I would recommend to have atleast 1 if not 2 ethernet ports every place you are putting in a coax. Future of TV is internet based, be it wired or wireless. In addition, I would also recommend to have a ethernet port at all places which might be designated desk areas in kids room and in office space. During important tests etc its safer to be on wired connections than on wireless IMHO.

I have coax and 5e everywhere. Phone runs on cat5e as you noted. I thought I would get a land line but I didn't. Havent missed it.

So figure out exactly what speeds your isp provides, because we learned the hard way that what is advertised may not be available at a specific address. I think you need 10mbps for hassle free streaming. Netflix and Amazon Prime have great codexes that can work on less but the streaming tv services are behind that.

Streaming tv is great. We have both wired and wireless connections. The future is wireless. But I have coax and ethernet at all potential tv locations. Overkill, as it turns out.

Hard wire into the office, but then most devices are now connected over the wifi. Printers, etc.

So my advice is don't overdo it with the wires.

I'm putting two Ethernet lines to every location where there is a tv. If you have a game room/media room where you think you might want to have several devices connected, you may want to run 3 or 4. I do IT for a living and have set up plenty of enterprise class wireless setups. It's great for poking around on your iPad or doing a little work on your laptop, but to me, a wire is still king.

One other note, you mentioned doing internet tv. You won't be able to do anything like that if you end up having to use a satellite provider for your internet. They are basically like cellular in the sense of data caps. I've been able to stream video over 1.5 Mbps, it's not pretty but it's watchable. I may have misunderstood you and you were only referring to satellite for tv service.

When I built my last home in NJ, I had 12x2 Ethernet ports in the dozen or so rooms with the hub in the basement. Needless to say I work in Technology and IT industry. I had three high output wireless access points in that home and cat6 for hard wired communication between servers, switches and hubs. Fast forward to today and in our next home to support Gigabit Ethernet, in addition to cat 7, I'll be installing Glass Optical Fiber which will improve our server to server network communication speeds and certainly future proof the home for new content. And yes we have and will have TV and media content available in every room.

I'd run flex conduit to all locations and leave a pull string in place for whatever comes next. At this point running a couple cat6 cables to each location seems reasonable, you may want more for the primary entertainment location. I've now got all of the AV equipment out of the TV room and in a data cupboard in the basement. Connections are made with HDMI running on cat6. Having a clean installation with only the TV hanging on the wall and no visible wires is nice, but there are four wires currently in use (internet for TV, roku, dvd player (seldom used these days), and fios cable box). Other places, like my office and shop I just plugged in a little 5 port switch to the single wire; seems to be plenty of bandwidth for computer, printers, and Sonos boxes. I find wired connections to be much easier and more reliable for anything that doesn't move around.

The last home I did for a tech client was specified Cat6, at that time the highest theoretical rating, for every room in the house. Number 2 son, an on-line games special effects animator for a major gamesmaker, insists on at least that.

Our former neighbors built a new house 5 miles outside the city limits - and could not get a land line, no matter how much they begged.

My thoughts are less tech-y than the above:

- In your living room and bedrooms, ask yourself not only where you intend to place your TV now ... ask yourself also where you COULD place your TV in the future. If you decide to turn your sofa or your bed around, for example, you might want to move the TV. Placing a second "hook up" now will cost something, but nothing like the cost later and/or might save you from visible wires.

- Put long, hard thought into unusual places you might want outlets. For example, I want a shallow shelf at the end of my kitchen peninsula that can house charging phones or tables ... a place to keep them handy, yet off the countertop. Because I use my table for recipes frequently, this will be useful. I also intend to install four outlets on each side of the bed (at table height) for things that I might want to charge next to the bed.

- You mentioned three small children. Be sure you're providing a spot for them to have internet access ... internet access that can be supervised. It was hard enough when my now 19 and 22 year old were small, but today parents have to be so vigilant.

- I agree with the idea of going with MORE than you anticipate needing. I'm sure whoever built my house back in 1970 thought two outlets in the kitchen was gracious plenty. That person probably didn't own a microwave, and his coffee pot probably went on the stove top. He probably thought that small appliances (i.e., the mixer) are used and put away -- so why would anyone ever need more than two outlets? The upshot is that we end up charging phones in the nearby office, when I'd really like to have them in the kitchen sometimes.

We are heavy computer users, minimal TV watchers, and only have mobile phones (no home phone).

We're going to limit the wired ethernet to just be our offices. To be honest, I don't even use that, although I have wired ethernet at my desk. I get enough speed with wireless.

