Hello everyone:

I found your forum by chance trying to search for an answer to my questions. There is my story.
I bought a new house and have to sigh a contract with a company to wire my phones, cables etc.
The sales person offers me different cables for TV such as:
1.COMMSCOPE 2000896CM, CMG c(ETL)us DR CATV (ETL)us 18 AWG
Is it RG-6 cable or not?
2.ANDREW(R) DAXCESS (TM) BY PCT A660-BVV-N Series 6 cable (ETL) CATV OR BM 150V or RT-4 18 AWG 60711261
3.Ultralink Contractor Grade RG6/U Type CMR 18 AWG 60% Braid+Foil (UL) E224705 CL-2/FT-4 HDTV 3 GHZ B4HO32 Canada
This one has a very little shield.
4.Ultralink Professional Grade RG6/U Type CMR 18 AWG solid copper HDTV 3GHZ quad shielded

First cable comes with the offer. For the second I have to pay some $100 extra. For the third they asked triple price. The fourth cable you just can imagine. I am planning to have HDTV and Satellite TV in my house. My house is located close to the communication tower( for cellphones). What is my optimal choice?
In addition, I have to decide to install CAT3 or CAT5e for the phone lines. I have read your previous posts on this topic, but I am still confused.
For the smart home system they offer the same #1 cable and 2x CAT5e.

I have no knowledge in this field, and I would greatly appreciate your advice.
Thank you for your time.

Alina

What idiots! How the heck do they expect you to know the difference? They don't and hope that the sucker customer will think that more money is better. Actually those cables cost them about the same, a bit more for quad shield. I also have no idea about them, some I have never heard of and that COMMSCOPE number doesn't even come up on their site search.

I would recommend that you dump these guys and find someone more reputable that will just wire your damn house.

RG-6 with bonded foil and 60% braid swept to 2Ghz is fine. A solid copper center conductor would be better for satellite installations.

I always recommend CAT3 for phone lines. Less money, easier to work with and that's all that is needed. Unless you think you will need to convert that wiring to a data network to connect your computers together that is what they should use. Most people use wireless for computers now anyway. Just make sure that each jack has a separate run back to a central point like in the basement or closet, NOT to the outside of the house. This goes for the RG-6 cable also.

Oh, and smart homes are really dumb. Don't waste your money.

-Hal

The CommScope cable in question is better known as CommScope F660BVV or by the "BrightWire" trademark. The spec sheet indicates a 1GHz sweep, which is really only good for CATV...not satellite or HDTV.

Interference from the cellular tower and adjacent voice/data cable runs need consideration. I would play it safe with something like a Belden 7915A "Duobond Plus". It's better than quad shield and is sweep tested to 3.0 GHz.

I certainly agree with Hal's suggestion about all cable runs terminating to an inside central point. Even for voice cable, I can't stand that looping technique. If the loop becomes damaged somewhere along the way, it will affect all the voice jacks after it. And if you're hip to a "smarthome", you might also be the kind of person that would put in a PBX. That choice won't be available to you if the voice wiring in your house is looped.

The CommScope cable in question is better known as CommScope F660BVV ...

Don't know how you get that from "COMMSCOPE 2000896CM". More logically "ANDREW(R) DAXCESS (TM) BY PCT A660-BVV" but what the hell is going on here?

Look, like I said I wouldn't even do business with these guys. Giving you confusing information and leaving choices like that up to you is not the way an honest contractor operates. You are not an engineer, you have no technical knowledge. Find somebody else who WILL TELL YOU what you need and STAND BEHIND THEIR WORK when it's done. I don't want to hear anything about cell towers, that's their job to figure out. (I really don't think the cell site will be a problem at all.)

-Hal

I gotta tell ya Alina, you are getting ripped off , grab your yellow pages and look in the telephone Cable and install section and call around, I'm sure you can find a way better deal.

And on a side note looping is unacceptable PERIOD!! If your paying someone to cable your house it should be in one central point as was stated above, we do this all the time and I can tell you it doesn't cost my customers anywhere close to what they are asking,, kick them to the curb and shop around.

Hope this helps

My esteemed colleagues on this forum and I have different views on the Cat3 vs Cat5 issue. We do agree on all other points.

Every wire, regardless of its intended use, should be a "home-run" to either the basement utility area, or a closet that is centrally located.

