[HN Gopher] Homes need to be built for better internet
___________________________________________________________________
Homes need to be built for better internet
Author : rntn
Score : 80 points
Date : 2023-12-08 16:20 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theverge.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com)
| vlmutolo wrote:
| The real solution is to plan for having a low-power access point
| in every room. Maybe even hidden in the ceiling of every room.
|
| Everything gets faster and more reliable when you limit
| crosstalk. If anything, I'd want my future home to have WiFi-
| blocking walls and access points everywhere.
| HPsquared wrote:
| What happens when you walk around the house?
| eppp wrote:
| Controllers that support roaming and handoff.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| In particular, 802.11r isn't that hard to support.
| lxgr wrote:
| You don't even need a controller for roaming/handoff
| (although it increases efficiency).
|
| Any standards-compliant 802.11 access point will support
| basic roaming, even across different vendors, since it can
| be entirely client/station-driven.
| s3p wrote:
| Hope you weren't downloading a file
| bdavbdav wrote:
| It's more than fine. We have no cell signal (so WiFi
| calling), 5 UniFi APs. You can walk around the place and
| you wouldn't even notice a transition.
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| If downloading a file makes your WiFi calls bad, look into
| bufferbloat and CAKE.
| gregmac wrote:
| I have two unifi access points inside and another two outside
| due to brick exterior walls that blocks most wifi. It
| seamlessly switches, to the point I can be on a video call on
| my phone and wander around without any interruptions.
| bdavbdav wrote:
| It's seamless
| eimrine wrote:
| > The real solution is to plan for having a low-power access
| point in every room.
|
| This is too expensive, how about a correct placement of a one
| router and refusing to use a vacuum cleaner with spyware?
|
| > If anything, I'd want my future home to have WiFi-blocking
| walls
|
| You have no choice since anything except some nasty plastics
| does this, even wood according to the article.
| vlmutolo wrote:
| The most expensive Unifi in-wall AP is $170. Even if you had
| ten of them, that's only $1700. If you're building a house,
| that's not that expensive for making basic infrastructure
| work well.
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| That $1700 will be somewhat outdated in 5 years, and
| definitely outdated in 10.
| wl wrote:
| The conduit used to run the Cat6 or fiber to those APs
| will probably still be useful in 40 years.
| northrup wrote:
| THIS! The fact that of all the things we regulate in
| housing construction by codes, and how we're turning to
| view the Internet as a fundamental access need, you'd
| think we'd be more prescriptive with "in order to make
| maintenance of this communication medium flexible and
| future proof, all communication cables in homes should be
| ran in conduit."
| madamelic wrote:
| Yep. When I was growing up 15 years ago, my dad wired the
| house with Cat6. I am now a homeowner and wiring my house
| with Cat6.
|
| 10Gbps at 55m (180ft) is plenty for residential when the
| top-end residential internet offerings cap out around
| 1Gbps. Unless you have a buzzing internal network, you
| are wasting your money going above Cat6/Cat6a imo.
|
| Cat7 is no speed increase over Cat6, only distance and
| cross-talk improvements. Cat8 is rated at 4x Cat6 for
| throughput and costs 3x more than Cat6 (~$530 per 1k ft
| vs $170 per 1k feet).
|
| There's no reason to buy a Lambo if the speed limit is 35
| mph.
| bluGill wrote:
| You are lucky, my first network was RG58 (coax), and my
| second was cat-3 cable (10baseT). They didn't age well. I
| switch to cat-5 as soon as it was an option and luckily
| that has aged better.
| madamelic wrote:
| Indeed I am. I grew up on the cutting edge of tech for
| sure thanks to my dad. I don't remember a time without
| internet nor (relatively) fast internet. When I got into
| a serious relationship, it was a culture shock to find
| out how others lived tech-wise growing up.
|
| I embarassed myself accidentally in my first apartment
| when I was mistook an RJ11 for an RJ45 from a distance
| when I commented to the agent about it having ethernet. I
| knew what RJ11 were, I just forgot that ethernet wasn't a
| normal thing to have.
|
| I remember finally getting permission to touch the home
| server rack in my sophomore year of my CS degree. That
| was a milestone.
| bluGill wrote:
| Are you sure? My B+G access points still work with modern
| equipment - they are slow, but they work (I need to get
| them to a recycler as I don't use them). Newer standards
| are diminishing returns - older equipment is likely to be
| good enough far into the future just because it is
| unlikely anything will really need faster.
| OJFord wrote:
| GP said 'outdated', not non-functional. Your 802.11b/g
| APs _are_ outdated, like you say 'they are slow' - i.e.
| you've become accustomed to newer faster models.
| bluGill wrote:
| True, but I'm not convinced that modern network gear will
| become outdated. It is fast enough in general so it is
| hard to think of why everyone should rush to wifi-next
| anymore.
| bdavbdav wrote:
| Many countries houses have brick internal and external (ours
| (UK) is - apart from one or two internal stud walls). How do
| you place a router so that it hits a 4/5 bed house with brick
| walls?
|
| Airtime contention is a big thing - anything with low signal
| takes a disproportionately large amount of airtime to carry
| the same amount of data. You might be able to do it, but
| everything will suffer (even things close to the AP/router).
|
| We've got 4 UniFi APs inside, one outside, and there are
| still some devices with poor antenna design that are clinging
| on.
| sand500 wrote:
| What if we switched to higher less penetrating frequencies?
| We are now on 6GHZ and there is even a spec for wifi over
| 50GHz.
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| Wood and drywall is essentially transparent for 2.4 GHz at
| least.
|
| https://www.nist.gov/publications/electromagnetic-signal-
| att...
| thfuran wrote:
| Low e windows are basically impassible force fields though.
| pixl97 wrote:
| >This is too expensive, how about a correct placement of a
| one router
|
| Because this has it's own set of limits. Especially if you're
| the in tech living in suburbs type that doesn't have a tiny
| house.
|
| I had Cat 6 dropped to the TVs/media devices because I don't
| want constant streaming devices "using up all the wifi". The
| offices where computers are have network drops too.
|
| This leaves a few wifi units around the house to service
| truly mobile things like phones and the assorted device that
| uses wifi that doesn't make sense to network.
|
| If you're going to try to fed 2+ TVs across a sizeable house
| with a bunch of other wifi capable devices off a single wifi
| router don't be surprised when your latency is high and or
| your speed suck.
| umeshunni wrote:
| That was my solution when we did a remodel of our house.
|
| Cat6 and PoE to each room. Unifi Dream Machine Pro in a rack in
| the garage and Unifi In Wall APs (with ethernet out) in each
| room.
|
| They were easy enough to swap out and upgrade to Wifi 6 when
| that launched.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| All of this is why I had high hopes for LiFi - completely
| blocked by walls, zero crosstalk, allegedly great performance
| within each room, and you can run it through lights that you
| wanted to have anyways. Obviously there are trade-offs, but it
| really did look like a great solution to a lot of these
| problems. Unfortunately, I suspect that 1. the trade-offs
| really didn't hurt, and 2. Wi-Fi is already utterly pervasive
| and it's almost impossible to get a second standard that's not
| backwards compatible to that.
| sargun wrote:
| I can't wait until 60 GHz is available en masse, and I can
| deploy an AP in every room.
| originate wrote:
| We could re-do the supply chain for residential construction or
|
| Buy existing tech that can arrive tomorrow, google: "Wi-Fi mesh".
| Pick from a half dozen options.
| azinman2 wrote:
| Which sucks. You're constantly sharing bandwidth and operating
| noisey links between APs. Far better to just have multiple APs
| via Ethernet backhauls.
|
| Problem is people expect to put in a single WiFi-router-modem
| and be done. Radio doesn't work that way.
| lxgr wrote:
| How exactly are you meshing through non-permeable walls?
|
| And if it does work (e.g. due to access points having better
| antennas and maybe positioning), it wastes spectrum like
| nothing else, which exacerbates that problem in high-density
| apartment buildings.
| hughesjj wrote:
| All I want is conduit for my Ethernet. When they're spraying up
| every cubic centimeter of the walls with insulation and fire
| proofing it gets super hard to maintain or run/re-run any cable
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| Google's own mesh WiFi products (under Google and Nest brands)
| are shit. It took 8 months for the support morons to discover
| there were _too many_ APs, with one taking all of the others
| down without any user-visible feedback.
|
| While I use Ubiquiti non-mesh now that only gets 600 Mbps max
| even with WiFi 6e NICs, hardwired works and provides dedicated,
| point-to-point bandwidth.
| pixl97 wrote:
| >It took 8 months for the support morons to discover there
| were too many APs
|
| Yea, the Unifi is nice because it will show you that. In
| theory if you're in a moderately noisy environment you can
| setup the hub to scan once a day and move channels around to
| maximize what you have.
|
| But in your case, you need to do the opposite (which if you
| rent you probably can't) and block as much wifi from outside
| as possible. Everyone getting wifi units and cranking them up
| to 100% radio transmit isn't great.
| thelastgallon wrote:
| Homes need to be built better, period.
|
| (1) We need 240V outlets for EV charging (costs cents at
| construction time, costs $3000 - $8000 later)
|
| (2) We need electric panels and wiring future proofed and can
| also seamless upgrade to solar, battery, complete electrification
| of home with heat pump water heater and heat pump instead of a
| separate gas furnace (fridge and AC use heat pump already),
| induction stove.
|
| (3) Home electrification should allow power intake from car,
| eventually everyone is going to have electric cars. This will
| serve as emergency power, no need to buy a separate gas
| generator.
|
| (4) Indoor air needs a lot of work, in addition to heat pump for
| heating and cooling, we have to consider heat recovery, enthalpy
| recovery, humidity, UV and most importantly particulate matter.
