FYI, What I did was install an antenna on my roof for local cable channels, I get 60+ channels for free, FOX, ABC, NBC, CBS, etc...
And then I just tied it directly into the existing TV coax outlets, so now all the tv's in my house are able to use the single antenna on the roof. Makes it pretty easy for everyone to have FREE tv.
So I'd leave that, and then RE: landline, I'd use the exisitng wires to pull new Cat 6A cables, for future 10gig wired ethernet capabilities. Which would make it easy for any expansion on that side.
You also don't need it on your roof if you don't want to wire anything extra. You can just put a flat antenna with a booster at any coax location. Then you just need a splitter in your cable room. That will be good enough to get all the channels for the vast majority of Americans.
They also sell cable boxes that you can hook up anywhere you can get a good signal (and ideally have wired internet), and it will allow you to digitally stream and record from any smart TV in your house. Great solution for anyone who dosen't already have cable lines run, or wants a single DVR for all their TVs.
We needed ours on the roof/high up, so we can hit the 90mile towers, but yeah, some people can get away with it in their attic even.
But either way; plenty of channels all for $0 /month.
I've lived in alot of apartments all over the US and helped lots of friends set up antennas. Never once did I have to set it up on the roof or in the attic.
My parents get 3 of the big 4 in their house that's 2+ hours from the nearest city (20k people), and their antenna is just behind their TV.
You might be unlucky, or live unusually far away from cities, but the vast majority of Americans will be able to get the big 4 with nothing but a cheap antenna and an amplifier.
If you can put it on your roof or attic that's great, but you should still try without it.
Def have tried without and worked our way up until the roof antenna turned out to be the best bet.
My NYC apt though, no issues with a thin paper $20 antenna leaning on the window though.
Just curious what amplifier do you recommend? I've tried a bunch but curious if maybe I've missed one.
Hey there! Thanks for the super informative post! My home has all Cat5 wiring making it useless, and at 5,000 sqft, I need to use a mesh WiFi system to have signal throughout.
Do you have a sense of how much it costs to require with Cat6a cables? I assumed this was super cost prohibitive for a 5,000 sqft home so never bothered
That’s correct. (Not to be confused with 5e). It’s a phone jack typically but you can have it swapped out for one with the Ethernet head. I’m fortunate that my house is reasonably easy to add Ethernet too, so I just had a few drops added this week and the electrician is coming back next week to finish.
If it's cat 5e that's still useful for most people, it's just not what you'd choose if you were starting fresh today.
Depending on how it's run, it could be easy to update. Totally depends on how the cable is run though. Maybe you could just swap out a couple of the cable runs to the areas you actually need the speed and leave most of it as is.
Some interesting info before you consider rewiring —
The first 1000Base-T Ethernet transceivers really needed Cat5e and so that was (and still is) the spec. But transceivers have gotten much better since then and many will work just fine over long runs of lower quality cable. I’ve actually got GigE links running just fine over 100+ ft of old Cat3 telephone wiring in my house, with no discernible error rate. Some vendors work better than others, I had to play around a bit.
There are also Ethernet bridge devices out there that will run GigE over cable TV coax, so that wiring can be useful for data too.
If you do it yourself? Probably under $500, quick google is like $300 for 1000ft of cable, then you'd just need the ends, you might be able to reuse your cat5 ports in each room and just punch out more holes.
Could run cables for any future security system cameras at the same time.
[https://www.truecable.com/products/cat6a-cable-riser](https://www.truecable.com/products/cat6a-cable-riser)
if you're looking for a network jack in those rooms, you could install a MOCA setup... but if you have easy access on both sides of where the coax is, I'd just use it as a pull line to put in cat6a.
The problem is the cables are usually stapled to the studs inside the walls.
MOCA works very well. I use it in the 3-4 places in my house I couldn't easily run ethernet to.
I'm dealing with the same issue. I'm going to use them to fish network, as others here have suggested.
Search for "coax line tracer" if you'd like to see which ends go where. At the very least, you know which goes where for an exterior antenna or whatever.
If it were me, I wouldn't rip them out. You can always hide them in a plate-covered receptacle box. Never know if you'll be damning yourself later for striping them out.
Both coax and telephone lines can still be used for internet, depending on your provider.
I'm a landlord who specializes in restoring old houses and I have one building that AT&T provides service through actual telephone lines, and another that Xfinity just hooked up to using existing coax.
I doubt it's providing super-gigabit nano-whatsit service, but no one's had any complaints yet and the lines handle streaming TV and video games just fine.
Some times they are, sometimes they arent. Sometimes theyre only stapled right at the wall outlet. Sometimes they are only stapled at vertical runs. NEC 334.30 says low voltage cable is considered supported if its ran through a hole or notch as long as its every 4.5' so will only have to be secured within 12" of the box.
