Wiring for an IP Home

When my wife and I began to plan our new home 3 years ago, I was determined to wire it for everything under the sun. Heading up a company that was leading the custom electronics market into the next era of technology and applications, put a significant self-imposed burden on me. Mostly because I felt that instead of keeping up with the Jetsons, it was my responsibility to ‘be’ the Jetsons.

When I started the research process, my head was filled with questions, and for awhile it seemed that the more I researched, the more questions I would generate. What cables, standards and technologies would I use in our new IP home – Coax, CAT5e, fiber, Ethernet, wireless or power line technology? And what connections would I use for my displays – HDMI, DVI, Component or other? What format would I use for streaming audio around the home – MP-3, AAC, WMA, or WAV? Whose products would I use to compliment NetStreams’ multi-room audio/video/control products, for things like lighting, cameras, thermostats, theater products, etc…? I did know one thing, and that was that I did not want to narrow down product decisions three years before our home was to be completed because of the extremely fast pace of which technology and products change in our market. I did not want to wire my home exclusively or specific to any manufacturer’s products, because I wanted our infrastructure to address the many products available at the time my home was completed in the future, and the many products coming in the future beyond that point in time. These decisions would involve a lot of research because many of these standards were still under development or just coming to the market, and were unproven.

Months later I reached my conclusion and decision, and almost three years later, it has proven to have been the right one. What I determined after the many months of research was that there was no ‘one single standard’ that would address all of my needs. Here is what I learned:

The CEA 802.3 standard (Ethernet) is the most widely used standard, internationally, for both residential and commercial computer networks, control and now audio and video distribution. CAT5e is the most widely used cable for computer networks, control, telephone, professional video distribution, and more. I learned that this 20+ year old standard is solid and provides us with the right infrastructure for current and future products. The CEA 802.3 standard suggests “home runs” from each outlet. A “home run” is a direct run of cable from the “head-end” location (the location where telephone, cable/satellite and home network cables are originated inside the home) to one or more locations in each room. Using this standard would allow me to later choose from the myriad of products and technologies available for distribution of our video, while also providing us with the cables needed for our home network and telephone needs, in each room.

OK, one decision made…. CAT5e everywhere.

Much like electricity is distributed from a central panel(s) to locations around the home, and the electricity is fed to these panels from the meter box, where the power company connects their services to, telephone, home network, cable, and satellite service providers connect to boxes outside of your home known as ‘demarcation points’ and their services are then extended to the panels where they are distributed around your home. This wiring infrastructure is called “structured wring”.

The most widely used cable for structured wiring is called a “2x2 ”, which is a bundled cable with four cables inside; two RG-6 (coax) cables used for cable/satellite television or analog camera distribution, and two CAT5e cables, used for telephone, home network, video distribution and more. The standard for structured wiring cable is the TIA/EIA 568. Although this standard covers a good portion of my infrastructure needs, I learned that implementing only this standard would not be enough, because this standard did not address the needs of our lighting control system, our multi-room audio and video system, our home control system, our security system, our IP cameras, our thermostats, or home theater. It is mostly designed for distributing home network, cable/satellite television and telephone. However, if I want to distribute high definition television signals from a central location to all of our rooms, or want to centralize my three satellite boxes so that I don’t have to add a box per television set in our home, which in our case is 8-10 TVs, traditional structured wiring solutions can’t help me. This typical requires a professionally designed system and a video matrix switch.

So that I don’t turn this blog post into a book, I’ll now summarize what I did for my wiring. Because I believe that in the future most products will be IP-based or IP-controlled, I made sure to run CAT 5e almost everywhere that I anticipated installing a product or system.

Audio Distribution: For our multi-room audio needs, I chose to use the CEA 2030 standard, as I found this to be the most flexible and best standard. This standard requires a CAT5e cable plus a 4-conductor cable (#16 or #14 gauge wires) from the head-end audio/video location to each keypad, then looped up to the speakers. This can be accomplished with two separate cables or a Siamese cable that is a cable that offers both the CAT5e and 4-conductors in one jacket, making it easier and cheaper to install. I found that other standards address the distribution of analog audio or digital audio, but not both; and I found no other standard that addressed the requirements of an IP-Based audio distribution system. The CEA2030 addresses the needs of analog, digital and IP-Based audio distribution systems. Because my company is involved in the development of technology for IP speakers, I knew that having a CAT5e available at the speaker for network connectivity, along with the 4-conductors for power was critical.

Video Distribution: Because I wanted to distribute high definition video signals around my home from centrally-located satellite boxes, so we can access and view content from any video source, (including our TIVO), from any room in the home, I found that we could not use the typical coax distribution in my GE Security structured wiring panel. Structured wiring panels typically use traditional radio frequency (RF) amplifiers and splitters for its video distribution. These do not distribute high definition signals from the new HD sources such as BluRay or HD-DVD, nor do they distribute Dolby Digital, DTS, or other similar audio effects. However we still ran 2x2 cables from the structured wiring panel to each TV location in the home, and in addition ran CAT5e cables from each location to my equipment rack. This CAT5e would be later connected to a NetStreams Panorama video distribution system for distribution of our standard and high definition video signals from our satellite boxes and our centralized BluRay player around the home. More on this product line on a future post.

Telephone / Computer Network: This one was the simplest of all of the wiring standards to implement. Since a 2x2 cable contains two CAT5e cables, by running a 2x2 home run to each location that I wanted Ethernet and/or telephone, I was able to achieve both. And in locations where I did not need telephone, I could assign the two CAT5e to our home network.

Lighting Control: Wiring for lighting control was a little different because it forced me to decide, in advance, on the type of lighting system that I was going to use and the manufacturer. The reason for this is that lighting devices fall into two general categories: a) dimmer/relay switches that are installed at the traditional switch location and then networked through CAT5e, RF (wireless), or power lines, and b) dimmer/relay modules that are installed in one or more central locations somewhere in the home. Each of these methods has its own requirements, costs, and benefits. After weighting all of these heavily and looking at many different products, I decided to use the Lutron HomeWorks products. This system required us to run a shielded CAT5e cable from each keypad location back to multiple panels that would house our Lutron dimmer and relay modules and processors. The shielded cable can be Class II (CL-2) in-wall rated cable, but Class III (CL-3) burial grade – is recommended. These cables are comprised of a pair of 18 gauge wires for power and pair of 22 gauge shielded wires with a drain ground for communications.

Other: The above wiring schemes covered the majority of the needs of our IP home, but there were other subsystems and products to think about and each of these carried its own wiring needs: Security system, Intercom, Cameras, Thermostats, Drapes/shades, Pool controls, Garage door openers, Irrigation system, Outdoor lighting and more. If you are integrating these products with your whole house control system, the wiring requirements are different than when these systems are installed ‘stand-alone’.

If my blog has been helpful to you in any way, please drop me a note. I would love to hear from you and learn what other parts of my ‘building an IP home’ experience would be helpful to you: info@netstreams.com.