Running Ethernet cables through walls

[theholydemon]

I’ve found a cozy spot in my room where I can place hardware such as routers, switches, NAS, etc. But I’d need to run Ethernet cables to it from a different place in the room. I could run them over the wall using those tiny wire holders or by concealing them in a wire cover, but I noticed that both spots have electrical conduit covers next to them.

I’m wondering if I can thread the cables through the conduit instead of running ugly wires across the walls. I don’t even know if the covers connect, but I’m also concerned about safety.

Is this a thing people do? If not, why? If yes, what should I consider before attempting it?

 

[ch@ts]

I've got my ethernet cables in the walls. It's the best way to go. If you're doing up your house you should get a separate conduit for the LAN cables, but it's not necessary.
You need to call an electrician and see if there's space in your conduits to pull a wire through.

 

[nitin_g3]

Electricians follow a code where they don't put high voltage and low voltage wires together in the same conduit pipe. It's good to follow but it's not mandatory given that the better shielded ethernet cables have become over the time, so there is no or very minimum interference.

I just got my house constructed so I had a choice hence went with separate pipe for ethernet cables. But if the house is old, I'd say it's fine to use the same conduit. Just make sure to get better quality cable.

 

[skoka123]

This is the single biggest mistake I made when I was getting my house constructed in 2006. It was a time when the technology was not fully evolved. My major needs were good internet and media consumption. In 2006 we were still dependent on cable TV. Hence, I ran all types of cables inside the walls for DTH, IPTV, Telephone (DSL), etc. Apart from this, I also ran the CAT 5 cables through the 3 floors of my house. Come 2024, none of these cables are in use anymore. My landline runs on fiber cable from Airtel. My CAT 5 cable was the bottleneck for my internet speed. IPTV never picked up. Cable TV / DTH is now replaced with OTT. Basically, all the cabling was a wasted investment.

Replacing the Cables with new cables is no joke. After 10 years the cables become so hard that they cannot be pulled out of the conduits.

 

[Navier]

Correct me if i am wrong, but nowadays apart from electrical stuff, we only need conduits for following when constructing new house -

• Coaxial cable (from roof dish to stb).
• Optical fiber cable (from outside to your server room where ONU is located).
• CAT 6 cable (from server room to entire house including access point, pa system, ip cameras, etc).
• Maybe some optical fiber between floors for future compatibility.

 

[BullettuPaandi]

Just make sure to get better quality cable.

This and dimensions of the cable head, diameter of the conduit and number of L-turns. I remember overlooking these:

I tried running an ether-net cable first; but didn't think about how stubby the connector housing is for the conduit, which is only <3cm wide diagonally. Tried looking for slim/flat cables; but they all seemed to have longer housing, which I don't think would've made it past L-turns.

... but that's to be expected from someone who doesn't know the difference between diagonal & diameter in the first place.

You need to call an electrician

I don't know if this is true everywhere else, but where I'm from, such simple jobs are likely dismissed; can't charge enough for the time it might/could take. Only if there's a bunch of such simple jobs, they'll visit; be it electricians, plumbers, etc.

 

[theholydemon]

Thanks for the advice, guys. I didn’t want to mess with something I don’t know much about, so this is giving me some confidence.

You need to call an electrician and see if there's space in your conduits to pull a wire through.

I might just to install extra wall sockets for the hardware. Running cables is one thing, screwing around with electricity is another. I doubt he’d help me with the Ethernet cables and RJ45 connectors, though.

I just got my house constructed so I had a choice hence went with separate pipe for ethernet cables.

Boy do I have dreams for when I build a house.

After 10 years the cables become so hard that they cannot be pulled out of the conduits.

I hadn’t thought of cables hardening. We’re in a rented house, so I’ll eventually have to pull the cables out. I’ll worry about that when I get to it, but good to keep in mind. Also good to remember not to pre-install Ethernet cables while building a house, since they can become outdated like you said. Maybe better to have dedicated conduits instead.

Correct me if i am wrong, but nowadays apart from electrical stuff, we only need conduits for following when constructing new house -

I genuinely did not know about conduits until an electrician used one to install a new socket and a light bulb went off in my head. If I can get the hang of it, it opens a whole new world for me, quite literally.

I don't know if this is true everywhere else, but where I'm from, such simple jobs are likely dismissed; can't charge enough for the time it might/could take.

India. I know this is the case in the west, but I recently had a technician come to my house from over ten kilometers away in traffic just to flip an MCB. I didn’t know he lived so far away so I paid him a bit extra just out of sheer embarrassment. This should tell you that a) I know nothing about electricity and b) a lot of people in India are in such a bad state that they’ll earn every buck that they can.

 

[burntwingzZz]

If you are going /nas server route just maintain router/switch near them connect them using copper .if you have a house spread across multiple floors deploy one more switch/router between them and pull two cat 7 cable and create an etherchannel/link aggregation and for last mile use wifi .

So whenever wifi 6e ,7 becomes mainstream just keep on changing your end wifi device router /switch.similarly your node will keep on upgrading .An the Cat 7 cable will maintain a solid 20 Gigabit backbone between seperate location of the house.

investing in multiple cables on multiple electrical outlests is expensive . just lay cat 7 backbone cable to your liking and buy/upgrade your end wifi devices you will have solid and reliable connectivity

 

[theholydemon]

Yeah, my plan is something similar. I bought some Deco routers for a mesh WiFi network, but the main router would benefit from an Ethernet link which is why I’m thinking of how to lay the cables. I also prefer Ethernet for my desktop PC which is not where the main router is, so I will have to run another cable back to it.