Cat 3 costs 6 cents a foot. Cat 5e costs 9 cents a foot. I stock and install only Cat 5e, and for complete flexibilty -- like future rearrangements of furniture -- I run a minimum of two of them (along with one coax) to every location in a house. That includes one set of all three (phone, ethernet, TV) on every wall of any bedroom, one outlet of all three wires in the kitchen, and at least two outlets with all three in the living room.

For a room that is dedicated for a home office, I run more than that. The difference in price is negligible. The extra cost of installing more wires later is a big problem. The hassle of terminating the Cat5e wire is inconsequential for a professional who does it every day. (You won't be asked to help, I assume, so why would that be a factor?)

I use quad shield RG6 coax. I have no idea what all those numbers and words mean in your initial post. I'm sure they are important to someone, just not to me.

There are lots of companies who do this work.
Check with your local BBB or Chamber of Commerce.

The hassle of terminating the Cat5e wire is inconsequential for a professional who does it every day.

So inconsequential that this professional charges an additional $5 per termination for every CAT 5 run that is used for voice. This money is to help offset my inevitable carpel tunnel surgery from untwisting it every day.

-Hal

You're right... you DO need to get out of this business.

lets get this back on track....We already have plenty of threads on cat 3 vs cat 5 for voice.

Back to the topic.

I Run at least 1 cat3 and 1 cat5 to each location. then 2 coax. preferable quad shield to where ever you may want a TV. Keep in mind that direct tv requires a phone line to each box and the newer boxs will also take a network connection

.*****home run everything******

Stick to decent cable and you will be fine, even the stuff at your local big box store (LIKE HOME DEPOT) will do the job.

better to do conduit to each location then your future proof for sure

Rather than chastise someone with 40 years' experience, in every facet of the industry, I would respectfully recommend that you take one thing into consideration (and then I promise never to offer any more advice to you or any other member):

In the case of one Cat3 and one Cat5 to a location, tell me how to get either two LAN devices (PC's, peripherals. printers, scanners) installed where there was only one device originally spec'd, or how to provide maintenance (read: immediate remediation) redundancy in the event that the one Cat5e fails? (Please exclude adding a switch as one of your answers.)

People a lot smarter than I, from the maligned TIA to the venerated Bell Laboratories, have determined what various minimum standards should be. I don't argue with them, I just do what they suggest, within reason and ability. It is a policy that has served me well as I enter my fifth decade of customer service.

no problem at all , start with a 5 port swich and add as much as you like

I missed the dictum of no switch

why would you not use a switch , its a perfectly acceptable way to add devices

(Please exclude adding a switch as one of your answers.)

Why? That's exactly what is often done. I've installed single network jacks for large format printer/plotter/scanners only too find that they require two connections and the installer simply provided a mini-hub. Unless you are doing heavy duty data transfer it works fine.

Heck, ask Ed, he'll tell you how CAT3 works just fine for most data applications if you must. This is only a house and the usual use for a network is only to access the internet. Nothing tough about that.


I've seen houses where the owner got sucked into running fiber to every room. That was 6 or 7 years ago and it's still sitting there unused today.

-Hal


Been in the business for nearly 40 years too and that why...

When I bought my house (28 years ago) I ran 25 pair to .......some of the locations I needed it at. (Long story, fights with wife, etc., etc)

Anyway, there was no such thing as data in those days. So when I want to network my 106 year old monstrosity I picked pairs out of the 25 pair cable.

Considering I've got Cat2 and Cat 3 cable going to 25 pair cans I'm maybe getting 5-10MBS out of my wiring.

Well, my DSL runs at 3 MBS so that's not a problem and my data transfers take 5 minutes instead of 2 minutes.

I think I can live with it.

If I had to do it now I would home run a Cat 3, a Cat 5E/Cat6 and a quad shielded coax to every location. The Cat 3 of course would be 25 pair to handle my 1A2. I ain't giving that up.

Sam

Why would I exclude adding a switch?? it is a very reasonable answer. the cost of a switch is less then what I would charge for a cat5 drop in some cases.