| And mold prevention. Recent discussion on mold, lots of people
| reporting problems: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38543229
|
| (5) Homes can be built with solar shingles. Right now, we install
| a roof, then we install a structure to support panels and then
| panels. If we can just install solar shingles, it is just 1/3 of
| materials and far more importantly 1/3 of labor and a lot less
| than a third in time. We now have nailable solar shingles:
| https://www.gaf.energy/timberline-solar/
|
| (6) Electric utility (or the city) can lay electric and fiber at
| the same time. Either the city or electric provider can provide
| internet or give equal access to providers. We don't need any gas
| connections, homes can be completely electric.
|
| (7) Ongoing discussion on 48V POE for cars
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38557203). Wny not 48V POE
| for most of home wiring? Most everything can be smart by default.
|
| I'm sure there are a lot more, but nobody is asking for these.
| Builders can just build these if people start asking for these as
| standard. Its a tragedy that people buy 50+ year old homes for
| 500K - 1 million USD, moldy, rickety, poorly insulated crap homes
| with so many ongoing issues and will cost hundreds of thousands
| to retrofit and make it livable.
| sokoloff wrote:
| > We need 240V outlets for EV charging (costs cents at
| construction time
|
| I suppose that 25,000+ cents is technically cents, but that's
| pretty far outside the ordinary use of the phrase.
| hk1337 wrote:
| > (3) Home electrification should allow power intake from car,
| eventually everyone is going to have electric cars. This will
| serve as emergency power, no need to buy a separate gas
| generator.
|
| That sounds good in theory and I know it's only for emergencies
| but I don't think that's going to last that long or be that
| beneficial. At least not right now.
|
| > (6) Electric utility (or the city) can lay electric and fiber
| at the same time. Either the city or electric provider can
| provide internet or give equal access to providers. We don't
| need any gas connections, homes can be completely electric.
|
| Do they even get buried at the same depths? My understanding
| was electrical lines get buried deeper than communications
| lines.
| knappe wrote:
| >That sounds good in theory and I know it's only for
| emergencies but I don't think that's going to last that long
| or be that beneficial. At least not right now.
|
| Having a large battery is useful in many, many ways and not
| just for emergencies. Be it for power cost decrease,
| emergencies or load balancing, all of these are very much
| expected consequences of electric cars being in most
| households.
|
| A recent volts.wtf podcast guest spoke about being able to
| run their entire house for more than a week on their Rivian
| truck. Now imagine that in a more generalized, non emergency,
| scenario. That opens up plenty of opportunities.
| organsnyder wrote:
| Our recent fiber installation burial was accomplished by a
| single person with a handheld trencher. The trunkline conduit
| near the street was buried using a boring machine, but I
| don't think it's very deep.
| bluGill wrote:
| They can be at the same depth. However they often are not: if
| there is a problem you need different training for each type
| of cable so if they are near each other the tech needs both
| types of training.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| My car could power my heating system for multiple days,
| that's better than freezing in a pinch.
| Kinrany wrote:
| > Homes can be built with solar shingles.
|
| Is it important for all that to be replaceable when solar
| technology improves?
| turtlebits wrote:
| We need simpler/smaller homes. No one really _needs_ a home
| larger than 3k sf. For new construction, air tightness /Energy
| efficiency should be at the top of the list. The rest are easy
| to retrofit if the homeowner wants them.
| latchkey wrote:
| lol, i'm super happy with my 450sf condo! i'd get lost in
| anything bigger.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| Oh, great, and now we have the comment of busybodies
| everywhere. "You don't neeeeeeeed that!"
| slily wrote:
| I'll stick with my gas utilities, walls thicker than paper and
| wonderful lack of anything "smart" thank you very much.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > solar shingles
|
| Aren't those less efficient than panels?
| sokoloff wrote:
| They're more efficient than asphalt shingles.
| jonfw wrote:
| they're also more efficient than drywall, but I'm not going
| to clad my bedroom in them, because it would be a waste of
| money.
|
| Because the economics matter, we have to understand if it's
| a better value versus asphalt + solar, or asphalt + ground
| fixtures, or asphalt + a solar farm.
| danans wrote:
| They are less efficient at converting solar radiation to
| electricity, but far more space efficient. PV panels can't
| extend to the edge of roofs because of fire access code, and
| have restricted layouts due to their geometry.
|
| If the GAF nail-on PV shingles can approach or beat the price
| of a roof + PV panels, then they will be a good solution.
| Hopefully with their standard nail-on format, GAF shingles
| will have similar labor cost of installation to regular
| shingles, vs the specialized labor needed to install Tesla
| solar tiles.
| danans wrote:
| > (1) We need 240V outlets for EV charging (costs cents at
| construction time, costs $3000 - $8000 later)
|
| Cents for an outlet vs thousands for an EVSE retrofit is
| comparing the cost of different things.
|
| The $3k-$8k isn't paying just for an outlet, but for the labor
| required to run a suitable gauge conductor from a suitable
| breaker to the outlet, including opening and repairing any
| walls.
|
| In new construction, it won't be as high, but it will be around
| $1k (depending on your labor market) when you include
| electrical design and installation labor. I know this because
| I've done both retrofit and new construction installation of an
| EVSE.
|
| > (4) Indoor air needs a lot of work, in addition to heat pump
| for heating and cooling, we have to consider heat recovery,
| enthalpy recovery, humidity, UV and most importantly
| particulate matter. And mold prevention. Recent discussion on
| mold, lots of people reporting problems:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38543229
|
| Even beyond mold, there's allergens. Since living in an air-
| quality controlled home, my seasonal allergies have greatly
| diminished, which directly translates to better sleep.
|
| > 1 million USD, moldy, rickety, poorly insulated crap homes
| with so many ongoing issues and will cost hundreds of thousands
| to retrofit and make it livable.
|
| There is a general problem with the real estate market that,
| lacking regulations that require disclosure, buyers aren't
| educated about energy/air-quality issues they might be getting
| into, and sellers are incentivized to cover up any such issues
| (i.e. by throwing open windows and running air filters during
| open houses). Simply requiring a disclosure of a summary of
| energy use over the last year (at monthly granularity) would
| make a big difference.
| minot wrote:
| > (1) We need 240V outlets for EV charging (costs cents at
| construction time, costs $3000 - $8000 later)
|
| My understanding is that there needs to be some kind of upgrade
| on our grid so everyone can charge their cars. This would
| likely involve increasing its capacity to handle the additional
| load from widespread EV charging.
|
| > (2) We need electric panels and wiring future proofed and can
| also seamless upgrade to solar, battery, complete
| electrification of home with heat pump water heater and heat
| pump instead of a separate gas furnace (fridge and AC use heat
| pump already), induction stove.
|
| I remember seeing a social media post urging people to check
| their electrical panel and if it was a specific name, "Federal
| Pacific Electric" for instance, to call an electrician and plan
| to have it removed because they were known to cause fires. I
| absolutely agree though. The future is all electric and the
| sooner we can drop natural gas to homes, the better.
|
| >(3) Home electrification should allow power intake from car,
| eventually everyone is going to have electric cars. This will
| serve as emergency power, no need to buy a separate gas
| generator.
|
| Ideally, we would all live close enough to free-of-cost to the
| rider public transit but yes, we should allow power going back
| and forth between car and house. Maybe we can skip the battery
| in the house altogether, send all power from house solar panels
| to (in order of priority) the car if connected, the grid if car
| is not connected, the house locally if grid is not connected.
| This could be implemented practically with the right
| infrastructure and technology.
|
| > (4) Indoor air needs a lot of work, in addition to heat pump
| for heating and cooling, we have to consider heat recovery,
| enthalpy recovery, humidity, UV and most importantly
| particulate matter. And mold prevention. Recent discussion on
| mold, lots of people reporting problems:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38543229
|
| I don't have a link but I remember reading a few years ago
| about how in places with low pollution such as Colorado and
| where days are hot but nights are pleasant in the summer,
| perhaps one way to cut costs could be to over ventilate at
| night in the summer (after measuring temperature) forcing
| (filtered) cold air from outside into the house and forcing the
| existing warm air out. This would also require a good
| insulation system to maintain the temperature balance.
| Thoughts?
|
| > (5) Homes can be built with solar shingles. Right now, we
| install a roof, then we install a structure to support panels
| and then panels. If we can just install solar shingles, it is
| just 1/3 of materials and far more importantly 1/3 of labor and
| a lot less than a third in time. We now have nailable solar
| shingles: https://www.gaf.energy/timberline-solar/
|
| I am all for it if solar shingles are cheaper than solar panels
| on top of roofs. While the upfront cost of solar shingles might
| be higher, the long-term savings and aesthetic appeal could
| make them a worthwhile investment.
|
| > (6) Electric utility (or the city) can lay electric and fiber
| at the same time. Either the city or electric provider can
| provide internet or give equal access to providers. We don't
| need any gas connections, homes can be completely electric.
|
| Yes, absolutely agree. I used to love gas until I learned that
| gas leaks and gas connections going to homes leak A LOT. Now, I
| am all for all electric. And yes, we need fiber everywhere
| please. High-speed internet access for all is especially
| important in the context of remote work and online education.
|
| > (7) Ongoing discussion on 48V POE for cars
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38557203). Wny not 48V
| POE for most of home wiring? Most everything can be smart by
| default.
|
| Does this mean we don't need step down transformers? Is it
| simply moving the step down transformers from the street into
| the house? The potential benefits of 48V POE could include
| increased efficiency and safety.
| amluto wrote:
| > perhaps one way to cut costs could be to over ventilate at
| night in the summer (after measuring temperature) forcing
| (filtered) cold air from outside into the house and forcing
| the existing warm air out.
