Anyone Wired their Home with Ethernet Cables?

[lulusong]

Wireless is so buggy! And slow.

anyone ever wired their home with ethernet cables? Who did you use? My contractor is happy to do anything, and sometimes he volunteers to do things he's really shouldn't be.

So, who do you call-electrician? handy man? Any idea how much it costs and how big a job it is (like are we talking about ripping down walls or punching small holes...

[Anonymous]

My husband just did this himself in a house we are building. It is much easier to do it new, rather than on an existing house, because it will require snaking wires through walls (many with insulation).

An electrician is the best person to do this, but it won't be cheap. They will have to run the wires in a separate location than your electrical wires, which will mean more holes in studs, drywall, floors, etc. The parts aren't expensive, but the labor will be.

Honestly I'd think about what you can accomplish with wireless, vs. hardwiring the entire house. For that, you could talk to an IT person like Geek Squad (but if you know someone a little higher up on the IT food chain, that'd be your best bet). I don't know why your wireless is 'buggy' or 'slow' but that has nothing to do with the fact that you have a wireless router and your house isn't hard-wired. Your incoming signal (from the line to your house) might be whacky and you should call your service provider to check that. Also it could be your router, or the line from where the internet wires come into your house to the place where your router is. Often houses aren't wired properly and this results in a loss of signal too.

[Anonymous]

you're not setting up the wireless correctly or something. Make sure the update the firmware on the router as soon I you get it out of the box, most of them are shipped with early buggy versions.

[Anonymous]

IT guy here. PP is right. You must have old firmware on your wireless (or an old wireless router). Either install new firmware or spend $100-$200 for a new, fast router.

I am very, very peculiar when it comes to the reliability and speed of my connection, and since a few years I have been totally happy with using a WiFi network. No need for cables.

[Anonymous]

OP here. Thanks!

So you use wifi for streaming video too?

[Anonymous]

If you can find an easy wire path (or open walls), it's fairly cheap to do yourself. DO NOT hire an electrician. Find someone who knows networking. Just because it involves wires...

If you go the DIY route, you should do some reading. One thing to avoid is running network cables next to electric cabling.

There are definite advantages to hard wiring. Wireless is great if you don't have frequency conflict. In a densely populated area, this could be an issue. I work from home, and, as much as I like moving around the house with my laptop, for mission critical work, it's wires.

[Anonymous]

Wireless also doesn't work well if you have concrete or plaster interior walls (or anything else that will block a signal). The folks above who arrogantly said that you must have set something up wrong have obviously never lived in an older house in DC.

[Freeman]

If you happen to have a Verizon Fios router using your coax lines, you can use an ethernet-to-coax adapter in any room that has a cable jack.(http://www.amazon.com/Actiontec-Ethernet-Adapter-Service-ECB2500C/dp/B008C1JC4O/ref=dp_ob_title_ce) There's no setup involved(Just plug it in and it works), and the speeds are faster than wireless. I used one to provide connectivity to everything in my entertainment center. If you don't have Verizon, they have paired adapters that you should be able to use on any coax cables, but I don't have any experience with those.

[Anonymous]

Rewiring into existing is going to be expensive and messy, involving snaking lines to one central location. We installed Cat6 line in our home to all of our computer and TV locations, and it's blazing fast compared to wireless, especially when using multiple devices simultaneously.