, networking, how to, how to build a server, networking diy, server, ubiquiti, unifi, in wall hd, in wall, nano hd, dream machine, udm, udm pro, cable drop, ethernet cable, cable crimping, how to make an ethernet cable, cat6, cat5e, cat7, cat8, 10 gig, fiber, drywall, lath and plaster, access point, ap, router, modem, tech, internet, how to get faster internet, gigabit

Id: vNmSp4QLcxs

Length: 24min 44sec (1484 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 09 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/tom00953]

nice one! Added 10 Gigabit Ethernet Internet to my house ;)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Am5FBEe0D8w