|
| Setups like this are fairly common, especially in commercial
| construction. There are "economizers," various forms of
| "whole house fan," and a few HRVs/ERVs with a built in bypass
| feature. Also windows. HRV bypasses are not especially high
| flow.
|
| Sadly, most whole house fans are designed quite specifically
| for houses with vented attics. While most house do have
| vented attics, there is very little excuse these days to
| build a vented attic, especially in wildfire-prone areas.
| acover wrote:
| Is it possible to use normal solar panels for the roofing
| material?
| amluto wrote:
| > (1) We need 240V outlets for EV charging (costs cents at
| construction time, costs $3000 - $8000 later)
|
| 6/2 (plus ground) cable is not _that_ cheap. And current code
| actually requires EV-readiness in many places.
|
| > Wny not 48V POE for most of home wiring? Most everything can
| be smart by default.
|
| I would take regular #12/#14 wiring, so long as the neutral is
| wired up correctly (which it almost always is with NM-B or any
| similar factory-made cable) over some 48V let's-hope-
| it's-still-useful-in-10-years setup.
| nradov wrote:
| People buy expensive old houses because there is no vacant land
| to build new houses in those areas. If you want to live in a
| certain neighborhood then you take what's available. It's the
| location that counts; the quality of the house itself is mostly
| incidental.
| georgelyon wrote:
| Given recent research into using WiFi to "see" through walls or
| at the very least track what humans are doing in a space, I would
| argue we should go in the opposite direction. I'm pretty happy
| with my current house and adversarial-to-WiFi cement walls. Sure,
| I had to run some cable and buy enough access points for about 3x
| the amount of square feet of my house (if you go by the
| advertised specs) but this is a one-time investment that is
| pretty small in the grand scheme of home-related things.
| sokoloff wrote:
| The wire might be one-time per 30 years. (The Cat-5 spec is
| only ~28 years old.)
|
| The APs are going to get replaced more than once a decade I
| think. We've been in our place 16 years and I'm on the third
| generation of APs, one Netgear that I moved here with, a set of
| UAC-AC-Pros, and a set of UAC-U6-LRs.
| georgelyon wrote:
| Sure, "very infrequently recurring" may be a more accurate
| label than "one time"
| engineer_22 wrote:
| AFAIK the wifi "see through walls" exploit requires an array of
| wifi routers. Even in lab conditions the imaging capabilities
| seem... aspirational. An adversary would be well served to
| stick to other forms of surveillance
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Any technology installed in a home will be obsolete in under a
| decade. It's silly to deeply embed this stuff into the framework
| of the house.
|
| Remember all the people who spent big money running CAT5 to all
| the rooms? Then we got in-home WiFi and all of that cabling was
| just forgotten.
| teeray wrote:
| > Then we got in-home WiFi and all of that cabling was just
| forgotten.
|
| Those folks just plugged APs into all that "forgotten" cabling
| and ended up with the best backhaul for their WiFi possible.
| hk1337 wrote:
| I don't think it should be run to every room but ethernet
| cables to the main places where you want solid internet
| connectivity would be good. Like an ethernet line to your TV
| for good connectivity on streaming devices and if you're going
| to use a room as an office. Everything else can be wifi. Maybe
| a few others just in case.
| Libcat99 wrote:
| I'm off the opinion that anything that can be wired should
| be. If a device is stationary and used often, wire it. It's
| not just about a better quality link that device, it also
| means less contention for your other devices that must be on
| wifi.
| icehawk wrote:
| One on every wall is my preference. My TV, computer desk,
| etc, won't be in the same place forever.`
| pixl97 wrote:
| Eh, for most houses this is overkill. For one, they tend
| not to have a wring room to bring 20+ cables back to and
| put in to a patch panel. The other is that a great number
| of houses have a pretty singular optimal layout for a
| room.
|
| In your design my house would have around 40 drops,
| rather than 7. 40 makes no sense.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Do many consumer TVs even have an RJ45 connector anymore?
| Despite what a few of us here might like to do, average
| homeowners hate cables and love Wifi.
| hk1337 wrote:
| I would be curious to find out about others because all the
| flat screen TVs I had there was an RJ45 connector. I don't
| do any streaming on the TV anyways so I do not even have
| wifi configured. For me the ethernet would be for Apple TV.
| gizmo686 wrote:
| Every TV I have has an RJ45 connector. They also have wifi,
| but the RJ45 is there for anyone who wants it.
| pixl97 wrote:
| >even have an RJ45 connector anymore?
|
| Yea, every one I've seen recently. Of all devices they are
| the number one device to put on a network drop as they will
| use more bandwidth more consistently than any other device
| in your house.
|
| On my TV wall I had a singular network drop to the TV wall.
| When I built a faux fireplace for it, I put a switch there
| in the access hole and now have it split out between the TV
| and all the consoles.
| kennethrc wrote:
| > Remember all the people who spent big money running CAT5 to
| all the rooms? Then we got in-home WiFi and all of that cabling
| was just forgotten.
|
| I dunno 'bout that- seems to me someone who knows enough to run
| Ethernet also knows that WiFi is a collision-detection
| protocol; I retrofit CAT6 into my current place just a couple
| of years ago, and while I have a mesh WiFi6 network at home
| (with Ethernet backhaul, of course) I also ensured all the TVs
| (most of them 4K) and as many computers as possible were on
| Ethernet.
| r2_pilot wrote:
| Uhm, no? I ran cat 5e through my house in all the bedrooms and
| common areas back in high school and I'm still using them in
| addition to my Wi-Fi network, which historically hasn't been
| 1/1,000 as reliable as the copper cable. Even now I have higher
| bandwidth (1gbps) for each computer connected, and it doesn't
| have wireless interference to contend with.
| ip26 wrote:
| I'm sure someone once said that about 120V wiring, and about
| POTS.
|
| We can't anticipate what will be obsolete. But fifty feet of
| ethernet cable or single strand fiber is quite cheap and easy
| to install during construction. Honestly, so what if it _is_
| obsolete in a decade? I doubt my parents are regretting the
| money they spent running now-obsolete POTS into their house in
| 1950.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| POTS is obsolete, I'd guess most new houses aren't wired for
| it. Cable TV coax is obsolete except as a connection for a
| cable modem, will soon be replaced by fiber or wireless in
| most places where it hasn't already. Took a while but
| technological progress is on an accelerating curve.
|
| Mains electrical and plumbing are about the only things that
| will remain as-is for a good while.
| icehawk wrote:
| Not really, I had WiFi years before I could run Cat5 in the
| walls, and now it's used to cable the access points that run
| the WiFi.
| ec109685 wrote:
| This is why the Xfinity "10g" commercials are so disingenuous.
| They make it sound like the limit in homes for high quality
| simultaneous streaming and gaming is the cable internet
| connection instead of the home wifi network.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Well, it depends; if your downlink is 10Gb then yeah the local
| side might be a bottleneck, but some of us are out here on 10
| _M_ b internet connections and only benefit from upgrading the
| local network if it means better reliability.
| s3p wrote:
| The article makes no mention of which construction materials are
| supposedly 'better' for wifi signals.
| madamelic wrote:
| Yes, it is a frustrating article. Feels more like a Twitlonger
| than an actual news article. Mostly complaining and info-
| dumping vs offering up a solution or deeper information.
|
| If the author had dug deeper and reached out to experts, the
| article could have been great.
| jwells89 wrote:
| In this realm, something I'm going to be doing some time soon is
| running ethernet through to the various rooms of my home, because
| it lacks this wiring despite being built in the 00s with a fiber
| connection being part of the original plan.
|
| While I don't yet have a professional's opinion, this is likely
| to be somewhat involved and expensive as it seems that walls will
| need to be cut open and in one place, floorboards pulled up. It
| could turn out that some of the existing wiring has conduits that
| could be used but I'm not betting on it.
| gregmac wrote:
| Tips: get an "installer bit" -- this is a really long, flexible
| drill bit that lets you cut a hole for the mounting plate, and
| drill directly from there down into the floor below. In the
| ideal case, no drywall patching is needed at all. You mount a
| low-voltage retrofit box/ring in the hole you made and the
| keystone wall plate attaches to that.
| samtho wrote:
| Also, there is typically a small hole on the end of the
| installer bit, just below the tip, that lets you use it as
| "fish stick" and poke your pull line through after you drill
| the hole.
| drewmol wrote:
| If you not familiar check out powerline network adapters and
| access points. Not as good as cat6+ but better than WiFi as
| backhaul, I've been pleasantly surprised with the performance
| and throughput of the newer standards. You can get up to 2400
| Mbps with the recent models.
| kbenson wrote:
| Depending on the why and what you ultimately want, you might
| find powerline adapters useful, or the flat ribbon ethernet
| cables that are so small that you can actually fit it easily
| between the baseboard and carpet. You could probably run that
| under carpet and padding (to pass doors or jump halls) and
| straight through walls at specific points and get fairly good
| access everywhere with much less work.
| orev wrote:
| Powerline is very bad. It generates huge amounts of RF
| interference and I'm surprised to see it keeps getting
| recommended here. MoCa is far better as long as coax is
| available.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| One dream I have is pulling out my baseboards, carving a
| channel into them, and putting ethernet cables in there.
| samtho wrote:
| You might not even need to carve it out: there is often a
| 3/8-3/4in gap where the drywall stops.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Consider running single mode fibre instead. You can always
| convert it to Ethernet.
| jwells89 wrote:
| Doesn't that require powered converter boxes, similar to
| MoCA? The nice thing about ethernet is being able to plug in
| anything anywhere in the house without a power brick.
| madamelic wrote:
| > It could turn out that some of the existing wiring has
| conduits that could be used
|
| Unless it is low voltage in the conduit, you don't want to mix
| 120v with low voltage wiring.