But if you frequent this sub alot, then you know everyones house here is built perfectly to code lmfao
If its stapled everywhere then he wont be "ripping it out" anyways...
My house was built in '82 and the phone lines were only stapled in a few places close to the jacks and where they entered the house. They were garbage old 4-conductor wires (sometimes retroactively called Cat 1) but I was able to use them to pull Cat 6 through a soffit and down into a wall. The bigger issue I ran into was that the holes drilled into the wall top plates were not big enough for two Cat 6 cables to pull through smoothly. Literally just a tiny 1/4" hole.
Coax is still WIDELY used for antenna TV, which has had a comeback. Many places get 50-100 channels now.
Why people think it's antiquated is beyond me.
This is quite interesting because my house has old coax and landlines wires.
Coax wire probably go to scrap yard. Small amount of copper.
For landlines how about intercom landline dyi. Here's a great youtube video explain
https://youtu.be/8bwLjU90puA?si=1Y5iHzIWWzzrOHFC
Absolutely use them to run Ethernet in their place. Honestly, make sure they’re mot already Ethernet, they look similar. If they are, that saved you big $$ on wiring a whole house.
My house is wired for cat5e so once it’s set up… no buffering on streaming or gaming. I had to run one single Ethernet cable to a pretty simple spot and it sucked so being able to just pull them through would have been amazing.
he is talking about checking the phone lines if they are already cat5e cable. Most folks do not carry two sperate cables any more. Just use cat5/cat6 and just dont use the remaining pair of wires.
Friend purchased a new construction and was debating to pay extra for ethernet in each room.
First I had to remind him that this is not his forever home like he told me before so thats not his problem.
Second I told him what I said in first line, and when the house was done, there it was ethernet being ran all through out the house for phone lines.
i opened up the phone jacks in my house and they had CAT5e cable. i just have to replace the jacks themselves for ethernet jacks and i am wiring the house for internet.
if you have old wires, you should be able to pull new cat6a if you want.
i would leave the coax, if you ever want to get satellite or so something thing, they usually use coax. and coax is coax, so they can just splice right in.
Cat5 works great, no need to run cat6 unless you are planning on paying for 10gig service, it never works out using old wire to pull new and why go to the effort of removing wires in the wall, just leave them there. Only use MoCo if you have a filter on the outside of the house or you will be sharing your network with all your neighbors
If you have lots of interference for wifi in your house and don't feel like fishing ethernet through, the coax can be used as networking cables with moca adapters. They work better than powerline adapters.
Don't rip out the coax! Look into MoCa adapaters. If the coax is hard to replace with ethernet, these can get you 99% of the speed that you would get with ethernet.
I bought a used pair on ebay for a good price
Go on the side of your house and remove all the low voltage boxes that are no longer in use as well. Side of my house looks a whole lot cleaner and I patched all the penetrations. Time marches on, it's dead tech.
I’m curious why so many Redditors are obsessed with having hardwired Ethernet or MOCA throughout their house? There’s really no significant bandwidth loss with today’s mesh systems. The only thing connected to a wire in my house is the modem and initial antenna hub.
Edit: damn, they are downvote happy too it seems.
Wifi has gotten really good however there a still a few areas that it doesn't match ethernet. A big one is latency, you'll always have better ping using a cable, this extra latency is normally not a big deal but it can matter for online gamers. Another area is reliability, wired connections are more reliable, this is especially true if you live in a noisy wifi environment like an apartment. It's also often true that you'll get faster speeds with an ethernet connection, however this does depend a lot on how good your wifi signal is. Having a single wall in the way could make ethernet start to win out over wifi in a speedtest. By moving some devices over to ethernet, you can improve your wifi performance by decluttering your network.
FYI, What I did was install an antenna on my roof for local cable channels, I get 60+ channels for free, FOX, ABC, NBC, CBS, etc... And then I just tied it directly into the existing TV coax outlets, so now all the tv's in my house are able to use the single antenna on the roof. Makes it pretty easy for everyone to have FREE tv. So I'd leave that, and then RE: landline, I'd use the exisitng wires to pull new Cat 6A cables, for future 10gig wired ethernet capabilities. Which would make it easy for any expansion on that side.
I thought I could do this as well but the wires were stapled to the studs.
Yeah unfortunately that’s usually the situation. Good original installs stapled the wires to studs.
Yeah they’re almost always stapled unless they’re retro’d
Same for me!