Now to go a bit further...this is a house..not an office...if you have an office area in the house..sure run two cat5..heck run 3. I have cat5 to every room of my house...and I use..get ready..My wireless access point 90% of the time. So I now have a 12 port patch panel fully loaded and 2 lines plugged into it.Sure you can use cat5 for both voice and date, nothing wrong with it at all. For me it is a personal preference cat3 for voice, cat5 for data. have I used cat5 for voice...sure, and I have run data over cat3 in some cases?...you bet(thanks ED!). Guess what, it all works.

By the way the only place I ever needed more then 1 network connection was in my office..One for my PC and one for my print server....guess I am lucky that print server also has a 4 port switch built into it.

Skip also brought up a great point..if you can run conduit I would definitely do it, the you can add whatever you want, whenever you want.

Alina one more thing to think about..are you going to be installing flat panel TV's?

If so, where Are you going to put your cable/sat. box's..you may want to consider pre-wiring from that location to the tv locations as well.

Aline this should have been said earlier..

Welcome to the board


Feel free to PM me with any question you may have.

In home applications, I don't think extra switches would be a big problem. But there are issues to consider, when you have to:

1. More points-of-failure
2. Power provisioning for the switches (including backup and grounding)
3. Switch latency

For the above reassons, I generally prefer not to chain/cascade switches when I can. Ofcourse I'm speaking of business applications.

On a (slightly) different tack: what do you think about running video (cctv/catv/broadcast) over cat5e and using baluns? Never had to do this, is this a viable thing to offer a customer?

Perry

On a (slightly) different tack: what do you think about running video (cctv/catv/broadcast) over cat5e and using baluns? Never had to do this, is this a viable thing to offer a customer?

No. It could never be as good as using the proper coax. In a pinch where you couldn't run a new cable and you only had UTP give it a try. But it's definately not something I would use in an original installation.

Keep in mind though that there are network CCTV cameras that are made to work with CAT5. There are also converters (not baluns) that will put HDMI on two runs of CAT5e and is supposed to work very well to overcome the short distance limitation of HDMI.

-Hal

Yep installed a set about a week ago, they worked great

There is one problem that you can run into with adding chained switches/hubs to a network, probably is not an issue here. It occurs when on large networks where the time (including latency of the chained devices) for a packet to move end to end exceeds the retransmission delay for a collision. Stations on opposite ends of the cable will not see the collision and thus both transmit at the same time. The fix is a real router in the middle and proper sub-netting to define the collision domain to be each segment.

Also, even though it was written in the mid 90's do a seach for an article called "It's the Latency Stupid", since the principles still apply to all network devices and is one more reason for network performance issues.

igadget: Collision domains aren't an issue in a switched environment. Each connection between switch port and NIC, or switch port to switch port, is a collision domain. Collisions are only an issue now if someone throws and old hub in the mix somewhere.

As far as latency is concerned though, that's very true. For a business, this could be a serious bottleneck if the switches are low-end. For most home networks, you could do a lot worse and it would never be an issue.

Getting back on topic, I would agree with all comments about finding a new installer. The installer should be able to explain to the client how they are doing the job, and why that's right for this situation. It should never be left up to the client to guess what they need. This sounds too much like an electrician looking for the old "The specs should have said what type of cable to use and how to terminate it" excuse when things don't work properly in the end.

Heck
You guys are making an issue out of this.
In south Africa we want it to work first time,with as little hassles as possible and as cheaply as possible.
Stop confusing customers with technical talk and just do it.

As an aside:

There are devices that allow data to be transmitted over existing RJ-59 and RJ-6 in houses that are only wired for coax and a few cat-nuthin's.

I have used them successfully.

Google "ethernet over coax" .

I use Coaxsys products.

For that matter, there are products that allow you to send network signals over the power outlets in your house (haven't tried them myself though, so don't ask me how well they work...)

Almost any house in my area is loop-de-loop...thank the sparkies for that.

As for your original question...fire those schmucks and get a contractor who won't confuse you.

Arthur, don't you mean RG59 and RG6?

Clinton, thanks for the correction, I was still thinking hubs...dont ask me why.

I've not installed any either, but they put a signal on the 60hz carrier of the existing line and pull it off, through induction. They get about 2mb/s best case. there is also a way of running voice via that method. I'd do the voice line before the data that is for sure. Ive never heard of anyone trying them in an environment with either more than 2 connections(one at each end), or on one with something like X10 running in the house. I suspect they would have the same issue as X10 which needs a set of transformers in the breaker box to propagate the signal across both sides of the service.