If you can find closets on one floor that line up with closets on another floor, that can make convenient access. Most cat cable is pulled in residential without conduit. A good strategy is to find where existing things (like heat vents and returns) run and see if you can fish in alongside of those. The electrical code doesn't really deal with fire breaks. If you have to drill through something your local building/fire codes may require you seal up the hole when you are done (they sell goo in caulk tubes for this purpose).

You're certainly free to use conduit. They make a flexible conduit for low voltage stuff like this (commonly called "smurf tube" because it's blue). In addition to the fire stopping, if you just want to seal up air leaks there is this stuff that sort of looks like modelling clay sold for the purpose. In addition, you can always use "Great Stuff" (if you're certainly you never need to get in there again).

Splices and switches in Cat6 cause serious slow down. You may as well use Cat5e at that point. I avoid such things at all costs.

You can't fish wire through plumbing elbows, nor do they have the proper fittings to attach to junction/pull boxes.

Flexible smurf tube can be more difficult to fish through, especially when adding to what is already in it.

Don't pull hard on Cat cable and stretch it.

http://publicecodes.cyberregs.com/icod/irc/2012/icod_irc_2012_3_sec002.htm

SECTION R302 FIRE-RESISTANT CONSTRUCTION is mainly the drywall in the garage and the space between floors. Rarely deals with the ceiling on the top floor.

All holes should be caulked or foamed shut for air leaks in the short term, and moisture/mold problems long term. Conduits going from conditioned to unconditioned spaces need to have clay (duct seal) at the point where it changes from warm to cold.

If you have the space you could put a 2" pvc pipe through a hole in the ceiling to serve as a chase for the wiring. In the attic you can run all the wires first, and then install a plastic cap that is made for PVC, with a slot notched in one side to allow for the wires. This would give you a very small area to caulk around the hole in the cap.

If you want a more elegant solution, this is the Leviton site for structured media boxes. Maybe you can use something from there. http://www.leviton.com/OA_HTML/SectionDisplay.jsp?section=55914&minisite=10251

Bruce

"Splices and switches in Cat6 cause serious slow down" I have not heard of this Fred, can you please elaborate? I don't believe that category of cable has any relevance on how much splices and switches cause serious slow down.

If connected to appropriate switches and repeaters cat6 cables can achieve 10gbps, The cat5e can only achieve 1gpbs.

It depends on who is doing the connectors. If it were me and I were doing Cat 6, I would buy my cables with the connectors already attached instead of trying to do it myself.

Doing the connections WRONG can certainly screw things up (slow down is the least of your problems, chances are it's not going to work at all). However, it's not all that hard to do this right. Mostly you need to make sure you keep the twists going and follow the instructions for the particular connectors you are using.

I'm planning on buying cables with connectors.

http://www.audioholics.com/audio-video-cables/bjc-cat-network-cable-quality-interview

Fred, I read that reference, and while I got the gist of it, I didn't understand most of the details. I'm just rewiring my condo. I was planning on buying Cat6 cable, with ends attached, from Monoprice. I don't yet have any Cat6 gear, so using that cable is just for future-proofing.

I'll be running a cable from router in basement, to attic above 2nd floor, and then down into 2nd floor closet. From there , it will go through a power injector and then to a wifi access point. Later I expect to put a switch in that closet, and take additional runs from it to some of the other 2nd floor rooms. One use for that will be to connect to a Tivo Mini.

I assume that this sort of usage won't be very demanding on the network. Am I missing something? I will probably upgrade components (cable modem, router, etc.) as time
goes on. The first new component will be an access point.

First, you only need to achieve speeds greater than what Cat5e can provide INSIDE the house from one device to another. A good switch will cost $1k or more for 10Gb capacity. Many switches automatically slow the speed down to whatever the slowest part of the system connected to it can handle, others slow individual lines separately. The system is only as good as its weakest link. Splices and switches are common places to introduce RFI and crosstalk, which both make resending "packets" very common and slow things down even though the system speed reads as fast. TiVo systems work differently than sending data between computers. In TiVo (real time) there is no time to resend corrupted files, and essentially creates static in the recording. By just bringing one line to the upstairs, you are essentially segregating the upstairs from the rest of the house, especially in a "future proof" sense where you may want to watch TiVo on a different floor from where it is located (otherwise you would just use a direct patch cord to the TV) and someone else is also trying to do online gaming from upstairs. You end up with a bottleneck at best, plus crosstalk and RFI. If you half step the future proofing, you will only get half of it right.

