Home network wiring - most people should buy mesh instead

What is home network wiring?

Retrofit home network wiring means adding Ethernet drops to a house that was built without them, terminated at a central point and at wall outlets in the rooms that need them. Before spending anything on it, be clear that a good mesh Wi-Fi system solves most household coverage problems for less money and in an afternoon. Cable is worth it for a specific set of reasons - feeding access points, connecting devices that have no radio, and work that cannot tolerate a dropout.

Signs you need home network wiring

• You already have mesh and the far nodes are slow, because they are relaying everything back over the air instead of being fed by a wire
• Your work depends on a stable upload - video calls, remote desktop, large file transfers - and it degrades at exactly the wrong moments
• You have equipment with no wireless radio at all, or with a radio you would rather not depend on, sitting in a fixed location
• The house has thick masonry walls, foil-backed insulation or a metal-framed extension, and no amount of node placement has fixed the dead zone
• A room has become an office or a studio and the connection there has to be as good as the one at the router
• You are building, extending or gutting, and cable can go in for the price of the cable rather than the price of the access
• You have old telephone or coaxial outlets in useful positions and wonder whether those routes can be reused

Seeing something not on this list? Browse smart home problems by symptom →

How home network wiring actually works

1. 1

   Prove the problem before buying the solution

   Walk the house with a phone and check the actual throughput and stability in the places that matter, at the times they matter. A lot of complaints traced properly turn out to be one badly-placed router, an old device, or a service problem - none of which cable fixes.

   Watch forA quote for drops in every room before anyone has measured anything. The number of drops should follow from a survey, not from a room count.

2. 2

   Decide honestly between mesh, cable, or both

   The usual right answer is both, in a particular shape: wireless for everything mobile, and cable used sparingly to feed the access points that serve it. A pair of hardwired access points fixes more coverage problems than a dozen data outlets, because the thing that was actually broken was the wireless backhaul.

   Watch forBeing sold a drop to every room as though outlets were the point. Very few household devices use a wall socket any more. The cable that matters is the cable feeding radios.

3. 3

   Choose the central location and set it up as one

   Every run terminates at one place: a patch panel or a set of keystone outlets, next to the switch and the incoming service. It needs mains power, ventilation and room to work, and it wants to be reasonably central so no run is longer than it has to be. A utility room or a basement usually beats the cupboard the incoming line happens to enter.

   Watch forA stack of unlabelled cables punched down in an airless cupboard because that is where the line came in. This is the decision that most affects how pleasant the network is to live with for the next decade.

4. 4

   Plan the drops around the things that cannot move

   Prioritise access-point positions - usually ceilings or high on walls, centrally in the areas they serve - then fixed equipment, then anywhere someone works. Two runs to each position rather than one is standard practice, because the second one costs almost nothing while the wall is open.

   Watch forA single cable to an access-point position. If that one run is damaged or a future device needs a second, the entire access job repeats for the sake of a few dollars of cable.

5. 5

   Finding routes in a house that is already finished

   Existing vertical paths do most of the work: the space beside a soil stack, a redundant chimney, an airing cupboard, the void a previous coaxial or telephone run used. Loft and floor voids handle the horizontal travel. Where an old cable exists in a useful route, it can sometimes be used to pull a new one through.

   Watch forRoutes shared closely with mains cable over long parallel runs, and staples driven through the jacket. Both cause intermittent faults that get blamed on the equipment for months.

6. 6

   Terminating outlets and the panel end

   Each run lands on a keystone outlet in the room and on the patch panel or a labelled outlet at the central end. The pair twist is kept right up to the punch-down and the jacket is not stripped back further than it needs to be, because that is where the performance of a run is usually lost.

   Watch forLong untwisted tails at the termination. It is invisible, it passes a basic continuity test, and it quietly caps what that run can do.

7. 7

   Testing and labelling every run

   Every run is tested and both ends carry the same identifier, with a simple schedule listing which panel port serves which outlet. Testing happens before the walls are made good, for the obvious reason.

   Watch forRuns verified by plugging a laptop in and seeing the internet. That proves almost nothing about whether the run performs to its rating, and it is the reason some retrofit installs never deliver what they promised.

8. 8

   Configuring the network on top of it

   Cable is only the foundation. Access points need their channels and power set so they cooperate rather than compete, the switch needs to be able to power them if they are ceiling-mounted, and it is worth deciding at this point whether guest and device traffic should be separated.

   Watch forSeveral access points left on default settings at maximum power. They interfere with each other, and clients cling to a distant one instead of moving to the near one.

What does home network wiring cost?

Priced by access, not by the number of outlets. Drops into an open loft or a basement ceiling are quick; the same drops into a finished two-storey interior wall are not. During construction the marginal cost is close to the price of the cable. Mesh Wi-Fi costs a fraction of either. See the Cost Guide.

See the full home network wiring cost guide - by material, size and region →

If the number is the problem, here are the ways people pay for it →