Originally Posted by Hom3r (Post 36029168)

Look into decent powerline adaptors and in each room network switches.

This saves on drilling holes.

I bought a powerline adaptor kit, as my router is upstairs.

Behind the TV downtair is the other powerline, this connects to a 5 & 8 port switch.

Originally Posted by heero_yuy (Post 36029192)

The real problem in the walls is that although they are hollow there are usually cross members ( noggins ) at intervals between the vertical studs. You can use a stud finder to locate them but you then need to get the cables round them by making a hole in the wall at the noggin location and notching the noggin for the cable before re-filling the hole. There will also be a "wall plate" (timber) top and bottom running the entire width of the wall.

Depending upon the construction there may also be insulation beteen the studs as well.

You'll also need an electricians fish tape to pull the wires through.

When I wired up my place I ran the cables in the floor space and then put flush pattress boxes just above the skirting boards. That way the only cable in the wall was behind the skirting boards which are not plastered but nailed to small stand off timber laths. Then there was only a couple of inches actually in the plaster of the wall. Easy to chisel out and re-fill.

I actually had a route from the ground floor to the first inside some plaster boarded pillars that were where a dividing wall had been removed. I deliberately didn't put cross timbers inside these for the very purpose of pulling wires and pipes through.

If you have a cupboard under the stairs this may be the route you can use. I've home run all the CAT5s to a patchboard here that sits next to the router.

I did all this before I got my current router ( Buffalo air station ) that has a very good WiFi signal throughout the house and into the garden. Streams Go TV in HD very nicely.

Originally Posted by Kushan (Post 36029310)

Thanks for all of the advice, guys. I realise it is not an easy job and it might be difficult to do, but I'd like to give it a go (insofar as doing some research to find out just what's involved before I commit).



Thanks, but powerlines are a non-starter for me as they're just not fast or reliable enough for what I'm planning to do. I have needs beyond just better wifi around the house.



I appreciate it's going to be a ball ache to do for sure, but I appreciate the advice given here. Part of the problem is that I just didn't know what terms to be looking for when researching this (like "noggin").

I don't mind having to cut through some plasterboard to channel through studs and noggins. I know it's tedious and annoying, but if there's a need, there's a need.

There's a soil pipe from the upstairs bathroom going down to the kitchen (And next to the living room, albeit at the opposite side of the Virgin equipment). It's actually quite a large cavity I think, but I guess I just need to find where it exits into the attic to start off with. That will at least get me from the attic to the ground floor. Then I just need to figure out if there's a better way to get from one end of the ground floor to another, but I have an ethernet cable going from one end of the living room to the other already.

I'm partly looking to wire the speaker cables I have as well, but they would have to go across the ceiling (concrete floor) and that's a whole other issue. I have spotlights and I believe these are on "tracks". Is there an easy way to tell the direction those tracks go in, or am I basically going to have to cut a hole in the ceiling to find out?

Originally Posted by Kushan (Post 36029318)

Yeah but you'll never actually hit gigabit speeds on powerlines. My real aim is to move (and upgrade) my NAS and server out of the living room. Powerline speeds wouldn't be good enough for my use, I would actually like to upgrade to 10Gbit in the near future.

Originally Posted by Hugh (Post 36029328)

Why?

What would you need that for? I worked at a a couple of Universities, and we had diverse 10Gb external links through JANET, but that was to support 35k students and 8k staff, and HPC links between other Yorkshire Universities.

Originally Posted by idi banashapan (Post 36029496)

whilst you're doing a big job like this, and you're able to, do the best job you can. 10Gb will provide enough speed for the next 10, maybe 20 years, even (for example) for streaming uncompressed 4k content off the NAS to multiple devices in the home whilst other services and data runs across simutaneously. Maybe other large files are being used, such as CAD or video encoding straight to the NAS.

Regardless of the reasons, putting in the fastest you can now is always the best idea, imo. If you only go for what you need now, it will only be a short while (certainly shorter than if you did the best your could) before you are sitting there wishing you did it better the first time round, as you rip out what you've done to replace it with something faster!

Originally Posted by Hugh (Post 36029612)

Having implemented network installs and upgrades on Corporates and Universities,I understand this, but I was asking "his" reasons...

Originally Posted by Uncle Peter (Post 36029692)

If you're really unlucky and the house builder has cut cost corners you might have Paramount Partition walls which are basically plasterboard sandwiches separated by a cardboard honeycomb or lattice in lieu of proper studs as a load bearing mechanism.

These things are a pain in the backside to drop a cable down as you have to force your puller rod down through it. This type of wall was popular in the 70s and 80s but some builders were still using them up until recently.