And, a wifi access point isn't going to have speeds worthy of any cable beyond Cat5e, especially if trying to access the internet. Cat6 is only useful for hardwired situations.

Fred,

Currently I have comcast into my basement and then to my LR. There I have cable modem, router with wifi, tivo. I don't have wired ethernet to anyplace else. Wifi is bad in a number of places away from the router. (This is in a relatively small condo - ~1600 sqft.)

My primary goals are to improve wifi throughout, and allow for a tv on a tivo mini upstairs. And secondarily to provide hard wired network access in some key places upstairs and down. (No particular needs for that other than to provide a faster path when doing something intensive.)

The key constraint for me is getting wires to the right places, especially from downstairs to upstairs. I recently had some other work done that required pulling thermostat wire upstairs. A place to do that was found next to the main hvac return plenum. I had the installer drill holes extra large and leave me a pull string when doing that. But the holes are still only about an inch. So I am limited in what I can get between floors that way. Hence my intent to pull a single cable and use a switch upstairs. (I will probably pull an RG6 along with the Cat6, just in case it is needed in the future, but I don't have a current need for it.)

My intent is to hang the wifi access point on the wall of the stairway from 1st to 2nd floor. It is quite central, and I can wire it through the wall from that upstairs closet. Given the size of my condo, I hope that will give me good coverage in all living spaces, and it won't look ugly.

And I can get to that closet from the attic, after running from the basement up there. I will move router to basement (turning off its wifi) along with the cable modem, with a CatN from it to the tivo in the LR.

I realize that the the result will only be as good as the worst link. I figure that will be good enough for now - it should still be a significant improvement over my current situation. And I can upgrade other components later if needed. I guess the key question is how good a switch to get, since I don't currently have one. I'm not going to pay $1k. By the time I *need* more than 1gig I can hope that the prices are down. I don't need the switch to hook up the access point. Only when I want to also connect to a tivo mini and to other wired drops upstairs.

If the price difference between the cat 5e cable and the cat 6 are similar, go with the cat 6.

When the time comes that 10gbps switches drastically drop in price (without a doubt they will) and when you are required to have internal network traffic exceeeding 1gbps.

The simple fact is that the cable can always go slower than it's max speed but it can never exceed it. If there comes a need for 10gbps in 5,10, 20 years how easy will it be to replace the cable?

ok, I just checked out some cable prices on Monorpice, and we're talking about 5 dollar difference for 100' cable.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=7970214&CatId=201 will handle gbps speeds.

how long will the run need to be? maybe I missed this part, but why do you need power injectors?

depending on the length of your run it might be more economical to run two cables side by side. One for your wap and one for your gb switch. That way you will have future options to upgrade switch and WAPs to 10GBPS seperately, if required.

The run from basement to the attic and down to the closet should be less than 50'. The run from the closet to the access point will probably be less that 6'. So the cost of the cable is insignificant.

But as I noted, I have very limited room to make the run from basement to attic. And I don't have the skills or tools to expand that.

The reason for the power injector is that the access point is powered that way. And it will make for a tidy installation of the access point. (No wires showing. Just a small hole in wall for the cat6 into the back of the access point.)

That cable article linked is simplified to the point bordering on bunk. I've spent 30 years in the networking business including writing one of the first internet routers, running networking for the a major state university system, and working on the team that networked the first internet tradeshow.

While you might drop packets more often than not, if you're attempting to run high speed data services on screwed up cat 6 wiring, it's just going to fail completely. If one packet doesn't make it through for some reason, it's unlikely that others will. The nature of TCP/IP is that while it is designed to recover from an occasional dropped packet, the data rate pretty much goes to ZERO if you have any bit error rate at all.

This is going from the upper room through the roof of the storeroom. I can scarcely reach, and see, the spot from the storage room.