|
| In residential, it's not a huge deal but does come with the
| risk of data loss along with, to my understanding, an extremely
| minimal chance of fire due to inducing voltage. The chance of
| fire increases as the voltage goes up so generally it's only a
| risk in commercial or industrial.
|
| You don't have to get inspections or follow code to my
| understanding but the rule of thumb iirc is 8 inches minimum
| between low-voltage and 120v. So if 120v is in one stud 'bay',
| you go to the next one.
| gregmac wrote:
| The majority of the complaint here is really that:
|
| * many new homes use metal "structured cabling" boxes (which
| block wifi signals)
|
| * the box is not in a central location (eg: usually in a corner
| of the basement near where cabling comes in)
|
| * Most people use their ISP-provided combination wifi/router
|
| * The wifi is then located inside the metal structured cabling
| box
|
| For most non-techie houses, if the access point is centrally
| located, it'll solve the vast majority of problems. However, to
| do this, practically, at least some of the following have to
| happen:
|
| * The router and wifi need to be separate units, with ethernet
| cables to the wifi location
|
| * The structured cabling box needs to be redesigned to be plastic
| or mount the router/wifi combo externally
|
| * All the in-house ethernet and outside connections need to be
| run to a location near the center of the house, such that there
| are minimal walls between it and each living space
|
| This isn't hard, it's just an incentives problem. Most houses
| don't sell for more money by doing this, so the builder has no
| incentive to fix it. ISPs have clearly decided that having a
| single modem/router/wifi combo is most cost-effective for them,
| and just let their customers deal with a less-than-optimal
| experience. In many cases people have little or no other ISP
| choice, so it's not like they lose the business.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| _> All the in-house ethernet and outside connections need to be
| run to a location near the center of the house, such that there
| are minimal walls between it and each living space_
|
| If we're just talking wifi like 99% of people will do, this is
| literally _one cable_ that needs to be planned. Shouldn 't be
| hard, but like you said the people responsible for setting it
| up would need to care.
| samtho wrote:
| > many new homes use metal "structured cabling" boxes (which
| block wifi signal)
|
| Which are not meant to house a wifi access point, these are
| fine for (wired) network routers and the modem, but if you have
| this setup, your wireless access point should really be on the
| ceiling.
| bluGill wrote:
| we know that, the people who make those boxes know that.
| However the people installing network in most houses don't
| know that: they see a box in a useful location for having
| switches and think "I'll just put everything in there" even
| though that box is in a bad location for wifi and is metal.
| OJFord wrote:
| I'm not in the US, that's not common here, are these
| something like this? https://i.pinimg.com/originals/4b/ad/6b/
| 4bad6bbff1a36e3dfbf7...
|
| For the majority (I assume) of houses built without Ethernet
| runs, what's in there? Just the fibre/copper entry and modem
| if required? Or does it also house circuit breakers and meter
| etc. typically?
| nradov wrote:
| In my experience the Xfinity (Comcast) WiFi boost pods work
| pretty well. You can just plug them into any available
| electrical outlet and they automatically form a mesh network to
| eliminate dead zones around the house. They might not be ideal
| if you need really high bandwidth and low latency, but for most
| homeowners it's probably good enough and much cheaper than
| installing Ethernet wiring.
|
| https://www.xfinity.com/learn/internet-service/wifi/xfi-pod
| dmckeon wrote:
| Put a patch panel in the structured media center, attach all
| house Cat-5++ cables to it. Put in-wall keystone RJ-45
| receptacles at the other end of each cable. Put ISP
| router/gateway/wifi box at some central location. Use patch
| cables and panel to connect ISP box to ISP. Add WAPs elsewhere
| as needed.
| RajT88 wrote:
| His woes would likely much less if he could figure out how to fab
| a plastic plate to replace the metal one.
|
| (Or better: buy one which fits)
| latchkey wrote:
| They are like $10 on amazon. When I remodeled my place, I ran
| some power from another plug and I put my cablebox/wifi router
| into the wall (high up), behind a plastic door that lives
| behind the tv. Super easy and works fantastic.
| teeray wrote:
| Part of the issue is that there isn't really a professional class
| that is dedicated to home Internet like other home services. For
| Joe Homeowner, they call the plumber to put in a new sink, an
| electrician to hang a light fixture, the HVAC guy to put in
| A/C... and Comcast when the Internet is acting up? This would be
| equivalent to calling the city's water department when your
| toilet is clogged with a Barbie doll.
|
| Electricians are the closest match, but usually telephone wiring
| is the closest experience they have to running Ethernet. They
| know nothing about properly setting up APs and the RF
| considerations.
|
| So when building houses, builders don't bother, because getting
| that labor is specialized and homeowners are satisfied with the
| equivalent of a port-a-potty from Comcast in the living room
| because they don't know any better.
| asperous wrote:
| I looked it up and there is a whole industry of "low voltage"
| or cable networking installers.
|
| I think it's more a matter of cost and that people wouldn't
| think to do it if their internet mostly works.
| hervature wrote:
| In case people are curious, I had several lines of ethernet
| added throughout my home I wanted to add (cameras outside,
| ethernet port in garage, etc.) and I was charged $100 per
| line (they called them drops). This included going into my
| attic and doing as much as possible passing the ethernet
| inside the walls. When they went outside, they used conduit.
| I think most people would actually save money by dropping
| from 1Gbps to 200Mbps and using those savings to pay for a
| wired backhaul and good mesh network.
| pjot wrote:
| The ATT guy just drilled a hole in the side of my wall to pass
| the fiber through. I rent, so I don't really care, but if the
| plumber did that I'd be pissed.
| themark wrote:
| This. They wanted to drill a hole in my place to run a line
| from the pole. The line would go right past a window. It just
| seemed unprofessional.
| samtho wrote:
| I mean, do you expect them to alter the laws of physics to
| your preferred taste? Most overhead installs must attach to
| the closest point on your home to the pole.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| If their experience was like mine someone from the ISP
| showed up unannounced and just started putting a hole in
| their house. They then called the ISP to ask if this was
| legit, and the response was "we can't answer that for
| you, maybe you should call the cops".
|
| In this case, yeah, it would be unprofessional and they'd
| be pissed :)
| bradley13 wrote:
| Yes, actually, I do. Not alter the laws of physics, but
| run the cable where it makes sense. If that means running
| it in a conduit _outside_ the house for a few meters to
| get to a sensible spot, then that 's what they're going
| to have to do. They don't just get to put a hole in your
| wall "wherever".
| organsnyder wrote:
| When we built my new home office (above the garage), I bought a
| couple of big spools of Cat6A and told the electricians where I
| wanted them run. I also made sure they were aware of bend
| radius requirements, etc. (though if they managed to bend
| shielded Cat6A that far I'd be impressed). I've been doing the
| termination myself.
| mplewis wrote:
| The niche to search for is "low-voltage electrician." They do
| all sorts of professional installations of non-powered wiring.
| ponector wrote:
| Yes, there are guys who specializes on security, CCTV, smart
| home, etc. They should charge properly. Nobody will call them
| for lying few meters of RJ45.
| petee wrote:
| A recent wiring overhaul at my house saw the electrican
| bundling about 6 cables with my cat6a runs. Never been happier
| that I went with shielded; no apparent issues despite zero
| clearance, but imagine non-shielded buried in a wall somewhere,
| undiagnosable
| ghaff wrote:
| It's probably something of a generational thing. The fairly
| young electrician who the contractor who did a few fairly large
| projects I used seemed to know what he was doing. It's probably
| not perfect but it seems to work fine. Everything isn't wired
| but the cable comes into my office where my modem/switch are
| and it goes off to ports next to a couple of complexes of
| electronics downstairs that also have local switches.
|
| I still use wireless a lot but quite a bit of the higher
| bandwidth gear is wired.
| d0gsg0w00f wrote:
| Yeah, I learned that if I want something a certain way I make
| sure they include it in the quote and check while they're
| working just like a General Contractor would do. For things
| like fiber conduit I'm going to make sure the driveway people
| bury it.
| turtlebits wrote:
| IME, ethernet in every room is overkill. I had it in my previous
| house and only used it for in the office.
|
| What I'd be happy with is a few ceiling drops for APs in common
| areas.
| lxgr wrote:
| Why not give people the option? What's a guest bedroom today
| can become a home office tomorrow, and stability/bandwidth
| needs per room can vary accordingly.
| bastard_op wrote:
| Home builders are probably the worst option to design a home
| network as they're only interested in mass-producing crap as
| quick as possible, and they have no idea the difference between
| cat5, cat7, or fiber. You're lucky if you get electrical outlets
| in the right places and orientation.
|
| My friend that is like me a network engineer just bought/building
| a new house, and was talking about getting a 8 port switch. I was
| like what, for a new, large-ish house? He was talking about just
| doing wireless, and I'm like ugh, but what about all your kids
| watching netflix on 8k+ tv's, all on wireless at the same time
| and complaining to you, you'll wish you had wired their tv's. Not
| to mention security cameras, doorbells, multiple AP's
| potentially, ethernet-based sensors for things, etc, all things
| that need Power over Ethernet too, or at least benefit from it.
| It got him thinking at least.
|
| Then he went back to the builder and the builder gave him 2
| options, take what they give, which is an ethernet drop in each
| room in a random spot back to a closet of whatever cable they
| happen to have that day, or nothing. I'd have been pissed, and he
| was at that point. I told him better luck next time on his next
| house.
|
| It shouldn't take a network engineer to build a decent home
| network, but apparently it does and any home builder worth a damn
| should in the modern age should consider it.
| ponector wrote:
| Regular homebuyers would not pay extra thousands dollar for
| proper network project.
|
| Unfortunately if you want a decent network - then do it
| yourself.
| bdavbdav wrote:
| DIY is really hard to do (neatly) once built. Especially in
| the UK where even a lot of internal walls are brick.
