Data cabling installation, with Cat6 to the rooms that need it.

When a wired data point beats Wi-Fi

Wi-Fi weakens through brick and stone, and water and metal block it too. A house with solid internal walls can have a fast broadband line and still have rooms where the signal is poor.

Ofcom's own advice is to plug anything that doesn't move straight into the router with a cable, for a faster and more reliable connection. A data point in the wall does that from any room, with the cable out of sight. It suits home offices, smart TVs, games consoles and CCTV recorders, anything that sits in one place and needs a steady connection.

No amount of cabling changes the broadband itself. Wi-Fi never outperforms the line behind it, so cabling spreads a slow line round the house without making it any faster.

Cat6 installation, from the faceplate back to the router

Each data point is a Cat6 cable from a faceplate in the room back to the router, or to a patch panel if there are several. Both ends are terminated, then the run is tested end to end, so a bad termination shows up before the floor or the plaster goes back.

The tester checks that every core reaches the right pin at the far end, with no breaks or crossed pairs. A point that passes gets a label at both ends, so it can be found at the patch panel years later.

Cat6 is rated for faster speeds than the older Cat5e and costs very little more to put in. Where there are several points, a small patch panel and a switch beside the router keep the cables labelled and tidy, so moving a device later is just a matter of swapping a lead.

Where each cable goes gets settled at the survey. In a finished house, under the floors and through the loft is usually the tidiest way, and trunking on the surface of the wall is used where neither route is possible. A single data point can take about 30 minutes.

Ceiling access points and mesh Wi-Fi

A Wi-Fi access point on the ceiling or a wall takes its power and its data down one Cat6 cable, the same PoE that runs wired CCTV cameras. I set it up on your existing network, with the same Wi-Fi name and password, so phones and laptops join it on their own.

Mesh systems do a similar job without the cable, each unit passing the signal on to the next over Wi-Fi. That's convenient, but every hop can cost speed, and the units still have to reach each other through the same thick walls. A cabled access point takes its connection straight from the router, so the far room isn't relying on a relay.

A router works best somewhere central and off the floor. In plenty of houses the line comes in by the front door, which is rarely the middle, and an access point deals with that.

Data points for small offices and shops

A small office or shop might want a point at each desk and an access point covering the back room, with the cables gathering at a patch panel near the router. A switch feeds them from there, and a small wall cabinet keeps it all out of reach.

Planning a few spare points while the cables are going in costs far less than coming back for one later, especially where the run goes through a ceiling that has to be lifted.

Data cables and mains cables in the same walls

Data cabling and mains wiring often share the same voids and the same routes up a house. Under regulation 528.1, BS 7671 doesn't let the two share a wiring system unless they're segregated, and the telecoms cabling standard, BS 6701, applies alongside it.

In practice that means a separate route, or a partition between them where they share trunking. Keeping them apart also cuts interference on the data run. Because I do the mains wiring too, I plan both routes together instead of threading data cable past whatever's already there.

Internet to a garden office or outbuilding

Before data, an outbuilding needs power, and a power supply to a garden office or shed means an armoured cable of its own. The data cable can share the trench in a separate duct.

External-grade Cat6 handles a run across a garden. Between two buildings with separate earthing, a short fibre link or a point-to-point wireless bridge avoids tying the two earths together through the data cable.

Where the house broadband doesn't reach far enough, or there isn't any worth having, the outbuilding can have its own Starlink dish.

Data cabling in new builds and renovations

New homes in England have to be built with gigabit-ready physical infrastructure under Part R of the Building Regulations, meaning ducting and a point where the network connection ends, plus a gigabit-capable connection where one can be had within the cost cap.

Part R stops at that termination point. The cabling to each room is up to you, and the cheap time to run it is at first fix, before the plaster goes on, in a new build or an extension alike.

In a new build the mains smoke alarms and their interlink cable are wired at that stage too, since Approved Document B wants mains alarms in every new home.