Ethernet: How to Hardwire Your Home for Speed and Reliability

Fed up with unreliable Wi-Fi and endless buffering? You’re not alone. Others find their laptops and PCs running slowly, or even receive the dreaded Ethernet doesn’t have a valid IP configuration error, despite having a strong wireless signal. Mapping your house with Ethernet is great for from-the-wall wired internet everywhere, and you won’t have to rely on wireless at all. It offers a stable, straight-line connection that’s ideal for gaming, streaming HD video, and making sure your work-from-home setup doesn’t skip a beat.

This guide will explain everything you need to know to create a wired home internet setup and enhance the speed of your local network.

Why Choose a Wired Connection?

Although Wi-Fi is convenient, it can be prone to interference from walls, appliances, and even your neighbor’s network. These problems are all eliminated with a wired Ethernet connection.

Here’s a quick comparison:

Step 1: Planning Your Hardwired Home Network

A small bit of preparation can take you far. Before you drill holes, however, you should know:

• Which rooms need wiring? Focus on the rooms where a consistent connection matters most, like your home office, living room (where you likely have smart TVs and gaming consoles), or bedrooms.
• How many ports per room? A wall plate can have many Ethernet jacks in one hole. Consider the number of devices you will connect in each place. It’s about as easy to send four cables to a room as one; measure twice, cut once, and you’re future-proofed.
• Where is your central hub? This “distribution point” is going to be the area where all of your Ethernet cables come together. A laundry room, closet, or basement by your modem and router is best.
• Which way will the cables run? If you have an attic or a basement, it’s the easiest path. As several of your homes reach additional stories, you may have to get creative with pathways through closets or along baseboards. Keep in mind, regular Ethernet cables (Cat-5e/Cat-6) can go up to 300 feet (100 meters).

Step 2: Gathering Your Tools and Equipment

This project calls for some very specific things, many of which you can borrow or borrow from the local hardware shop.

• Tools:
  • Drill with a paddle bit or a hole saw
  • Ethernet crimper
  • Drywall saw
  • Fish tape, or alternatively, a strong string to pull cables through the walls
  • A cable tester or a laptop
  • Stud finder
• Equipment:
  • Ethernet cable: For future proofing and gigabit speed, Cat-6 is recommended. 
  • Wall plates and keystone jacks: These provide the neat and professional appearance of ports in your walls. 
  • RJ45 connectors: Plastic plugs that go on either end of the cables. 
  • Low-voltage mounting bracket: These will hold the wall plates inside the drywall. 
  • An Ethernet switch: This takes the single connection from your router and distributes it to all the new ports in your home.

Step 3: Installing Your Wired Internet Setup

Now for the fun part! This process can be broken down into three main tasks.

Running the Cables

1. Use a stud finder to find an empty space in the wall that will hold your new wall plate, typically next to where you’ve got an existing outlet.
2. Using your drywall saw, cut a hole for the low-voltage mounting bracket.
3. From your center location, you should cut a hole in the top plate of your wall frame and drop the cables down to use them in the wall cavity.
4. Fish the Ethernet cables from the attic or basement down to the hole you’ve made in the wall using fish tape. Hang some excess cable from each end.

Installing Wall Plates and Jacks

1. On one side of each wall, use a strip, the end coupler, and punch down each wire into the keystone jack. Many jacks come with a diagram for the T568B standard. Make sure to use the same standard at both ends.
2. Plug the jack into the wall plate and secure it to the mounting bracket.

Making Connections at the Hub

1. Back at your central distribution point, crimp the spare ends of your cables (labeled between four walls and centrally, with Cat5e that have white inner strands) onto RJ45 using your crimping tool.
2. Plug these cords into your switch.
3. Lastly, plug your router into the “uplink” port on the switch. Your home network is now a hardwired one. Congratulations! One example of this is file access on the device, but Android’s FileProvider means that only specific apps have permission to see those files; those at content://cz.mobilesoft.appblock.fileprovider/cache/blank.html.

Step 4: Testing Your New Network

Test each new port before you hook up all your devices. The simplest approach is to plug a laptop into all of the wall jacks and see if you get connected. You can check the connection of all wires: the use allows you to connect a special tester, which will determine whether all the wires are connected correctly.

If a connection isn’t functioning, it’s typically because of improper wiring or a bad crimp. Check your connections against the T568B diagram and re-crimp if need be. Sometimes you may want to reset the TCP/IP stack in Windows to try to repair network issues.

Enjoy a Faster, More Reliable Connection

By hardwiring your house, you’ll have a fast, reliable network that gives you the best speed, and this often means better internet when everyone else is getting sluggish service. And say farewell to any lag during crucial video calls and hello to uninterrupted streaming and gaming. You still want to have a wire if possible, for the long haul.