| ponector wrote:
| Could be messy, but possible. After all, our modern
| apartments are built with reinforced concrete first and
| then wires are laid into the walls, floor, ceiling.
| rickydroll wrote:
| Try in a 1930-40s house with vermiculite insulation. You
| need asbestos monitoring whenever you crack open a wall or
| a ceiling. Of course, the same can be said for and
| 1970-80-90's house with Chinese drywall.
|
| I'll never get 10G from my basement to 2ed floor office. I
| can run fiber along the chimney, but there is no way down
| that doesn't disturb the vermiculite insulation.
|
| I love old houses, but they present a whole different set
| of engineering challenges and DIY skills.
| nostrademons wrote:
| I've heard the secret to getting contractors to do what you
| want is "Name a price, then do it." Basically for everything
| non-standard you want in the build, let them set a price, and
| then pay it. Oftentimes it'll be a few thousand for extra
| wiring or moving some outlet around, $25K to raise the roof
| in a room, something like that. But if they feel like they're
| getting an extra few grand out of you, many contractors are
| very willing to do it.
|
| It does mean that costs frequently balloon, but you should
| expect that when you do any form of home renovation, and just
| budget an extra $100K or so for it.
| thfuran wrote:
| >and just budget an extra $100K or so for it.
|
| Yeah, I can't believe everyone isn't jumping right on that.
| Fauntleroy wrote:
| Lots of people out here not making the realization they
| need to be in the top ~20% of earners in their area if
| they want anything remotely nice in their life.
|
| Edit: probably higher than that in certain locations
| where homeownership is impossible
| ChadNauseam wrote:
| Only because "remotely nice" is defined relative to
| people in your neighborhood. What percent of people
| worldwide have their own bedroom with >10gbps WiFi and an
| outlet?
| Nevermark wrote:
| Not sure the context here is "worldwide". I don't see any
| comments about running AC to bedrooms.
|
| Also, "nice" things continually transition to being
| expected "basic" things. Especially when many people find
| the upgrades not too onerous. Other people feel natural
| frustration if happenstance makes the transition to a new
| norm more difficult for them.
|
| --
|
| It took work to get good WiFi signals throughout my home
| this year. But an 80+ foot tree fell on the roof,
| centered directly over me in bed without killing me,
| during a tremendously dark and stormy night. So I won't
| complain about the signal resistant materials! Too much!
| In a closely adjecent "verse" I won't be complaining
| about anything.
| instagib wrote:
| A co-worker became friends with his contractor and put in his
| own drops in the evening after the workers left.
|
| My place has two separate drops per room. One for Ethernet and
| one Ethernet that is setup as a phone line. I picked up a
| couple used enterprise grade AP's with traffic shaping and all
| is good.
| madamelic wrote:
| > A co-worker became friends with his contractor and put in
| his own drops in the evening after the workers left.
|
| Was talking to my dad over Thanksgiving and that's precisely
| what he did every time we bought a new house. He would go
| over to the new house after work and install conduit to the
| house so he didn't have to tear up the house installing it
| after drywall.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| How many times did you guys move into a newly constructed
| house?
| madamelic wrote:
| Only twice while I was living with them.
|
| The first time I think he just did a giant PVC pipe from
| top to bottom, that's what he said. Seems like there was
| more to that installation that I should ask about. I was
| quite a young child when we lived at that house so
| hearing it had ethernet was surprising.
|
| The second time he actually did all the ethernet runs
| while the house was unfinished and I remember it because
| he'd bring me along.
| olyjohn wrote:
| If you're just lazy like me, you just go through an
| exterior wall, staple the cable up along some trim, and go
| back through the wall into the room you want the cable.
| Caulk it up and paint it and you can't even tell it's
| there. Best to get outdoor-rated, or direct-burial cable.
| The layer of paint over it also seems to do a pretty good
| job protecting it.
| NewJazz wrote:
| Even if they use a shitty cable you can pull your own cable
| through after the fact, no? Might not work well with flimsy
| fiber if they took tight turns, but CAT7 should be fine.
| jaywalk wrote:
| They don't just leave cables hanging freely behind the walls.
| OJFord wrote:
| I assume GP is assuming it would be hanging freely in (in-
| wall) conduit, which is pretty uncontroversially the best
| way to do it, just very hard to retrofit.
|
| And if you are retrofitting a cable run, yeah it probably
| _will_ be 'just hanging freely behind the walls'.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| I've been in a newly constructed home with Cat-6, and
| they stapled it. This was within the last year.
|
| From builder's perspective it is "controversial" to run
| conduit because they're trying to tick boxes as
| cheaply/fast as possible and conduit is the exact
| opposite of that goal. If you want conduit, I'd assume
| you have to pay for it as a bespoke upgrade.
| slimginz wrote:
| Not every time. In my current place the cable is stapled
| directly to the studs so it would require gutting basically
| everything to replace all of it. Luckily most of the runs go
| to places that make sense but I'll never be able to upgrade
| from CAT5e.
| jonhohle wrote:
| That's how my house is as well. The builder used CAT5 for
| all of the phone runs. Fortunately it's a one story with
| easy attic access. I've rerouted many of them to a closet
| (the originally all terminated outside near the electrical
| panel) and ran a few more by drilling through top plates in
| the attic. I don't have jacks everywhere I'd want, and most
| of the cable is CAT5, but it generally hasn't been an
| issue. Most of the lines seem to support gigabit speeds.
|
| In my previous house an upstairs leak resulted in a
| downstairs ceiling coming down which was a boon for wiring
| up most of the house and adding in ceiling speakers and can
| lights.
| secabeen wrote:
| In some jurisdictions, every wall will have a horizontal
| 2x4 about half-way down the wall. Drilling through the
| top-plate will get you started, but you'll need a special
| 4' long drill-bit to make the second hole you need in
| that 2x4. It's kind of fun to drill with such a long bit.
| jasode wrote:
| _> Even if they use a shitty cable you can pull your own
| cable through after the fact, no? _
|
| Often you can't use the old (unwanted) cable to act as a
| "fish tape" or "mouse" to pull a new cable because the old
| cable is routed through many small holes in 2x4 studs,
| ceiling plates, or joists. The path usually has several tight
| 90 degree turns, with staples, and some of the holes are even
| spray foamed. There would be too much friction inside the
| walls to pull a cable for non-trivial distances.
|
| If the old cable was inside of conduit, pulling a new cable
| could work but that type of install is very rare. Conduit for
| networking cable is typically only used underground to bury
| the cable between buildings rather than inside the walls of a
| single home.
| Sylamore wrote:
| Depends, I've seen cat6 stapled to the studs like all the
| other wiring. I'd probably at least ask for it to be placed
| in conduit if it were me, but I'd probably also just go in
| and do the wiring myself before they closed up the walls.
| Baeocystin wrote:
| Honestly, modern meshes are fine. I Have clients with large
| families, everyone streaming at Netflix O'Clock, and the three-
| pack of Eeros they picked up handle everything without a single
| hiccup. My last house, many years ago, I did wire up with
| CAT5e. If I build again in the future, I may not bother.
| ghaff wrote:
| As I wrote elsewhere, I've had a fair bit of Ethernet
| installed when walls were open and other electrical work was
| being done anyway. But this was years ago and a lot of what I
| do is over wireless these days. It's probably still a good
| idea to run some network wiring depending on the house layout
| but, with meshes, it's probably not really necessary--
| especially if at least some of the high bandwidth equipment
| is wired.
| Baeocystin wrote:
| Yeah, I do technically have a few runs, for a pair of PoE
| security cameras. I wound up moving my Synology out of my
| office in to the garage (it was a rackmount unit, with
| screeching fans), just plugged in to one of my satellite
| Eeros, and I literally can't tell in terms of bandwidth.
| I'm not complaining, it's nice to not have to worry about
| wires!
| ghaff wrote:
| My Synology is fairly low-end one. It's "only" something
| like a 1.8TB RAID-1. (I think it was probably cheaper
| than operating my old Linux box with btrfs to do the same
| thing.) But, yeah, I plug my various wired stuff in where
| it's convenient but basically don't sweat the details.
| xattt wrote:
| I'm planning to wire not only for Ethernet, but also speaker
| wire. I'm not fully confident in my ability to make sure a
| ceiling speaker goes in the right place, but I'll have to
| resort to that.
|
| My options are either a guy that does all the big projects
| (churches, restaurants, houses for people that won't blink at a
| 100,000 dollar late-construction review) or myself.
|
| There's simply no in-between, because it's not in the mindset
| of the general population. Most one-man electrician shows
| probably have enough issues keeping their phone going.
| ghaff wrote:
| I basically have whole house (including outdoor) speaker
| wire. But, to be honest, this was basically done 20 years ago
| by an electrician in concert with other work and I'm not sure
| I'd do it today unless it were really easy.
| m463 wrote:
| On the other hand, you can still get pretty good bandwidth out
| of the lowly cat5. You usually don't have 100m runs.
|
| Over my lifetime I think 10 -> 100 -> 1000 -> 2.5 maybe 10 is
| usually doable.
|
| arguably not as good as fiber, which has been reused in steps
| of orders of magnitude each tech jump.
| ghaff wrote:
| People here get obsessed with the highest bandwidth numbers.
| But, most of the time in a consumer context, it really
| doesn't matter.
| avidiax wrote:
| > you'll wish you had wired their tv's.
|
| Unfortunately, many TVs only have 100Mbps ethernet, and
| sometimes that ethernet port doesn't even achieve 50Mbps
| because of software issues. People workaround that by using a
| USB Gigabit Ethernet adapter with the USB 3.0/3.1 port.
|
| https://www.howtogeek.com/763255/how-to-add-gigabit-ethernet...
| madamelic wrote:
| I wish ethernet only cost "a few hundred dollars".
