Another Wi-Fi question...for a dummy

[the86d]

My son is getting 250/250Mbps out of a 500/500 pipe, on a "1Gbps" link in his room on the Belkin powerline adapters. Most people don't need more than a Gigabit link in their homes, yet, as most people have nothing that pushes/pulls enough throughput to require it.

Cat5 will still give you a Gigabit link 100 meters+ (328ft+) (100 meters is the spec, but it'll go further), but Cat6 would be better for future 10 Giabit, however 10Gig switches AVG about $150+ minimum, and the NICs... the lowest I could find is like $40 ea.

[MrFancyPants]

Crimping ends directly on the cable is NOT the only option, not only that, it is not the best option.

I agree with this more often than not, however there are situations where crimping an end on a home run back to a patch panel or switch makes the most sense. Example, the ceiling mounted APs in my house are flush mounted to the ceiling, and I drilled a hole just big enough to run a cable through and crimped an end on it and connected directly to the PoE port of the AP. There's no room for a biscuit box or even a keystone jack between the AP and the ceiling. You could argue that I could have terminated the cable above the ceiling to a keystone jack and run a short patch cable through the hole in the ceiling to the AP, but I would have had to drill a bigger hole to fit the end through then seal it around the cable. More work, not as sound and unnecessary. Since the AP is inside and does not move, a crimped end on a solid cable works just fine.

I began my IT career as a cable monkey and we did it this way whenever the situation called for it. I've never once seen a cable end have issues due to corrosion or anything else other than obvious physical damage. As long as you leave a service loop at each end of the run so it can be re-terminated if necessary, you have nothing to worry about.

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk

[Fizz]

I agree with this more often than not, however there are situations where crimping an end on a home run back to a patch panel or switch makes the most sense. Example, the ceiling mounted APs in my house are flush mounted to the ceiling, and I drilled I hole just big enough to run a cable through and crimped an end on it and connected directly to the PoE port of the AP. There's no room for a biscuit box or even a keystone jack between the AP and the ceiling. You could argue that I could have terminated the cable above the ceiling to a keystone jack and run a short patch cable through the hole in the ceiling to the AP, but I would have had to drill a bigger hole to fit the end through then seal it around the cable. More work, not as sound and unnecessary. Since the AP is inside and does not move, a crimped end on a solid cable works just fine.

I began my IT career as a cable monkey and we did it this way whenever the situation called for it. I've never once seen a cable end have issues due to corrosion or anything else other than obvious physical damage. As long as you leave a service loop at each end of the run so it can be re-terminated if necessary, you have nothing to worry about.

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk

I'll agree with you on that installation. Personally I'd do as you hinted, and just leave the jack in the ceiling and a short length of patch, if no other reason than to save the time from sorting and pushing through the RJ45 ends (I have the keystone tool that will push and trim all 8 conductors at once). That particular install also has the advantage that the unsupported length of cable is minimal. A slightly larger hole is inconsequential when the device is that large.

I've done experiments with certifiers as well, the jack/patch cable route usually has better stats, even though it's technically more junctions. I think it has to do with jack blades cutting into the conductor and having a much larger contact footprint.

OP is talking about cameras, in which case at least a few will be outdoors.

[sholling]

Mesh just means you have dedicated radios for backhauls/uplinks back to the access point that has the wired connection into your network.

Mesh comes in two flavors, ranger extender and dedicated back channels. The range extender version uses half its capacity to talk to its base station and half to forward the signal. This is 90% of the market.

The dedicated back channel flavor (IMHO the only type I'd consider) like the Netgear Orbi 3000 use a separate (3rd) channel to talk to the router. Personally I prefer hardwired access points to extend a network.

[3d42]

Update: WiFi project is done

So my original goal of only going into the attic once turned out to be far too lofty. I finally decided on a Swann video system, and a TP-Link deco mesh system. I upgraded my modem to a netgear cm1000 (ultra high speed...).

After reading the posts on here, I realized that I should know my starting point, so I downloaded a speed test app. I was getting about 16/8 before. Now I'm getting 89/9. I'm quite pleased with the improvement. I was actually expecting better, but I think I have a service plan that doesn't give the best speed (I should probably check that...)

Thanks to everyone for all the help and advice!

[ibanezfoo]

Impressive anti-gravity setup you have there. I have the older Deco sysem but it doesn't have the anti-gravity feature.

[3d42]

Impressive anti-gravity setup you have there. I have the older Deco sysem but it doesn't have the anti-gravity feature.

It was a $10 upgrade for amazon customers, so I figured "why not?"...! Apparently I still need to learn how to post pics from my phone!