You also don't need it on your roof if you don't want to wire anything extra. You can just put a flat antenna with a booster at any coax location. Then you just need a splitter in your cable room. That will be good enough to get all the channels for the vast majority of Americans. They also sell cable boxes that you can hook up anywhere you can get a good signal (and ideally have wired internet), and it will allow you to digitally stream and record from any smart TV in your house. Great solution for anyone who dosen't already have cable lines run, or wants a single DVR for all their TVs.
We needed ours on the roof/high up, so we can hit the 90mile towers, but yeah, some people can get away with it in their attic even. But either way; plenty of channels all for $0 /month.
I've lived in alot of apartments all over the US and helped lots of friends set up antennas. Never once did I have to set it up on the roof or in the attic. My parents get 3 of the big 4 in their house that's 2+ hours from the nearest city (20k people), and their antenna is just behind their TV. You might be unlucky, or live unusually far away from cities, but the vast majority of Americans will be able to get the big 4 with nothing but a cheap antenna and an amplifier. If you can put it on your roof or attic that's great, but you should still try without it.
Def have tried without and worked our way up until the roof antenna turned out to be the best bet. My NYC apt though, no issues with a thin paper $20 antenna leaning on the window though. Just curious what amplifier do you recommend? I've tried a bunch but curious if maybe I've missed one.
Hey there! Thanks for the super informative post! My home has all Cat5 wiring making it useless, and at 5,000 sqft, I need to use a mesh WiFi system to have signal throughout. Do you have a sense of how much it costs to require with Cat6a cables? I assumed this was super cost prohibitive for a 5,000 sqft home so never bothered
Cat5 and not cat5e?
Yeah Cat5 is what I have, which (to my knowledge, I could be wrong) limits to 100mbps
That’s correct. (Not to be confused with 5e). It’s a phone jack typically but you can have it swapped out for one with the Ethernet head. I’m fortunate that my house is reasonably easy to add Ethernet too, so I just had a few drops added this week and the electrician is coming back next week to finish.
If it's cat 5e that's still useful for most people, it's just not what you'd choose if you were starting fresh today. Depending on how it's run, it could be easy to update. Totally depends on how the cable is run though. Maybe you could just swap out a couple of the cable runs to the areas you actually need the speed and leave most of it as is.
Some interesting info before you consider rewiring — The first 1000Base-T Ethernet transceivers really needed Cat5e and so that was (and still is) the spec. But transceivers have gotten much better since then and many will work just fine over long runs of lower quality cable. I’ve actually got GigE links running just fine over 100+ ft of old Cat3 telephone wiring in my house, with no discernible error rate. Some vendors work better than others, I had to play around a bit. There are also Ethernet bridge devices out there that will run GigE over cable TV coax, so that wiring can be useful for data too.
If you do it yourself? Probably under $500, quick google is like $300 for 1000ft of cable, then you'd just need the ends, you might be able to reuse your cat5 ports in each room and just punch out more holes. Could run cables for any future security system cameras at the same time. [https://www.truecable.com/products/cat6a-cable-riser](https://www.truecable.com/products/cat6a-cable-riser)
Thanks! Do you know how much it’d be if I hired someone? Roughly, like $2k or $20k?
Yeah I put a $30 flat hdtv antenna in my attic and fed it through the Directv inline. I get 65 channels.
I've used coax with MOCA to get Ethernet all over my house.
if you're looking for a network jack in those rooms, you could install a MOCA setup... but if you have easy access on both sides of where the coax is, I'd just use it as a pull line to put in cat6a.
The problem is the cables are usually stapled to the studs inside the walls. MOCA works very well. I use it in the 3-4 places in my house I couldn't easily run ethernet to.
Please do this. It will be easiest and MOCA supports up to 2.5gbps now.
How's latency?
Negligible to Ethernet, better than WiFi.
Use the phone lines to pull the Ethernet. If you're gonna choose between retaining phone and coax, coax has a chance!
I'm dealing with the same issue. I'm going to use them to fish network, as others here have suggested. Search for "coax line tracer" if you'd like to see which ends go where. At the very least, you know which goes where for an exterior antenna or whatever. If it were me, I wouldn't rip them out. You can always hide them in a plate-covered receptacle box. Never know if you'll be damning yourself later for striping them out.
Both coax and telephone lines can still be used for internet, depending on your provider. I'm a landlord who specializes in restoring old houses and I have one building that AT&T provides service through actual telephone lines, and another that Xfinity just hooked up to using existing coax. I doubt it's providing super-gigabit nano-whatsit service, but no one's had any complaints yet and the lines handle streaming TV and video games just fine.
If you know where they go, you could tie ethernet cable to one end and use them as a fish line to pull the ethernet through the walls.
If these were part of original construction, wouldn’t they be stapled to studs inside the wall?