|
| I am currently about $600 in the hole and I haven't even bought
| conduit, new drywall, or another switch. I am guessing it will be
| in the $1,000+ range when I am done. That's assuming I don't need
| to go get another 1,000 foot roll which I am guessing I might
| (doing 48 drops + PoE)
|
| ---
|
| While interesting, I don't think the article really was for me.
| It felt shallow and like an info dump rather than a real opinion
| piece.
|
| The solution to "I have bad internet" is ethernet yet the author
| seems against or as if it is stepping back into the past. We rely
| on wires to get it into the house generally, why are you
| advocating for getting rid of wires then being confused when your
| coverage sucks.
|
| The technology is there to have good wireless internet (wifi mesh
| driven by ethernet) but the author seems like they want to
| complain rather than looking at the problem rationally.
| mindslight wrote:
| " _Doc, the Wifi AP doesn 't work very well when I put it in a
| metal box_" ... " _Have you tried not putting it in a metal
| box?_ "
|
| It feels like the author has a self-induced problem where she
| indeed knows better. But she's trying to emulate what she
| thinks a non-techie would do, and getting that quite wrong by
| limiting herself to fewer pieces rather than widely available
| off the shelf products meant to solve the problem properly.
|
| Obviously the metal box is meant for modem+router+switch, and
| then you hang wireless APs off of where the ethernet cables run
| to. When I was in an apartment that had a similar setup, I
| found it a bit limiting and still ran various ethernet lines
| under rugs and whatnot, but it was much better foundation than
| draping cables in hallways and stairways.
| rdl wrote:
| That was possibly the worst written tech article I've read in a
| while, despite generally agreeing with the premise of home Wi-Fi
| being important. I look forward to LLMs actually eliminating the
| bottom 75% of human writing.
| onetimeuse92304 wrote:
| Not sure what you mean.
|
| I am living in one of the worst place possible for Internet. I
| have over 400 2.4GHz APs accessible from my apartment. And it was
| built pre-Internet age with absolutely no forethought.
|
| And yet I have perfectly working Internet.
|
| Yes, when the network operator installed their AP it absolutely
| sucked. But I turned it into modem, put on my own pfSense box.
| Configured traffic shaping to reduce bufferbloat and ensure
| bandwidth is always reserved for things like zoom calls.
|
| Then I put on a decent (Ubiquiti) access point in every other
| room. I have reduced power of those access points so that they
| fall off naturally, this helps clients who move about the large
| apartment to roam. It does not make sense to have the AP radiate
| much further than the puny phone modem -- it just keeps the modem
| stuck to that AP while the AP struggles to receive signal from
| the phone. And so on.
|
| I have also upgraded almost all devices to 5GHz. 5GHz has much
| shorter range but it is actually a benefit -- it means less
| interference from devices of my neighbours.
|
| For security, I have separated VLANs and WLANs (separate for my
| work, for network management, for my family and their unsafe
| devices, for some legacy devices like printers and finally for
| guests).
|
| Everybody who visits me notices how well the WiFi works.
|
| I don't see how you need to _build_ for "good Internet". "Good
| Internet" is just function of knowing what you are doing.
|
| It may cost a bit more to set up networking like mine. But this
| is drop in the ocean compared to trying to somehow improving your
| wifi coverage by chosing more expensive materials to build your
| house.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| I mean, at the very least, running CAT-6 into every room of
| your aforementioned apartment and terminating them somewhere
| sensible with a fiber/cable endpoint wouldn't cost _awfully_
| much and would make everything you did here notably easier.
| Even if it 's not used by a given tenant or owner, this stuff
| like any infrastructure is inherited by the next occupant.
| Since we got fiber internet, I've not touched a single coaxial
| line in my home, but when I sell it and move, that cable is
| still there, ready to be used by whomever buys it. Whether they
| will or not is obviously their decision to make, but at least
| this way the option is there. I see no reason why ethernet
| couldn't work similarly. Every house I've lived in has had a
| nest of coaxial cable lines in some corner of the basement or
| other utility area, and most have RJ-11 for phones too.
|
| I would also say that your last note: "a function of knowing
| what you're doing" does unintentionally I think really well at
| illustrating the problem. I do not have the slightest clue how
| plumbing works, but my home came designed from stock with
| working toilets and showers. I also have a fair bit of
| knowledge about electricity (enough to change outlets and
| switches anyway) but not enough to really build out circuits,
| and my home came designed from stock with appropriately placed
| (mostly) outlets ready to be used. My point being: people
| shouldn't _have to know_ how their infrastructure works, and I
| would argue while a new entry and one that could use some
| standardization, Internet absolutely belongs in that category.
|
| Additionally, you're using some pretty top-of-the-line consumer
| electronics there with Ubuquiti APs. I looked into those some
| years back and to replace my Google Wifi's that I had at the
| time would've cost me about $1,500, which, I can afford and did
| consider, but ultimately never pulled the trigger on and I
| wouldn't be upset in the slightest if Joe Consumer looked at
| that price tag and had fit, since bottom-shelf wireless routers
| on the market do the exact same thing (distribute internet OTA)
| for like, $70.
|
| Now, I don't use bottom shelf personally, I have a mesh network
| too but mine doesn't allow me to tweak the power of the
| transmitters nor really do traffic shaping or service
| prioritization. This is, in my mind, akin to someone saying
| "there's nothing wrong with the highway, I have a Ferrari and I
| can get to work in 10 minutes if the cops aren't in the way."
| No kidding. You've bought one of the best answers to the
| question at hand, but not everyone can have that. And this is
| made worse by the fact that there are absolutely _tons_ of shit
| quality routers built and sold every day that do a bad job of
| this task, and the only way to avoid that as a customer is
| knowing a decent amount about network administration so you
| know what to avoid.
|
| If a home fittings company made faucets that worked as badly as
| many routers out there do, they'd be sued into oblivion if not
| fined by the FTC for selling lemon products. I think we need
| more regulations on Internet-adjacent hardware so customers can
| have a baseline level of expectation that these things will
| function at the task they're built to accomplish to at least a
| certain level of reliability.
| bluGill wrote:
| There are companies making faucets as bad as that. Places
| like WalMart sell them for cheap ($30). However no builder or
| professional plumber will touch them - they know that
| spending $200 on a good faucet is worth it.
| fidotron wrote:
| My house was built in 1991 and consequently has a hilarious early
| 90s intercom wired throughout the house, with it being on the
| never ending TODO list to remove and replace with something
| reasonable. What is so curious is that even if you want to wire
| ethernet through the house (and I have to some extent) there
| aren't readily available decent things to shove on the wall that
| provide equivalent functionality which you can safely assume will
| not need replacing in five years. *
|
| The technology ecosystem just doesn't historically mesh well with
| the physical structure of homes at all. The whole success of Wifi
| is it allows us to be non committal about things. That we use it
| to connect TVs and doorbells to the network is really quite
| insane.
|
| I would like to see something in this space emerge and evolve,
| but it seems to be fundamentally incompatible with the VC backed
| tech industry at this point.
|
| * Guess what I'm trying to build.
| jaktet wrote:
| * well everything points to an intercom like system so is what
| you're trying to build not related to that l? (Since you said
| provide equivalent functionality)
|
| Maybe whole home audio with zones and voice communication?
| fidotron wrote:
| The wall units for doing that at least, only on digital
| infrastructure.
| bluGill wrote:
| Before someone says conduit in all the walls, that only works
| if the conduit comes out where you want something. Your
| intercom system probably terminates by each door at around
| waist level - which is unlikely to be where you want Ethernet
| cables to come out in the room - but perfect for an intercom.
| In the 90s people were starting to run phones to more rooms,
| but not to all rooms, at least those phone jacks would be in
| the right place. Likewise in the 90s people were running coax
| to more rooms - but a TV in every room was still seen as a sign
| of wealth and so most bedrooms wouldn't get it (the master
| would. though often that coax would be near the ceiling for
| watching in bed and thus not a great location for Ethernet.
| nostrademons wrote:
| It doesn't have to be perfect. If you had an opening by the
| baseboard on major walls, you could run through conduit to
| get to the right room, and then tack a cord along the
| baseboard and up corners of walls until you got to the right
| place, the same way most people wire their TV/media room
| right now. The main issue is running cords through doorways,
| which keeps them from closing and is a tripping hazard.
| People can live with cable ties as long as you get most of
| the run hidden.
| saalweachter wrote:
| Beyond that, if you have conduit running to different
| rooms, you can now treat those as _junction boxes_ instead
| of termination points. You can run the cable to the box
| easily, and then have ten feet of the old fashioned painful
| cable pull from the junction box to the point on the wall
| /ceiling you actually want to have a socket.
|
| Perfect, good, etc.
