I have a Zotac Zbox in my basement living room that is equipped with 802.11 b/g/n wifi but is notoriously slow. Mine is no different. I pay for 105 Mbps connection and the shit Zbox has been reporting between 1 and 1.5 Mbps during various speed tests. After setting up the new 65" TV and speaker system, I just couldn't bear to sit there watching watching my Kodi box buffer for another minute. Something needed to be done. I kicked around the idea of building a new machine. I even pondered getting an Nvidia Shield. But there was always the chance I might have spurious results with any of those as well.
The solution hit me. I opted to run my own cable and do away with wifi for my downstairs home theater area once and for all.
The house I recently purchased is almost 60 years old. I figured that with an old home without fire blocks, I could likely tackle this project on my own.
My town has been rolling out a local fiber gigabit network and I wanted to get everything done before that hit my area sometime soon ("Spring 2016"). I planned to run Cat6a from my office modem, down an internal wall into the basement. Then I would remove the baseboards and cut into the wall. There I could bore holes into the studs and run the cable around to the TV area. That plan fell flat as I had a door in my way. I opted for a similar plan, but this time outside the wall.
I already had the tools I needed except for a few job specific items. I purchased 250ft of Cat6a cable on Monoprice for $35. It was cheaper to order it that way than to order the individual pieces I needed. This would also give me some versatility if I changed my mind or ran into any problems. I bought the Cat6 jacks and wall plates at Lowes for around $30. The plastic molding/conduit type stuff was the most expensive thing at around $10 per 5 ft section.
Before I even got started I ran into a problem. The walls weren't aligned right on top of each other in the upstairs office and the downstairs basement. After doing quite a bit of measuring, calculations and sketching, I was able to drill a 1/8" test hole in the office floor (out of sight, under the printer stand) and hit inside the basement wall perfectly. I then opened that test hole up with a 3/8" bit to accommodate the three cables. I wasn't keen on putting a hole in my original wood floors but it was an unavoidable sacrifice.
http://i.imgur.com/9R4vk8p.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/YapVFbs.jpg
My initial thought was to just run one cable to connect the Kodi PC. This quickly turned to, "well if I'm going to run one I might as well run two". It ultimately ended up as "If I'm going to run two I might as well run three." I did some more measuring and cut three 60' lengths of cable that I would run. I put a 3/8" hole in the very bottom of the basement wall and used my fish tape and some fine wire to pull it through. I started running the cable inside the plastic molding and sticking it to the wall. This went very quickly once I got the hang of it.
My doors go right to the ceiling so I needed to remove the top molding and cut it with a table saw to re-fit.
http://i.imgur.com/I6Sz9Cb.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/KmgqGy5.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/TM27a6U.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/uKuZrG6.jpg
Once I had it all the way behind the TV area, I cut another 3/8" hole and put the cables back into the wall, up about a foot, and out to the box. Then came punching down all three cables to Cat6 jacks on both ends. Then testing to ensure everything worked and label each one.
http://i.imgur.com/yLfihm3.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/tIT4FvY.jpg
Kodi PC that was getting 1-2 Mbps over wifi is now getting full speed 120 Mbps and is ready for the impending gigabit network. :)
