Richmond Cable Utility Box CAT-6 Wires in House
 

Wondering why all the blue CAT-6 wires in the utility box in the garage are loose and hanging inside the utility box. Does The Villages expect the homeowner hire a company to get these ready for use?

Yes

You need to pick a service. They will hook the system up

You think Comcast or Spectrum is going to finish the job which IMHO The Villages should have performed?

Yes Spectrum will finish the job Its there job to finalize the installation

Comcast did for me. Relax….life is short.

Yes. That is exactly what they are going to do.

We will see what happens. Not sure why the cable company would be responsible for connecting all of the CAT-6 lines inside the house.

I don't think most people use the Cat6 cables. Most use the wifi from their internet provider or add their own router to the cable modem. What are you planning on using it for?

I like the lightning fast speed when my laptop is connected directly to the cable modem.

Other than you like to be tethered, how was your walkthrough? You seemed to be upset about the roads, light fixtures, and such before your closing. Did you have many thing to immediately fix in the first 7 days? How long is your punch list to be fixed prior to one year? Did you like the private inspection you hired?

We are still upset about the road situation.

We all went thru some “road situation “…..that too shall pass.

i spec'd out the Cat 6 wall locations through out the house, and they wired the ends in the wiring closet as if they were phone jacks. That was a call to warranty, and warranty didn't believe me, so they sent galaxy out and I helped them wire the closet correctly, i now have two wiring closets as all the equipment didn't fit into a single one, and the wifi access point is on the ceiling in the middle of the house, where everyone can see it and i get great house coverage.

Yes. I bought a crimping tool, Cat6 cable connectors, and an Ethernet switch from Amazon and did it myself.

The advertisement for the house probably says "Prewired for smart house" but when we built in 2019, cat6 prewiring was not something that was part of the building package, it was an add on like a pool or special landscaping. I met with the galaxy low voltage guy and he said yes to everything. Of course . . .

Now they pull cat6 wires during construction and sell it as "Prewired"

I got the BOSE sound system prewired above the living room, however, given the advancements in wireless speakers. . . . oooops, there are a pile of useless wires in the ceiling

Yes as the builder just puts the infrastructure in and when you pick your provider they will terminate the cable ends.

Hi, ok what is a Cat 6 wire? And you mention of a ceiling mount? Are those for WiFi home control?

CAT 6 consists of 4 twisted pairs of copper wire and 259 MHz of bandwidth, supporting data transfer of 10 Gbps 10GBASE-10 for distances up to approximately 180 feet. Quite easy to terminate.

Network wiring Cat5/6
 

The best use of any Cat5/6 wiring left over not needed is to add a surveillance system that works over IP. These are the best options for surveillance systems. You get a PoE switch and it powers all your cameras - no batteries to worry about. Always a nice option to have when vacationing away from your home to monitor what is going on. You can even add water sensors, thermostats to your home that can all be controlled and monitored remotely. Although these last two items mostly work on Wi-Fi they are very much a nice feature to any home and a sense of security. This is what I would look at doing with the extra Cat5/6 cabling. Pull them back and run them to the outside points monitoring your entrances and add a few cameras outside and even a few inside.

How would the Villages know which provider you will use, and where you want to place your equipment?

Just wanted to show you a view of Monument Way still under construction headed to Maxwell Villas which is already completed and occupied by homeowners. The Villages completed Maxwell Villas before these houses on Monument Way where completed. The road is a complete mess. Not right for homeowners to have to drive thru this disaster area every single day. But you know what they say "You can't fight city hall".

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Did Galaxy charge you for the work?

Spectrum finished mine when they came out to service.

That has to be frustrating - wonder why they completed and sold the homes at the end of Monument Way prior to completing construction on those homes at the entrance to the villas? I hope the construction ends soon - you bought in a great part of Richmond (I tried twice to secure a courtyard villa in your area but was not successful) - I close on a nice patio villa in the Oliver Villas (north part of Richmond) in two weeks - last I was there, I saw a lot of construction in my new area as well.

What exactly did Spectrum do? How long where they out there for?

Yes, it’s your responsibility to hire somebody to do this. I rewired my phone hole house myself instead of hiring it out and saved me almost $1000, I put my own network in too and get much better wifi and wired speeds than having somebody else do it

Prewired smart house means:

Cat 6 cable -> a type of ethernet cable specs to connect devices.
Prewired smart -> Cat6 wire are pulled through the walls between wall connections through out the house and the wiring closet, usually in the garage

Wiring closet -> an electrical box inserted into the wall of the garage where the cable line comes into the house.

What goes into the wiring cabinet ->
incoming cable feed wire from your cable supplier, is connected to a cable modem from the cable supplier.
the cable modem separates ethernet from cable video and has wired and wireless connections to connect to the ethernet wires.

The cable modem may or may not have wireless, high proportion of cable modems have wireless included. I do not have wireless in my cable modem, i have an independent wireless access point in the ceiling which is connected to a NAT router, which is then connected to the cable modem.

I require a NAT router because the cable modem does not have a router in it, just the ethernet cable splitter. just the way i designed the network so i have more control if i want it. . . and i worked for a network R&D company in the 1990's when the internet went public with lots of the internet pioneers.

Because Galaxy was an independent supplier and my request was for ethernet wiring with NO phone outlets, i expected Galaxy to wire for internet, not phone drops. My custom request was not the norm at the time, and so they the standard process was not changed, typical with std manufacturing, the custom details are often missed, and that wasn't the only item missed or done incorrectly.

We had Galaxy terminate the Cat 6 cables, convert a few phone jacks to RJ45 ethernet connections and had them add a few more in addition to pulling my rear channels for surround and mounting them in the ceiling. All total was about $1300. They did a great job but I had to argue with them about what I wanted. They just wanted me to do everything WiFi. If I have a portable device, WiFi is fine, that's what it's designed for. If I can get a cable to something I'm streaming with, I'll do it....

Good one… Lightning Fast Speed

Yes. They are obsolete in the age of Wi-Fi.

Thanks for all the details.

You always want to use wired if possible and use wifi when you can’t use wired.
In your network box in the garage, you would put your network switch in it as well as any coax splitters for your cable tv.
Modems are not routers and you need a router to start the internal network and wifi in your house. It is best to have the network provider supply the modem normally for free and you buy and implement the router and internal network. The best technology to build your network and wifi is to get a 6e mesh network and use the existing wiring in your house to create wired and wireless bridged network all using the same ssid. All your smart home devices will use the 2.4ghz network while all your tablets and phones will use the 5 or 6ghz network.

I finished out all of my cables this weekend with RJ45’s this weekend. I installed a UniFi switch in the low voltage panel in the garage as well.

I am hiring someone to pull cable to the corners of the house (I don’t want to crawl around in the attic) for my camera system and two more AP’s that I’m putting up.

Precast walls are awesome but the WiFi signal really drops outside of the house and in the garage.

Cat 6 or Cat 5
 

The CAT6 or CAT5 cables are all connected to wall sockets, either phone or ethernet.
You can use to set up a home network.
You probably will not use them all.
I have wired all of mine to a passive gigabit switch and can use what is needed.
I would be happy to assist you.
Mike

Thanks for the offer!
Wireless is working good for me here in Richmond. Very happy so far.

Awesome!

Wifi is approaching the 1 gig max speeds at the post the benefit of hard wiring is not what it used to be

Especially with a mesh network.

So what service did you go with?

spectrum 300 Mbps