CAT5e - The e is for everywhere
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 26, 2005 11:51 PM EST- Posted in
- Anand
Vinney and I flew down to NC over the weekend, and have been enjoying a steady mix of work, house stuff and relaxation down here. Of course, everyone blames us, the Connecticut "natives" now, for bringing cold weather down here. The days before we arrived, temperatures were in the 80s, it was sunny, all was good. Then apparently we gate checked a bag full of CT temperatures and now Raleigh is actually colder than CT.
Progress is actually happening on the house; it still doesn't look much different than the last time we were down, but hopefully by the end of this year we'll be walking into a house that starts looking like one. The front will hopefully be done bricking in about another week or so, and that'll mean that the outside of the house will be mostly complete aside from the landscaping and other finishes. The inside has a long way to go, with drywall still being about a month or so away from going up.
We walked through the house yesterday with the guy that'll be handling all of the Ethernet wiring throughout the house. Most rooms will have at least one Ethernet port, with the office and game room obviously getting a lot more. We stuck with CAT5e for the house and all of the wiring will be going to a closet in the basement, where I'll be tossing in a Gigabit switch for the house.
My goal was to have access to video, audio, cameras, door bell, lighting, heating and cooling where ever I had a TV in the house. Unfortunately, such an integrated system is only available at ridiculously high prices, and/or with very poorly done interfaces and mediocre quality in areas of audio or video sharing. Since the system I'm looking for doesn't yet exist, I wanted to make sure that the wiring is there should it eventually happen. So we've got additional CAT5e running everywhere from lighting switches, to potential camera locations, so whenever my ideal system comes into existence, hopefully it'll be retrofittable.
I brought down a handful of Intel's 65nm chips and put together the article published earlier this week. I was pleasantly surprised with the overclocking success of Presler, and I hope to look into performance of dual core at 4.25GHz when I get back to CT. I'm also working on our first notebook roundup in a while, but with a slightly different focus than what you might be used to. I'll announce specifics as I get further along on the roundup.
We unfortunately leave NC tomorrow, but we are going to see Jon Stewart in CT this weekend, so it's not all bad.
Progress is actually happening on the house; it still doesn't look much different than the last time we were down, but hopefully by the end of this year we'll be walking into a house that starts looking like one. The front will hopefully be done bricking in about another week or so, and that'll mean that the outside of the house will be mostly complete aside from the landscaping and other finishes. The inside has a long way to go, with drywall still being about a month or so away from going up.
We walked through the house yesterday with the guy that'll be handling all of the Ethernet wiring throughout the house. Most rooms will have at least one Ethernet port, with the office and game room obviously getting a lot more. We stuck with CAT5e for the house and all of the wiring will be going to a closet in the basement, where I'll be tossing in a Gigabit switch for the house.
My goal was to have access to video, audio, cameras, door bell, lighting, heating and cooling where ever I had a TV in the house. Unfortunately, such an integrated system is only available at ridiculously high prices, and/or with very poorly done interfaces and mediocre quality in areas of audio or video sharing. Since the system I'm looking for doesn't yet exist, I wanted to make sure that the wiring is there should it eventually happen. So we've got additional CAT5e running everywhere from lighting switches, to potential camera locations, so whenever my ideal system comes into existence, hopefully it'll be retrofittable.
I brought down a handful of Intel's 65nm chips and put together the article published earlier this week. I was pleasantly surprised with the overclocking success of Presler, and I hope to look into performance of dual core at 4.25GHz when I get back to CT. I'm also working on our first notebook roundup in a while, but with a slightly different focus than what you might be used to. I'll announce specifics as I get further along on the roundup.
We unfortunately leave NC tomorrow, but we are going to see Jon Stewart in CT this weekend, so it's not all bad.
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Houdani - Thursday, October 27, 2005 - link
Anand,Have you looked into a structured wiring solution which GE offers? I have no idea what the quality or capability of it is, all I know is that it exists. It's called the GE Smart ConnectionCenter (or something like that).
It may offer much of the interconnection which you're looking for.
http://www.gesmart.com">www.gesmart.com
http://www.geindustrial.com/cwc/products/ge-interl...">GE Smart ConnectionCenter
mulder - Friday, October 28, 2005 - link
This sounds cool. I see the comment above inquire about CAT6 vs. CAT5e and I had heard that CAT6 was spec'd for gigabit connections too. I guess my question is, why is Anand going with CAT5e instead of CAT6 for the house? Is it cheaper? Does it make a difference when everything is said and done? Just curious really. I didn't see the explanation and thought I would ask.Thanks.
mulder - Friday, October 28, 2005 - link
Oops, sorry. Didn't mean for that to be a reply to the comment. Accidently clicked the wrong reply. I meant for this to be a top-level question.adg1034 - Thursday, October 27, 2005 - link
Are you just going to attend the Daily Show? If so, I never knew it was in CT. Either way, Jon Stewart is awesome; enjoy.AtaStrumf - Saturday, October 29, 2005 - link
I'd like to know that too. Which Jon Steward are you talking about???judmarc - Thursday, October 27, 2005 - link
I'm with the previous poster - would love to see pics.Perfect (though wireless may be good or even better for a lot of what you'll be doing - a widescreen laptop on the deck with a glass of OJ and a mug of tea on a North Carolina morning - what could be finer?;).
Re landscaping - keep an eye on your topsoil, or have a friend/neighbor do it for you. It's aggravatingly difficult to grow grass without it, and expensive to bring it in if you don't have it. I know; 6 weeks ago I brought in 12 truckloads (~180 cubic yards) to cover an acre after a year of growing mostly weeds on clay and rocks. (You want grass - think of dirty/muddy footprints on brand new carpet.) Now, except for a few bare patches left to touch up, the yard looks like Ireland!
ksherman - Thursday, October 27, 2005 - link
How is CAT5e different from CAT6? Sounds like you are gonna have one helluva house! you should post some pics sometimecreathir - Thursday, October 27, 2005 - link
CAT5e is not "certified" to run at Gigabit speeds... it is essentially the same cable with a few minor differences. The copper yield is not the exact same, frequency wise on what it can handle. The other difference is in how the connectors themselves differ. On a CAT6 connector, the pairs are "stacked", whereas on traditional CAT5 and CAT5e they are all in a row. This is to further eliminate the possibility of a phenomenon known as "crosstalk" between the pairs at the only point that that happens, when they are not twisted. Hope this answers your question!- Creathir
ksherman - Friday, October 28, 2005 - link
Thanks! I kinda had a feeling that CAT6 had a connection to Gigabit...