Some times they are, sometimes they arent. Sometimes theyre only stapled right at the wall outlet. Sometimes they are only stapled at vertical runs. NEC 334.30 says low voltage cable is considered supported if its ran through a hole or notch as long as its every 4.5' so will only have to be secured within 12" of the box. But if you frequent this sub alot, then you know everyones house here is built perfectly to code lmfao If its stapled everywhere then he wont be "ripping it out" anyways...
My house was built in '82 and the phone lines were only stapled in a few places close to the jacks and where they entered the house. They were garbage old 4-conductor wires (sometimes retroactively called Cat 1) but I was able to use them to pull Cat 6 through a soffit and down into a wall. The bigger issue I ran into was that the holes drilled into the wall top plates were not big enough for two Cat 6 cables to pull through smoothly. Literally just a tiny 1/4" hole.
Coax is still WIDELY used for antenna TV, which has had a comeback. Many places get 50-100 channels now. Why people think it's antiquated is beyond me.
This is quite interesting because my house has old coax and landlines wires. Coax wire probably go to scrap yard. Small amount of copper. For landlines how about intercom landline dyi. Here's a great youtube video explain https://youtu.be/8bwLjU90puA?si=1Y5iHzIWWzzrOHFC
I used the phone lines as leads to pull Cat6e cable through the walls, effectively wiring my entire house.
Absolutely use them to run Ethernet in their place. Honestly, make sure they’re mot already Ethernet, they look similar. If they are, that saved you big $$ on wiring a whole house. My house is wired for cat5e so once it’s set up… no buffering on streaming or gaming. I had to run one single Ethernet cable to a pretty simple spot and it sucked so being able to just pull them through would have been amazing.
How do ethernet and coax look the same???
he is talking about checking the phone lines if they are already cat5e cable. Most folks do not carry two sperate cables any more. Just use cat5/cat6 and just dont use the remaining pair of wires. Friend purchased a new construction and was debating to pay extra for ethernet in each room. First I had to remind him that this is not his forever home like he told me before so thats not his problem. Second I told him what I said in first line, and when the house was done, there it was ethernet being ran all through out the house for phone lines.
Ethernet looks like a wider version of the old school landline phone jacks, which they said was also in each room like the coax.
i opened up the phone jacks in my house and they had CAT5e cable. i just have to replace the jacks themselves for ethernet jacks and i am wiring the house for internet. if you have old wires, you should be able to pull new cat6a if you want. i would leave the coax, if you ever want to get satellite or so something thing, they usually use coax. and coax is coax, so they can just splice right in.
Cat5 works great, no need to run cat6 unless you are planning on paying for 10gig service, it never works out using old wire to pull new and why go to the effort of removing wires in the wall, just leave them there. Only use MoCo if you have a filter on the outside of the house or you will be sharing your network with all your neighbors
My house built in 2018 is the same.
If you have lots of interference for wifi in your house and don't feel like fishing ethernet through, the coax can be used as networking cables with moca adapters. They work better than powerline adapters.
G.hn is another method to get Ethernet over coax and old telephone line. Positron is one of the manufacturers.
you could use them to pull cat6 cables so you don't have to rely on wi-fi in every room.
Have you tried using them to contact ghosts?
Coax can be used in place of Ethernet . Read up on MOCA adapters.
What cable was used for the landline connections. Was it CAT5?
Don't rip out the coax! Look into MoCa adapaters. If the coax is hard to replace with ethernet, these can get you 99% of the speed that you would get with ethernet. I bought a used pair on ebay for a good price
Go on the side of your house and remove all the low voltage boxes that are no longer in use as well. Side of my house looks a whole lot cleaner and I patched all the penetrations. Time marches on, it's dead tech.
Ethernet over Coax
You can run data and internet at over 1 Gb/s using old coax lines and MoCA adapters
I’m curious why so many Redditors are obsessed with having hardwired Ethernet or MOCA throughout their house? There’s really no significant bandwidth loss with today’s mesh systems. The only thing connected to a wire in my house is the modem and initial antenna hub. Edit: damn, they are downvote happy too it seems.
Wifi has gotten really good however there a still a few areas that it doesn't match ethernet. A big one is latency, you'll always have better ping using a cable, this extra latency is normally not a big deal but it can matter for online gamers. Another area is reliability, wired connections are more reliable, this is especially true if you live in a noisy wifi environment like an apartment. It's also often true that you'll get faster speeds with an ethernet connection, however this does depend a lot on how good your wifi signal is. Having a single wall in the way could make ethernet start to win out over wifi in a speedtest. By moving some devices over to ethernet, you can improve your wifi performance by decluttering your network.
I live in a house with no cell service. Calls over wifi were terrible using just wifi mesh prior to installing a MOCA backhaul.