Upgrade your home to 10Gb Ethernet. What switch, cabling and tools you need.

About 2 weeks ago I made the decision to add wired, 10GB, Ethernet into my home. I'm thrilled it's done because I hated doing it and I made loads of mistakes. The good news is I learnt lots along the way, and I'm here to save you from making any of those mistakes too!

Update 12.4.21: I’ve since gone back to the wall points and put new face plates on. I got a different brand and they went though the cat 6 and cat 6a cable without needing to strip the wires. In retrospect, I don’t recommend you strip the wires — just get better face plates!

Original description continues below:

Here are the sections:

0:00 Beginning
1:30 Why not Powerline?
2:00 Why 10GBe?
3:24 10GB switches
5:05 Cat 5e, 6 or 6a cable?
12:15 568A or 568B?
13:18 Cabling summary
13:50 Plugs and connectors
15:08 Tools for the job
15:52 Using a cable tester
18:03 Victory and annoyances
19:00 Summary/TL;DW

Kit I used (affiliate links so I might make 30p!):

RJ45 connectors:

Network kit with tester and crimping tool etc:

Fibre glass fishing rods:

# My video courses, including 'Ultimate Text Editing Productivity with Sublime Text':

[anthonyjhicks]

Thanks for sharing. I recently pulled Cat 6a throughout my three story house for network connections in each room, access points and security cameras. I did 20 runs to the basement ripping up floors, making holes in walls and pulling with fishing rods - before decorating and new flooring went in. You're right, it's a massive project and I saw more innards of my 1905 house than I wanted to see - but so worth it when it's done. Yes I could use mesh WiFi but with 80+ devices on WiFi and 40+ ethernet capable I really needed to make sure the critical stuff like desktops/office, video streaming and NAS were on Ethernet. Plus having POE to run acess points, cameras, IP phones and flex switches is great for reducing all those AC adaptors and needing extra power sockets in odd places. All Ubiquiti Unifi gear.

[macexpert]

Yes I also ran 1800ft of Cat6a throughout our house. It was a mayor pain to install. Next time I would only run Cat6A if it had to go parallel other power lines or sources of RF noice. Perhaps to feed a 2nd switch elsewhere in the house and then use Cat6 to do the final jump. But yes a good quality Ca6 ethernet with good connectors is ample.

[mugflub]

Hardwired ethernet is always my go-to. Wifi has gotten a lot better, but I will always opt for hardwired if I can.

[crashk]

If you want basically the same feature set in a switch, but with a better processor/switch fabric and it's a bit cheaper at the outset, all without trying to look like a weird art piece/stealth bomber... then the MikroTik CSS610-8G-2S+IN may serve you well. The 10Gb ports are SFP so you will have the expense of the SFP modules to go with either copper or fibre... but it's more flexible to reuse if you change your network around later. Even with SFP module costs, that makes it basically price parity with the nighthawk and your still getting better internal specs.

[AtanasPaunoff]

I bought couple of Cisco, HP and Brocade switches with 48x 10G SFP+ and 4x 40G QSFP... Cheapest one was about $140. Also I get HP DL360 G8 and DL380 G9, both of them with dual port 40G NIC to use them as routers... I have 2x 10Gbit + 1x 1Gbit from 3 seperate ISP... I use fiber at my home because it is cheaper than copper cables. I bought some Broadcom dual port 10G LAN cards for $30 each and put them in all PC at home... NAS server has 2 of these cards and each port are in different VLAN. Also i managet to buy some 3 meter 10G DAC cables for $5-6 each so no problem with interconnects :) 40G DAC cables 3 meter are also not expensive :)

[ivosarak]

Because of the cable run lengths I went to SM fiber and relatively quickly went from 1G to mixed 10G/40G set. The 40G portion is overkill, but capability is there and why not use it. All that gear is totally out of couple hundred budget one may like to spend on LAN.

[PoeLemic]

Awesome video. Really did a great job. Also, I had to listen to entire video, because I just love your accent, Mate. I'm across the pond and appreciate you taking time to help us Yankees.