We will put in an ethernet jack wherever we decide to put the TV, but won't put one with every TV slot. I don't even know how many TV jacks we'll do--I don't remember how many we put in our current house, but only one has ever been used.

it seems we ought to put in at least one telephone jack although I don't think we'll have a home phone again.

Unlike electrical, you can't daisy chain cat5/6, and I'm not willing to spend a ton of money putting jacks in just in case some future home owner might want them. We may even skip on the cables for ourselves, since we may not finish the basement initially and would be easily able to add in whatever we wanted to.

I'm not a IT pro, but why would you be running multiple cat5e runs to the same location? I can see in an office, 1 for computer, another on the wall for smart TV, etc...

But generally, all these runs will be coming from a centralized media closet/area. Most of your smart switches you can buy today are all gigabit ports, so you'll have up to 1gb going down that one line to the one plug. Almost nothing will really require that much bandwidth... So why not just run another small smart switch and plug your TV/bluray/XBox/PS4 all into the one cat5e run? Could eliminate a lot of wire and terminations

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Some people will prefer the cleaner appearance of running multiple cables in the wall to a multi port faceplate rather than installing multiple switches around the house. We had 4 remote switches in our last house (family room, each office computer, and master bedroom) in addition to one in the network closet. Each switch needed a power outlet and we ended up with a tangle of cables. It would have been a cleaner install to have the wires run inside the walls to a network closet with a single large switch. Our current house was built in the early 1990s and does not have wired ethernet so we've mostly switched to Wi-Fi. We also simplified as we've upgraded electronics: only one printer now and some services like Netflix that used to require a separate network connected box such as a Roku are now built into the TV. Going forward I don't think a house needs 48 or 64 drops and I would not try to wire "internet of things" devices. I'd focus on high quality video and home office for wired connections as well as ethernet cables to set up nodes throughout the house (2-4 depending upon size) in a wireless mesh network.

I'm 100% with you on the mesh network, still trying to decide on ceiling gang placement for mibe

I guess you have a good point for tidiness, I just figured it wasn't a big deal to ziptie bolt on a small shelf to the back of the tv if a split was needed... may be more of a rats nest, but out of sight.

i think it's great that everything is starting to have wifi capability, but it is one more thing to crash. I'm trying my hardest to still run 5e to everywhere I would use it, so that's one less variable to interrupt use. I have a great ISP right now that is almost never down, but every once in a while it either blips or my modem restarts... for some devices that's not a big deal, but for others it would be

Thanks for all the replies. Accidently posted under wifes account but i'm the original poster.

Hi

As others have said, it really depends on what you want where.

For example, we use Sonos extensively so regardless of whether we are running speaker cable out to wall or ceiling speakers or whether the zone players are located out in the ceiling, we know that we need additional power points for each of the zones so we work out the location and allow for them.

With automated lighting/HVAC, there are complicated systems and simple ones that fit behind the light switch/interface with the unit and are simply controlled on an ios device. Again, depending on what is needed or desired we know that looking at the lighting plan and seeing what circuits/zones need to be wired eg two way will often dictate the solution. ie where you go to switch on the main lights to the living area is also a convenient location for the HVAC controls, intercom etc

With entertainment, we always do multiple ethernet ports to entertainment locations as you quite often find both the TV, Xbox, cable tv also need connection to the internet and we prefer to hard wire. It is then simply a matter of running it back to a central hub to your signal source.

I agree with the others it is how you want to live that needs the thought.

Cheers

We did a cat6 drop to every location we thought we'd want a computer/device, plus our local tv provider suggested 2 cat6 to each tv location. (The other local tv provider suggested 2 coax).

We created 'zones' on each floor, and each zone of cables connects to an Ethernet switch, which are networked together.

So that's what we did!

we live in a remote part of upstate NY, 1000 ft driveway and use hughes net internet satellite, dish for tv (no wifi here.) we have no problems with TV, but the internet is HORRIBLE. we pay for the 'high speed' plan every moth and most times dial-up would be faster. contacting the company does no good, complaining does nothing! they sub out all the work and 1 guy showed up in his rusted ford sedan and seemed annoyed WE did not have a ladder available!! the system is a rip off. this summer we will run the cable back the drive ourselves and go with TWC. so if there is anyway to avoid network satellite do it. (dish network offers a package deal, but network is through hughes net.)

Yea, satellite internet works for simple browsing, but not for gaming or streaming. It has to do with ping. When you have to use a server further away everything takes longer. The server you are working with is extra far away because it has to communicate all they way out to the satellite and then all the way back to the internet supplier. Nice picture showing the process here.

Satellite TV is different because there isnt much back and forth communication, the satellite just feeds the receivers so it is a steady stream.