Hello

I am in the process of an addition to my house and had a couple of
questions if you don't mind. When wiring the extension for comcast
cable TV, cable high speed internet access, which wires do I use??

At home depot one guy told me to buy the 18/1, another said the CAT 5,
another said BOTH!!!

I was hoping someone could shed some light on this for me.

Thanks!

"Manish" wrote...

I am in the process of an addition to my house and had a couple of
questions if you don't mind. When wiring the extension for comcast
cable TV, cable high speed internet access, which wires do I use??

At home depot one guy told me to buy the 18/1, another said the CAT 5,
another said BOTH!!!

"BOTH" is closer to reality.

You will need coax cable (someone else said RG6; I'm not sure of the
specification) to go to the TV and cable modem. You may want to run 2 separate
cables either from the point where the cable first enters the house or from an
accessible location at the addition; the cable modem needs a separate cable with
a filter.

Cat 5 Ethernet cable is used between the cable modem and the computer; or
between the cable modem and router, and between the router and individual
computers in the case of a Local Area Network (LAN) with several computers.
Wherever you set up your cable modem is where you want to set up your router,
which will be the central access point for your LAN. From there you can run Cat
5 cable to other rooms. A single cable to each room should suffice; you can add
an Ethernet switch in any room where you want to set up multiple computers.

For cable tv runs, get good quality quad shield RG6 and terminate with
high quality connectors (ie not the twist on crap). I use
Thomas&Betts snap-and-seal compression connectors. Belden and
Commscope are good cable brands.

For network, get a high quality Cat5e or better. Again, I recommend
Belden Datatwist 350.

I would also run coax for satellite dish, unless you just know you
will never use it. Run two lines+phone to major rooms (living room,
home theater, etc) to handle dual tuner receivers like the Directivo
units from Directv. Run a single line+phone to other less important
rooms to save cable cost if you want. Make sure the cable you buy for
satellite runs has been sweep tested to at least 2Ghz. Regular
shielding is OK here.

Hook up the cable modem in the central wiring location. Hook it to a
router with switch and use the ports for computers on that floor (and
1st floor if this is in a basement). Use the uplink port to go to
another switch for 2nd floor.

Most people want to wire all rooms to the central location, and you
can do that if you are in the framing stage. In my case, though, we
bought our house already finished so I will use the above method to
wire internet. I just have to run one cable from basement to attic
this way.

Plus, if all your bedrooms are on the same floor, you can put the
switch in your bedroom closet and pull the plug to the kids computer
if they are mouthing off.




On Sat, 19 Jul 2003 23:38:31 -0400, Manish wrote:

Hello

I am in the process of an addition to my house and had a couple of
questions if you don't mind. When wiring the extension for comcast
cable TV, cable high speed internet access, which wires do I use??

At home depot one guy told me to buy the 18/1, another said the CAT 5,
another said BOTH!!!

I was hoping someone could shed some light on this for me.

Thanks!