For all your speakers wire and ethernet cabling, do yourself a huge favour and run smurf tubing. This will allow for extra wires to be run in the future without much effort.
Really great run-down, Will! I kept waiting for you to miss something but you prett much got everything I can think of... ok, one exception: Putting a spare, empty 2-3" conduit in from your rack location to an accessible space in the upper floor ceiling. Something will always be missed and that can make it simple to add more later. (I would also run a 1-1/4" conduit down to the boat dock from the network rack for whatever might happen later, and if there is a meaningful front yard maybe another conduit or two for future things in the yard, as well as the garage if there is one.)
I'd think eventually we'd get to the point of Smurf tube and CAT6, or best available at the time, everywhere, then just make all the peripheral devices Ethernet and POE. Individual wiring and separate (proprietary) systems is just such a hassle, particularly since you're gonna wanna or need to replace whatever. Between that and wifi, think that's about as future proof as realistically possible.
No Smurf tube going from the network room to the outside DMARC? No conduit going up into the attic for future cables? I hope that wall where you ran all the networking cables is an exterior wall, because the ISP is gonna come and drill a hole and run the fiber thru the wall lmao
great suggestions to consider. just be cautious of sonos. They have a tendency to have a short support life space of their equipment. We've stopped using them due to that.
wireless speakers will ultimately become a security risk as they currently use wpa2 which can be cracked in minutes and having that device on your network will cause a wpa 3 network to fallback to wpa2 meaning there was no point in buying a new router / access points ect ect ect , wired speakers are the goat , you can never get the audio perfectly synced on wireless
Power over ip, video server to multiple tvs, home office with network based storage, etc. today the home can source / sink a lot more data than what typically comes into the home.
At the end of the day, hardwiring gives you the ability to install several Wi-Fi access point throughout your home along with doing PoE security cameras on the outside. Depending on how large your new home is, the Starlink Wi-Fi gateway is not going to reach every corner of your new home. It's also nice to hardwire your TVs for a consistent streaming experience. Wi-Fi is great, but when you can hardwire a device (especially those that don't move like a desktop PC or a TV), do it. 1000' feet of CAT6 is less than $200, and all the other terminations you'll need along with a patch panel and network switch should come in at less than $100. So for $300 you've got yourself a state-of-the-art home network that's ready for the future.
I hardline connection is always better than a wifi connection. You'll find your starlink service will be faster and more reliable over Ethernet than starlink's built-in WiFi.
@@homesteadandhighways I use a mesh router with it. No issues 2yrs in. It’s covering about 4000sq/ft + garage. I am not a “gamer.” I will probably add wiring but for the past 2 years I have had zero need for it. Quite liberating actually.
