Creating a smart home (plus Cat 6 cabling) anyone

[vkurup]

Has anyone gone down the route of creating a 'smart' home? Smart home could be where you can control various bits like heating, lights, appliances via the Interweb on your phone.

We are in the process of getting the new place. A couple of years down we may put in an extension. I am really thinking of wiring the house for Cat 6 cables. Much better than wifi. Any thoughts?

 

[Khamelion]

While sticking in wired hard points around the house, you're still limiting to where devices that use the network can be situated. The obvious downside being visible cable from the hard point to the device.

One alternative would be to have a separate ring main specifically to be used with the wireless access point you can buy like the Devolo ones. That way you have the option to have individual wireless in every room and if used with the pass through plugs hard points for static devices like the TV, cable/Sky box.

Or you could use the network hard points to attach wireless devices which again would give a good signal in each room.

But if hard points are the way you want to go, then a decent 10/100 switch will be needed as most broadband routers only have 4 ports plus uplink, I'm assuming here that you would be putting in hard points into more than 4 rooms.

 

[Rooter]

why bother with wired? everything these days is wireless, you get a decent wireless system built, not just the out of the box BT home hub, get some proper wireless access points, have a wireless survey and install. to be honest, 1 enterprise grade AP should be enough for a modern 4 bed house. if a specific device needs wired connections, i would buy a wireless repeater with rj45 input. wired is so last decade dude!

 

[vkurup]

why bother with wired? everything these days is wireless, you get a decent wireless system built, not just the out of the box BT home hub, get some proper wireless access points, have a wireless survey and install. to be honest, 1 enterprise grade AP should be enough for a modern 4 bed house. if a specific device needs wired connections, i would buy a wireless repeater with rj45 input. wired is so last decade dude!

The virgin comes in the current lounge. In an ideal world I am looking at putting an extension at the far end and putting a smart TV/home cinema at that end. I already have a 2.4G/5G Netgear that is far superior to the standard Virgin kit. However, it is unlikely that the signal will make it to that end of the house. It may be 100mbps to the house, but signal degrades very quickly, so streaming stuff would be difficult.

Also I need to figure out a way of moving the virgin drop from the side of the house to a more centrally placed wifi box (or repeater). Also could run a VOIP from the Study if needed.

PS: Yup, I am very last decade.. still hanging onto my Blackberry..

While sticking in wired hard points around the house, you're still limiting to where devices that use the network can be situated. The obvious downside being visible cable from the hard point to the device.

One alternative would be to have a separate ring main specifically to be used with the wireless access point you can buy like the Devolo ones. That way you have the option to have individual wireless in every room and if used with the pass through plugs hard points for static devices like the TV, cable/Sky box.

Or you could use the network hard points to attach wireless devices which again would give a good signal in each room.

But if hard points are the way you want to go, then a decent 10/100 switch will be needed as most broadband routers only have 4 ports plus uplink, I'm assuming here that you would be putting in hard points into more than 4 rooms.

I did think about the powerline, but did not consider running a separate ring for it!! Any view on speeds on the powerline. I looked up Devolo, the power sockets with integrated Giga ports and socket looks very interesting... Does it work as much as it claims?