New Build - CAT6 Wiring

Markr123

With distances like that externally, you’ll definitely be wanting to look at fibre. This is especially true to avoid potential earth loops between buildings if the electric supply is separated. Fibre is surprisingly cost effective now. I used it between the house and the garage.
In the house I have x3 24 port switches each with SFP ports. I have another switch in the garage also with SFP. I laid x2 fibre connections in strong corrugated pond hose buried in the garden. I then used LAG to bond the 2 fibre lines. Works flawlessly plus I have redundancy if one were to fail. Too short for your run I think but I used x2 50m lengths of these... https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07MLDDVS4/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_tai_x1.BDb0C3E4T1

Supports 10Gbit too if ever needed although I can’t see a time in the near future where I will ever need that. My cctv cameras aren’t even close to saturating 100Mbit.

mickevh

I agree - I would not run 10G ethernet over copper at any significant distance beyond (say) hook ups in a comms rack. For me, for 10G at distance it would be fiber every day. And of course, fiber also pretty much negates any electrical interference issues as well as the earth lift/loop mitigation Mark mentions.

Puntoboy

The house and garage are on the same power supply. Consumer unit is in the house and a SWA cable runs out to the garage.

I don't mind the idea of fibre, I need to buy new switches for 10G anyway as mine, although they have SFP ports, they are only 1G. Is it really better than a couple of 75-100m CAT6a cables though? The external part of the run is only about 25m down the side of the house then under the garden.

Kristian

It depends on how well you can terminate you Cat6A and what switches you intend you run at both ends.  Will the switches be copper RJ45 or SFP (either copper or fibre).  A quick look on cablemonkey (https://www.cablemonkey.co.uk/custom-fibre-pre-terms/13073-armoured-pre-terminated-fibre-cable.html) shows you can get a pre-terminated cable (100m, 4 core, OM3 or 4, LC connector) for about £220 normal and £310 CST armoured.  Obviously there are other places so it may be found cheaper.

Downsides for fibre are that it's fragile, can't take DIY repair and more expensive.  It could be reused for 40Gb  in the future though.

Cat6 is more difficult to terminate than Cat5E, and Cat6A even more so.

HTH.

Puntoboy

I put CAT6 in the current house so that's not a problem. I've also working with CAT6a in my job so again, not a problem. Like I said I need to upgrade the switches so I will buy two that are suitable.

Markr123

Re the power supply, the key point of concern as I understand it is how the 2 buildings are earthed. I for example have a similar setup although I have a consumer unit in the garage too fed from the house. Aside from this, I noticed a separate ground rod for the garage. IF there was an electric fault, the RCDs MCBs in the consumer units would do their job and isolate the supply. If however, a separate copper cable (in this case a network cable) also formed a physical link, then this introduces a  (albeit unusual) potential path for current to flow. Sounds a little far fetched I know but it wasn’t a risk I ever wanted to take hence fibre.

Re 10Gb. It’s your money of course, but have you validated the NEEED for 10Gb networking and switches in the home or is it nice to have? It’s still mighty expensive and updating only the switches will only yield a connection between them. Example. PC / media box in the house. NAS in the garage. 1Gb card in the PC, 10Gb link to the garage, 1Gb NIC in the NAS. There is no gain there. Sorry if teaching you to suck eggs.

Edit. Apologies, I now see you do this for a living.

Kristian

I missed that bit

Puntoboy

whilst I don't work with structured cabling on a daily basis (hence my questions) I do have some experience with it.

There is no earth spike for the garage, it is earthed back through the SWA cable to the consumer unit to the house.

As you saw, I work in IT and have some equipment in the garage as well as the house, part of that are two storage servers which replicate to each other. They are hitting the 1GB bottleneck (so I know it's not the disks) hence the need for 10GB. I am planning on upgrading their NICs to 10Gbe. I use one of them for streaming and having multiple streams as well as replication is saturating that link. I currently have 4 port LACP configured for the one in the house but even that's starting to struggle so it's likely it won't be long until I need to upgrade. Cost is why I thought about CAT6a rather than fibre.

psychopomp1

Does your new build have wafer thin walls? If it does (like mine does), then multiple routers/APs for wifi coverage in a new build is waaaaaaaay overkill for a small/medium sized new build. A single decent spec router - out in the open - connected to the Openreach ONT will easily cover your full home with wifi. My home isn't that old (4 bedroom deatched) and like you, I have Openreach FTTP (330/30). However my Linksys router easily covers the full house with wifi, with all clients getting > 250 Mbps over 802.11ac wifi. Since the wifi signal  reaches every nook & cranny in the home, everything runs over wifi - even our 2 VOIP lines. My desktop gets real world speeds of around 1 Gb/s in file transfers over wifi, as I've installed a 4x4 wifi card on it with link rates of 2.1 Gb/s. If you're home is perfect for wifi (eg with wafer thin walls/floors) then make use of it

Markr123

@Puntoboy ok, yep, sounds like you are not too far away. My setup is not too far from yours minus the data flow! I have all my servers in a rack in the house. The rack in the detached garage houses a switch for Ubiquiti AP, Synology, IP cameras amongst other things so duties are much lighter.

Maybe of help. My fibre install costs between house and garage were...
Fibre cables (See earlier post for link) 2x 50m pre-terminated £82 delivered. 82p/mSFP Transceivers x4 was £60x30m of 1 inch pond hose £32 eBayx2 external waterproof electrical box B&Q ~£12x50m nylon brick line for draw string to get fibre through pond hose £5 screwfix.x1 days work - have fun getting the draw string let alone cable through -30m of corrugated pipe  Top tip involves a vacuum cleaner, a lot of patience and perseverance!! Threading cable through the house is the easy bit.By comparison, Comms Express Cat6 UTP 305m I use through the rest of the house was £82.64 delivered or 27p/m. Fibre is more (especially when needing SFP transceivers) but I had no real experience using it prior and was good opportunity to learn. I now have x2 10Gb capable connections with minimal risk of interference.

Hope this helps.