Apart from this I don’t see the need to run any further cables. We don’t have any other power users in the house so the mesh WiFi nodes, one of which is already WiFi 6, should be enough.

NAS is a future plan, but I want to make sure I can maintain a stable network before I make that kind of investment. I already have a pihole and a laptop with home assistant which I’ll put next to the main router. If all this works well, then I’m ready for a NAS.

Thanks for the advice.

The only thing I’m unclear on is how to fish the cable through the conduits. I guess I’ll buy some spring wire and experiment.

 

[burntwingzZz]

some times chinese and substandard cables are the answer . laying the ethernet cable was a very late thought during my house built up .the standard conduits had been already laid so i couldn't go for heavy/sturdy cables. i bought cables with very thin spline ,thin outer jacket

 

[elan]

The only thing I’m unclear on is how to fish the cable through the conduits. I guess I’ll buy some spring wire and experiment.

Use fish tape wire pulller. But if there are to many bend in the conduit it may be tricky to use it. Another approach which i have seen electrician do are, they tape 2 cables to one of the existing cable in the conduit and pull the existing cable all the way to the other end until you have those 2 new cable coming out of the end of the conduit you are pulling from. While this is done at either end of the switch board, light cut out from false ceiling or junction boxes, you can do this for the ethernet cable as well. Just check whether you can pull the existing cable without excessive force. You might need to exert bit of force for first couple of times as it might be going through bends and it take some force to pull the cable if its going through lot of bends. Once you feel you can easily pull the cable then you wire tape the cable generously with new ones as i mentioned above.

 

[SagnikPradhan]

Appreciate the thread, I had been thinking of running new cables. But the thought of having external conduits or having to break the wall seemed super expensive and ugly. I might give my electrician a call sometime in the upcoming weeks and ask him about passing new cables through the existing conduits.

It’d have been nice if Ethernet over coax would have been cheap, we have coax running all around the house weirdly. Will keep you guys posted!

 

[elan]

Appreciate the thread, I had been thinking of running new cables. But the thought of having external conduits or having to break the wall seemed super expensive and ugly. I might give my electrician a call sometime in the upcoming weeks and ask him about passing new cables through the existing conduits.

It’d have been nice if Ethernet over coax would have been cheap, we have coax running all around the house weirdly. Will keep you guys posted!

As long as the electricians is able to figure how they are running through the wall and is able to pull one of the cable then its just matter of replacing them with good ethernet cable. I just had renovation done at my flat and ran ethernet across all rooms. I paid 30-35/mtr for Dlink Cat 6 cable. Electrician will charge you separately per meter of the total cable lay length.

 

[theholydemon]

Couldn’t find a trustworthy electrician so I had to resort to an ivory wire cover running across the wall. My problem was that the endpoints I was hoping to connect did not look like they might have a conduit connecting them based on how they were lined up. So I didn’t want to go through the discovery process with spring cables only to find out that they don’t even connect. Seemed like a waste of effort. But would’ve been a cool project, though!

 

[Aravindh]

Couldn’t find a trustworthy electrician so I had to resort to an ivory wire cover running across the wall. My problem was that the endpoints I was hoping to connect did not look like they might have a conduit connecting them based on how they were lined up. So I didn’t want to go through the discovery process with spring cables only to find out that they don’t even connect. Seemed like a waste of effort. But would’ve been a cool project, though!

You can try to use powerline adapters. Powerline adapters turn the electrical wiring of a home into network cables and transmit signals to needed areas(can be wired or wireless). You will be needing two or more adapters for this setup. Personally have not tried, but worth the shot incase of desperate needs.

https://www.tp-link.com/us/powerline/

 

[eTernity2021]

This is the single biggest mistake I made when I was getting my house constructed in 2006. It was a time when the technology was not fully evolved. My major needs were good internet and media consumption. In 2006 we were still dependent on cable TV. Hence, I ran all types of cables inside the walls for DTH, IPTV, Telephone (DSL), etc. Apart from this, I also ran the CAT 5 cables through the 3 floors of my house. Come 2024, none of these cables are in use anymore. My landline runs on fiber cable from Airtel. My CAT 5 cable was the bottleneck for my internet speed. IPTV never picked up. Cable TV / DTH is now replaced with OTT. Basically, all the cabling was a wasted investment.

Replacing the Cables with new cables is no joke. After 10 years the cables become so hard that they cannot be pulled out of the conduits.

Practical issues, worthy input, so we would not require anymore eThernet cables running through walls, isnt it?? given WIFI 6s and more versions to come, ethernet cable allotment is expensive and no use at all

 

[skoka123]

Practical issues, worthy input, so we would not require anymore eThernet cables running through walls, isnt it?? given WIFI 6s and more versions to come, ethernet cable allotment is expensive and no use at all

I wouldn't say that. Soon we might have to worry about wifi interference. If you want to go for wiring ensure that you have enough junction boxes through which cables can be pulled out easily. Ensure that the conduits are large enough to push and pull the cables through.

 

[swiftwind]

if it is a possibility you may try drilling holes on the external walls and run PVC pipes on the wall on the outside. this way you may be able to reach most of the rooms. You can use square pvc trunking conduits which will not look aesthetically bad. This is what i ended up doing when my cat cable became bad where i was unable to pull them out & add IP CCTV cameras.