[matthewself]

Which runs cooler? A switch with built-in 10GBASE-T RJ-45 jacks or one with SFP+ ports with 10GBASE-T adapters? I found that the adapters run unacceptably hot. Most of the low-cost switches have SFP+ ports, but there is the QNAP QSW-2104-2T-A, which has JJ-45s.

[stshot]

I ran cat 7 in my house a year or so ago, but that was just for a bit of future proofing so I don’t have to do it again anytime soon.

[DJaquithFL]

I live in Florida and there's not snowball's chance that I'm crawling up my attic space when it's 130° up there. However, it's important that you're knowledgeable if hiring somebody or as a DiYer.

Regarding cabling, you need to be observant at least a few things: Distance, Environment e.g. CMR (exterior, water, plenum, etc rated) and e.g. shielding proximity to electronic interference. Make certain only to use solid copper and never strands.

Regarding switches and routers, If you're concerned about latency, then there's a difference between a cheap unmanaged switch and a more high quality managed switch. I'm a gamer so I'm all about QoS. My prosumer hardware choice is Ubiquiti and on the cheaper more budget restricted TP-Link.

Regarding the RJ45 pass through connectors, in a word oxidation corrosion and I understand DiY'ers preference to them. However, one place to never use them is if you have exterior cameras. I've heard all sorts of different ways to seal it .. don't. Eventually you'll risk not only a degraded signal and reduced speed, but lost and corrupted connections. You have to match your connector to the type of wire, so if you're running CAT-6A or better (or ideally CAT-6) then shielded connectors.

Regarding Tools, I think it's more important that you have a quality check line testing device e.g. Klein Tools VDV501-851. In addition to the fishing fiberglass rods I'd probably look at a longer retractable fish tape as well. I'd say the biggest trick in a home if you're in an attic space especially, is to find a small but sturdy straight wire e.g. metal marking flag poles that you can push through the corner of the ceiling and wall; it's an interesting trick that I've seen used.

In wall connectors, I personally don't recommend the "fixed" punch down as shown. Instead the Keystone Couplers / Jacks.

While my current house is primarily CAT-6A data / CAT-6 PoE cameras, if I were to move and build, everything would be fiber.

[Daemon_Wraith]

**Surreptitiously looks at his CAT 8 cabling** 👀

[AceBoy]

The difference in your cables may be riser vs plenum cable. I bought 6a riser cable that is thick but inside is like your "cat 6" cable.

[junetismail]

hi mate for your cat 6 have you had run it near electric cables and what type of shielding did you go for.. UTP, FTP, or SFTP. I might have to run a cable under the floorboards where it would be close to electric wiring, will utp be enough, or do I need shielded cable

[TheUKDude_]

Its now cheaper to go with LC to LC premade Fibre cables than it is for CAT Cables, plus going with Fibre runs will last you longer than using CAT Cables.

[steven]

One more thing. Cat7 is as cheap as cat 6A and has more shielding and a higher megahertz throughput... 700 megahertz

[dearheart]

I wonder if a baby can get a cat6a cable through a cavity in the wall, without getting its arm stuck?

[wotarush]

Sorry bit late to the party, if I run 2 cat66 cables down a wall, can you run together or do they need to be 100mm apart, what about ELECTRO MAGNETIC INTERFERENCE???, GREAT VIDEO BY THE WAY

[majorgear]

Do fiberglass rods bend at all? I recently replace a coax cable with ethernet, and the only tool that could travel the necessary path was a borescope ( snake with camera and led light at the end ). What I ended up doing was taping a small magnet to the end of the ethernet cable and feeding up through a hole drilled in the floor for the coax, then attach a piece of metal to the borescope and snake it down through a whole in the wall box, make the connection, and pull the cable up.

I tried a lot of different things before that, but that is what finally worked. I was going from my basement “server room” to a wall box in my living room.

[ApplicableProgramming]

Hey Ben, thanks for the video. I like your videos, and general vibe/mindset/interests, the resonate with what I am doing (software dev + tinkering with hardware + keyboards + ... ). Tell you ride a motorcycle and like photography, and we instantly become besties :D

[dearheart]

I am still looking for the house with double floor and patch panels.