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| > coax would be near the ceiling
|
| I've been amazed watching contractors cut out a slice of
| drywall, make mods, and replace the drywall. In under an
| hour. But you need to paint afterwards.
| hughesjj wrote:
| I mean, we have zigbee/zwave/Lora/matter now, the wireless
| comms game is changing to allow low power low bandwidth devices
| ad not just super duper 'i'll run my data center comms over the
| medium of air' level wifi
| nostrademons wrote:
| Something I'd like to see: internal conduit with pull lines
| that you can use to thread any "wire-like" material through the
| walls. Need to run a long HDMI cable? Open access panel, pull
| out existing bundle, clip your cable to it, use pull line to
| bring it back through the house. Same for Ethernet. In-home
| fiber becomes cost-competitive? Replace your Ethernet lines
| with it. Same for any new technologies.
|
| We should also do this for city infrastructure, eg. have
| conduit runs under the street that are a public right-of-way,
| and then any new company that invents a new
| telecommunications/energy/etc technology can pay the city to
| run its lines through existing infrastructure instead of having
| to dig up streets or beg the electric company for space on
| poles.
| saalweachter wrote:
| Smurf tubes!
|
| https://www.lowes.com/pl/Electrical-non-metallic-tubing-
| ent-...
|
| You don't even need wire pulls, you can just push cat5
| through 3/4 ENT tubes and expect it to pop out the other
| side.
| hermitdev wrote:
| Smurf tubes are great, but plugs like on Cat5 or HDMI
| cables get easily hung up while pulling cables. The ones
| you link above look smoother than the ones I've had the
| (dis)pleasure of working with, which were ribbed, making
| snags frequent & annoying, especially at any sort of 90
| degree bend. It's still significantly easier (and safer)
| than blind runs through walls.
| soylentcola wrote:
| At least for cat5/6, wouldn't you be cutting and
| terminating once they're pulled? Never thought about
| pulling one of those with the connector on - for the
| reason you mentioned, but also just because you might not
| know how much cable you'll need until it's all finished.
|
| I'd imagine HDMI would be mostly shorter runs (or using
| cat5/6 extenders) due to the limits/requirements of the
| cable.
| madamelic wrote:
| Sounds like you have done this before... quick question: is
| it normal to run multiple conduits carrying the same type
| of cable parallel to each other? For instance, multiple
| conduits running up from the first floor to the attic where
| all the final runs are done.
|
| It seems like 2" smurf tubes are relatively rare (I can
| find them but seems like they aren't interested in selling
| them in 100 foot rolls) so 1" are more common. According to
| conduit guidelines, 1" conduit for 40% Cat6 is a measly 6
| cables while 2" is 22. So even at 2", I would still need 2
| - 3 two-inch conduit runs.
|
| Is this off-base or do people generally hunt down 2"+
| conduit?
| saalweachter wrote:
| I didn't have that situation (I was putting in Smurf
| tubes while insulating an old balloon-framed house, so I
| was mostly doing straight runs down the walls, with the
| occasional bend around a window, before filling up the
| airspaces), but if I did, I'd try to just build a void in
| to go all the way up to the attic. If you don't want to
| leave it bare wood, you could put in 4" PVC, with the T's
| at each floor, instead.
| gizmo686 wrote:
| Pretty much any data cable you see in homes can be made to run
| Ethernet at a decent rate with just an adapter at each end.
| Coax can easily carry data at Gigabit speed.
|
| Cat5e has been the standard for decades, and can run gigabit
| speeds as well.
| fidotron wrote:
| It is interesting how all of you jumped to the wiring and
| conduits as the problem, when the point I was trying to make
| (badly) was even if the wiring was there then there is a
| distinct lack of things on the market to connect to it which
| do anything useful.
|
| We have a chicken/egg situation for home networks where
| normal people only see them as useful in the wifi sense, so
| we fail to exploit the potential we could have if things were
| wired.
| sowbug wrote:
| Is there any value in preserving old phone lines these days? In
| my home I've kept vestigial coax runs because they're great for
| MoCA adapters, but I haven't been able to think of a reason to
| keep phone wires. So if I'm doing work on a room and they're in
| the way, I rip them out.
| petee wrote:
| Unless you still have copper service, probably not. It was nice
| when phones would still work during a blackout, now its limited
| by local battery
| gizmo686 wrote:
| You can run networking through phone lines similar to coax.
| teknopaul wrote:
| Can't imagine. Occasionally run networks over power cables but
| I've never seen gadgets to do something useful with old phone
| cables. People used to have intercoms on them cables, but
| everyone has a phone in their pocket these days
| jmull wrote:
| > brick, wood, drywall, plywood, concrete, metal, and acoustic
| ceiling tiles is usually cheaper than Wi-Fi-penetrating materials
|
| What are these alternative Wi-Fi-penetrating materials? And what
| trade offs do they have? (Cost is mentioned, but there many
| aspects other aspects to building materials besides cost and wi-
| fi penetration.)
|
| I'm thinking the author should start by not putting their wi-fi
| router behind a metal plate.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| Glass... But then the author remembered that those who live in
| glass houses...
| matthewaveryusa wrote:
| What we really need are architects that add chases throughout the
| house so that you can add any matter of cable you want, be that
| electrical, plumbing, cable, fiber or cat.
|
| I have a chase in the middle of my house which used to be a
| chimney for a now decommissioned oil burner. I have all matter of
| cables going through there now, including, but not limited to two
| cat cables that provide ethernet to my attic and second floor.
| Not sure I would have been able to DIY it without that chase.
|
| If each house had a couple of these chases that would provide a
| ton of flexibility in terms of remodeling.
| noja wrote:
| An architect will optimise for liveable space. Whoever pays
| them can choose less liveable space in exchange for a chase.
| Most normal house purchasers won't go for it.
| Retric wrote:
| A chase doesn't reduce living space, it may however
| compromise sound deadening between rooms.
| Vvector wrote:
| Does an 8" chase have that much effect on livable space?
| Would 2980 sqft vs 2979 sqft make any difference to most
| buyers?
| mlhpdx wrote:
| No, but it would add to build time and cost. And generally
| be one more thing to think about for the designer/builder
| and we know how that goes.
| somehnguy wrote:
| Why would you need to prioritize one over the other?
| Plumbing, electrical, etc already utilize the same spaces
| inside of walls and floors. No reason this couldn't be done
| the same way without cutting down the living area at all.
| Nevermark wrote:
| From a spacial perspective you are right, of course.
|
| Perhaps the tradeoff is that for any given house price, the
| time & money cost of planning and adding "hidden" features
| that buyers seldom think to prioritize, has to be offset by
| reductions in other value that buyers are more likely to
| notice. But, not necessarily space.
| mlhpdx wrote:
| I think most residential homes in the US aren't the work of
| architects these days, but designers. The difference being
| credentials, not diligence/skill.
|
| Either way I suspect they aren't optimizing for living space,
| but salability and construction cost. That's what buyers will
| actually use in decisions - ability to pay and perception of
| quality/value.
| mlhpdx wrote:
| Yep. This kind of forethought is rare in home design, but
| magical when present. It doesn't sell, though (not like the
| latest color or cabinets do).
|
| I put thought into long term maintenance and upgrades for my
| current house and for the first few years got nothing from it.
| As I've had to do repairs recently I've saved literally
| thousands of dollars because the wires, pipes, conduits and
| fittings are all easily accessible.
| guhidalg wrote:
| Similar thought with boats, you don't appreciate how valuable
| maintenance ease is until YOU have to do it.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| How does this work with IBC/IFC building code requirements to
| have a fire-stop between floors? Even assuming the conduit
| itself is correctly rated, you need to seal the interior while
| somehow still allowing future wiring to be added without the
| need to remove a wall.
|
| I guess my point is: You'll fail inspection unless you're
| extremely careful. It isn't obvious how to add generic future
| conduit without fire-stops being a huge PITA (since the same
| thing stopping smoke/fire also stops you running cable).
|
| Keep in mind new construction is held to a higher standard
| (newer version of IBC/IFC) than grandfathering into existing
| building.
| sokka_h2otribe wrote:
| Rockwool
| Someone1234 wrote:
| That won't pass inspection. Ignoring the fact that Rockwool
| isn't certified as a conduit fire-stop, you also cannot
| demonstrate its existence to a building inspector.
|
| This is a hard/annoying problem to solve, "shove some
| insulation in the pipe" isn't in the ballpark of what a
| solution might look like.
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| There are plenty of easy to use commercial products for fire
| rated, reworkable cable penetrations. Unfortunately they are
| rather expensive so you'll want to minimize usage. There's
| also foam and plaster products that meet latest codes but
| they're not as friendly to rework (chip them out and
| replace).
| matthewaveryusa wrote:
| I did what sokka mentioned. rockwool at both the top and
| bottom. The chimney is still present so there's a cast iron
| 4" pipe which is my conduit. When the previous owner
| decomissioned the oil tank they chopped the top and bottom of
| the chimney off and added caps at both ends and the roof was
| patched. All the cables go all the way through to the attic
| and I hit the second floor from the attic. Not sure it'll be
| to the liking of all inspectors but to me it's reasonable.
| em-bee wrote:
| absolutely.
|
| when we had an electrician dig new chases to completely rewire
| the electricity in my grandparents apartment in a century old
| building, i asked him to add an additional pipe everywhere so
| that i could wire ethernet as well. every room got at least one
| or two, some more. the key thing was that even though we didn't
| use most of those extra pipes, adding them barely cost more
| than the material, because the work to dig the chases didn't
| change.
| babypuncher wrote:
| At the very least there should be conduit between every room in
| the house and the utility closet. Wi-Fi is a miracle of modern
| engineering, but it will never truly be able to compete with
| the speed and reliability afforded by a hard copper or fiber
| optic interlink.
|
| Higher density housing can be extra frustrating. My single
| family home is in a community dense enough to require fireblock
| in the walls on upper floors, and it has made running my own
| ethernet an even bigger pain in the ass than usual.
| mattferderer wrote:
| I believe if you build with SIP (structured insulated panels)
| you get these built in often -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfvjvDlVzLs
|
| Saw an ICF house a decade ago where they did some thin channel
| mounted on the wall & they ran everything through there instead
| of cutting into the ICF. Can't remember how it worked with the
| dry wall.
|
| Would be nice to see interior walls built with such a thing.
| dbcurtis wrote:
| Yes, exactly this. Although, fire codes do create a requirement
| here. You have to be sure not to create places where fire can
| propagate. And please use plenum-rated cables (fire retardant
| sheath). If you have punched holes in your old chimney in order
| to pass cables in and out, I'd do a fire propagation audit and
| mitigate any problems that you find.
