Network Cabling and Wi-Fi Installation | Practical Installation Guide

Almost every "the Wi-Fi is terrible" problem is one of two things: a single router trying to cover more area than physics allows, or access points connected to each other wirelessly rather than by cable.

Cable categories

Category	Speed	Use case
Cat5e	1 Gbps	Adequate for most homes; still widely installed
Cat6	1–10 Gbps (10G to 55m)	The sensible default for new installation
Cat6a	10 Gbps to 100m	Longer runs, future-proofing, PoE-heavy installs
Fibre	10 Gbps+	Between buildings, or runs beyond 100m

The cable is the cheap part of any run; the labour of pulling it is the expensive part. Install better cable than you currently need, and pull a spare while the wall is open.

Access point placement

Central and high. Ceiling-mounted in the middle of the area served, not in a corner cupboard.
Wired backhaul. An access point connected by cable outperforms a mesh node repeating wirelessly, every time.
Plan for overlap, not saturation. Too many access points on overlapping channels is its own problem.
Avoid obstacles. Masonry, foil-backed insulation, mirrors and large appliances all attenuate signal badly.

A sensible home layout

Modem and router in a central utility position, not wherever the incoming line happens to land.
A small switch and patch panel alongside — even a six-port panel transforms tidiness.
Cable runs to each ceiling access point location.
Cable runs to fixed high-demand devices — TVs, consoles, desktops, NVR.
Everything else on Wi-Fi.

Rack and cabinet

Even a small wall-mounted cabinet is worth it. Keep power and data separated where they run parallel, leave slack in a service loop at both ends, and label both ends of every cable at the time you pull it. Nobody has ever regretted labelling.

Marcus Feld

AV Systems Editor · Twelve years installing residential and commercial AV systems before moving to writing. Covers mounting hardware, cable routing and network design.