|
| 40 years ago, the U of Minnesota built a new Elec Engg
| building. As I remember it, every single office for faculty and
| grad students, as well as every lab, backed up to a secure
| 6-foot wide hallway that was built specifically to be a cable
| chase. Brilliant idea. Experimenting with a new technology was
| a matter of changing out the access plate in the back wall of
| the office, and rounding up someone with a key to the hallway.
| ska wrote:
| I've seen this done a couple of times, but somebody has to push
| for it.
|
| In standard suburban construction, this will never happen.
| These developers will cheap out to save $15 on a ventilation
| fan, they aren't going to run anything extra if people aren't
| demanding it.
|
| To a 1st approximation, nobody (in the buying public) knows or
| cares.
| rmckayfleming wrote:
| I just bought a house this year, the previous owners lived in it
| for about 2 years from brand new. Thankfully it has an ethernet
| drop to every room upstairs, and in reasonable places on the main
| floor. Far better than the situation at the last place I lived
| in.
|
| But annoyingly, it's all Cat5e! Sure, it's fine for gigabit, but
| now that I have proper networking equipment, I wish they'd have
| spent the extra few bucks and put in Cat6A or Cat7 so that I
| could get 10Gbps to my office from the rack in the basement...
| thfuran wrote:
| Cat5e is rated for higher than 1gbps for lengths you're likely
| to find in a home.
| pixl97 wrote:
| If they didn't screw up too bad installing it (which is not a
| given), you may be able to tie off a new cable to it and use
| the existing cable as a pull.
| vardump wrote:
| If one wants anything more than 2.5g ethernet, one should just
| install single mode fiber, nothing else.
|
| Running 10g+ on copper is expensive and consumes too much
| electricity.
| chankstein38 wrote:
| Does anyone else feel like 5G made this a lot worse? I used to
| get strong 4G LTE at my house but now that I have a phone capable
| of 5G and things around me have "upgraded" I can barely get a
| useable signal inside my house. Similarly, my local walmart is a
| deadzone now. Yay progress?
| kbar13 wrote:
| the overarching point behind the article hits but the specific
| example the author used is something i'm personally jealous of.
| ethernet going into every room? please i am stuck setting up
| runners along baseboards and drilling through concrete to run
| ethernet between floors...
| CapstanRoller wrote:
| Hasn't the USA collectively decided that houses are a luxury
| good?
|
| Forget "better internet" -- many of us can barely afford _any_
| shelter, much less one that we can 'own'
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| Shelter is a luxury good. There are millions of homeless people
| on the street, ignored while the talking heads claim the
| economy is "better than ever".
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| Cat 8 wiring, patch panels, and racks.
|
| My shittastic apartment has Cat 5 wiring to 4 plugs while I can
| get 5 Gbps internet I can't use.
| kabanossen wrote:
| What we really need is Ambient Connectivity. Check out Bob
| Frankston's (inventor of the spreadsheet) writings.
|
| https://rmf.vc/ambientconnectivity
| boilerupnc wrote:
| While the discussion has been on wiring and ethernet, I would
| argue making a digital twin scan for a new home construction
| before dry-wall goes up is one of the best small money
| investments I made for the ongoing upkeep of my home. No argument
| on all smart future proofing ideas for new construction
| (redundant wire drops, chase pull-wire pipes in 2-3 parts of the
| house, pre-wiring roof soffets for cameras, etc ...), but it has
| been priceless to be able to show service folks for big and small
| jobs ... an X-RAY of my home's studs, wiring and plumbing. I've
| been able to avert mistakes (protective plate for gas line
| sitting behind here), plan with the right assumptions (didn't
| realize there was a horizontal support board between those studs)
| and visualize possible remodel options (that exhaust duct could
| easily be re-routed to go out this wall instead). While digital
| twin scans are more and more common in commercial facility
| locations to document equipment for repair and insurance purposes
| - it's amazing to me that this still has not caught on with
| residential builders as a nice upsell option for trivial
| effort/cost. The digital twin should live with the deed and be
| handed over when the house changes owners. Every friend and
| service person I've shown it to - has commented - "wish I had
| that for my house".
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I would love to hear more about how you did this digital twin
| scan. Agree it should live with the deed along with a survey,
| makes life easier for everyone. Planting trees whose shade you
| may not sit in.
|
| (scholar of building sciences)
| zbrozek wrote:
| Please say more about what service you bought and what data
| product you got. I would be interested in doing the same.
| boilerupnc wrote:
| Replying to all 3 comments ... I considered a couple of
| options.
|
| Option 1: I chose this path. I used this company [0] for
| convenience. They were easy to get a quick quote and found a
| person local to my area (I'm located in the mid-Atlantic) to
| do the scan. For < 4000 sqf homes - it takes about 3 - 3.5
| hours to fully scan. Cost is dependent on size of area
| scanned and was in the 3 digit range. Post-pandemic, I
| suspect with a bit of hunting on gig websites, you can
| probably find local 3-d scanners who usually are hired by
| realtors for home-sale scans - but are equally willing to do
| other scan jobs as well. Many of them use Matterport
| equipment and from my small anecdote sample - scanning was a
| hobby which then got turbocharged into fun gig work by the
| realty virtual tour boom during the pandemic. They own the
| equipment ... and do scans for some side money.
|
| Option 2: Buy the scanner camera equipment and DIY.[1]
|
| At the end, I received a matterport model that was
| transferred to my free hosted account - limited to 1 model.
| While I have no need for more than 1, I did want to archive a
| backup of my model locally for safe-keeping. This project
| pointed me in the right direction [2]
|
| Closing thoughts. I love being able to travel back in time
| through a 3-d render of my home when it was still just the
| skeleton. There needs to be better ways to achieve archiving
| of the model - given its value in terms of cost to acquire
| and security. While I didn't appreciate it at the time, using
| the model for quick virtual measurements of areas within
| rooms has also been handy when looking at furniture and rugs.
| If I forgot to measure before going, I can pull it up on my
| laptop and get a quick ballpark measure within the house. I'm
| thinking of doing another scan after I'm fully settled in ...
| to easily capture and annotate my stuff for insurance
| purposes.
|
| [0] https://virtualspace.global/
|
| [1] https://matterport.com/
|
| [2] https://github.com/rebane2001/matterport-dl
| keehun wrote:
| Along with the other commenters, I'd be interested to know what
| you used. When I built my home, I took hundreds of photos of
| all wall and ceiling surfaces. I then later annotated those
| photo file names to the right places on the
| blueprint/schematics. Now I look up the photo file name from
| the schematic and pull up the right photo.
|
| I would love to be able to just "walk through" and look around
| in 3D my house before the insulation & drywall went up. I
| wouldn't want to pay for those 3D house tours that realtors are
| using now if I built another house and wanted to do something
| similar.
| HackeNewsFan234 wrote:
| For my house, I bought one of those 360 cameras, Rico Theta
| something, it is about 3 years old, and took pics through out
| the remodel. There is free software to set those up like a 3D
| house tour, although not as flashy. I did that a few
| different points in time, but having the pics annotated to be
| searchable by room name or "wiring" or "duct" is more
| helpful.
|
| The 360 camera was hugely helpful because I could take one
| picture of a room instead of 5-15. I could walk through 3K
| square feet and take pics of everything in about 15 minutes.
| sokoloff wrote:
| We did an analog tech version of that with a VHS camcorder on
| my parents' house.
|
| The only time we had to use it, we had both an inside and
| outside view that _just missed_ the one key place we were about
| to work on. :)
|
| It was good enough to still be helpful (we were able to guess
| based on the likely path of the NM-B ("Romex") in the spots we
| could see), but it was amusing how we missed the key spot by
| inches twice.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| >The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF)
| noted in a recent blog post that if the US were to focus a
| significant chunk of its efforts on creating a better digital
| infrastructure instead of "fixing" our physical infrastructure,
| it would result in "superior longer-term economic growth,
| competitiveness, national security, and environmental benefits."
|
| Presumptive industry lobby says to spend money on what they make
| money on.
|
| I don't like the phrasing that we need to make better wifi
| signals in a home "instead" of replacing lead pipes or repairing
| bridges.
|
| But yes, I wish homes were a bit more repairable, with chases as
| another commenter calls them. Currently in my apartment, I have
| an Ethernet cable running along 60ft of baseboard to wire my
| desktop to the router, with WiFi for the rest of the place.
|
| (This is the time of year where I think of my idea that fridges
| and freezers should be built to draw in outside air, for climates
| where ambient is cold enough for fridges without additional
| processing).
| puchatek wrote:
| Can someone explain the appeal of 1GB Internet?
| pixl97 wrote:
| Yes.
|
| Not having to think about the speed of your internet.
| bradley13 wrote:
| To set the stage: European houses are different from US houses.
| Smaller, also a lot more concrete, brick and rebar.
|
| With that in mind, when we built our house a few years ago, I
| went for a combination of wired and wireless. Heavy users, like
| the television and the PCs in the office have dedicated cables.
| But running cables everywhere just didn't make sense - so most
| devices are expected to live on the WLAN. Since WLAN doesn't
| penetrate between floors, there is a central plug on each floor
| for an access point (or mesh satellite).
| busterarm wrote:
| Housing developers are really bad at doing large scale low-
| voltage work.
|
| I used to work for an ISP here in the southeastern US and there
| were entire neighborhoods that had permanently shitty service
| because the housing developer decided to do the wiring on their
| own for the extra profits and did a terrible job of it.
|
| Then the individual communities never want to pay to have the
| work redone properly -- they think the ISP should eat the bill,
| even though we gave the developers the opportunity to do it right
| the first time. Doing hundreds of reworks of the last mile of
| service at once is expensive.
|
| Often we would come to some arrangement and heavily discount the
| wiring work down to like $30k from the community in exchange for
| exclusive contracts. The communities that wouldn't spend a dime
| were just permanently SOL.
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