I use mesh routers to extend our WiFi signal at home. Our house isn’t particularly large. However, the router has to live next to the Openreach modem, which is in the under-stairs cupboard. This limits the signal around the house - obvious to everyone, it seems, except house designers.
We currently have four mesh units - lounge, kitchen, bedroom, garage. The router runs DHCP with WiFi disabled. Fortunately, Ethernet runs from the cupboard to the lounge and kitchen, so those mesh units get a quick, reliable backhaul. The bedroom one works well off the lounge signal using WiFi backhaul. However, the garage signal is fairly poor - slow speeds and high latency are the name of the game due to wall thickness. With no Ethernet currently running to the garage, I wanted to fix this with a proper wired backhaul rather than relying on the poor ability of WiFi to punch holes through breezeblock.
Initial research and planning
So, for the setup: ISP-provided router in the under-stairs cupboard (DHCP only, no WiFi) feeding a TP-Link Deco mesh (kitchen, bedroom, garage, lounge). For my new garage Ethernet backhaul, it just needed a physical LAN extension, not a new network segment. I had a spare Ethernet port on the router and just needed to wire through to the garage.
This was part some internet searching and part asking my good friend, Claude.1 I made a plan, wrote a shopping list, and hopped online to look for what I needed.
Before settling on the spot for the hole, I checked for hidden pipes and cables on both sides of the wall. Drilling blind through a wall is a good way to turn a small networking job into a plumbing or electrical one.
The hole
I found my drill bit and settled on a 12mm hole. The wall is plasterboard, breezeblock, then plasterboard again, so it was a case of working through each layer in turn. I realised I’d need some grommets for the hole. I then found out that it needed to be sealed properly with intumescent fire sealant as best practice! Who knew you needed fire protection for such a small hole.2
Choosing the cable and components
I picked unshielded Cat6 due to the balance between speed and cost. Cat6a seemed excessive and I don’t need shielded as it’s nowhere near any other cables causing interference.
Now, one thing I will say is finding the required Cat6 Ethernet cable length was a bit of a challenge! It turns out most of the shorter options already have RJ45 connectors installed. And those are too big to go through the gap I was planning (and I didn’t want to make it too big). So I spent a fair while looking at different websites where it seems 305m is the default option. Or maybe 100m if you’re lucky. Deciding I didn’t want to drop north of £150 on cable alone, and that enough spare cable to do me a further 304 similar projects was probably a little too much, I kept looking. Eventually, I found a sensibly sized 30m length - which is great, now I only have enough for a further 29 projects! (The run itself only used about 1m of it.)
Oh, and the cable needed to be Eca-rated (I found a LSZH3 cable which exceeds that rating which was good).
I also needed a keystone and wall panel, and found one from Kenable. Well, two actually as I needed one for each side of the wall. Then a punch down tool for actually installing the Cat6 wires on the keystone - so another tool that will otherwise be gathering dust in the garage after this project! But at least it was only a few pounds.
Next, patch cables. I got some slim flat ones with some small clips to attach them to the wall. And finally, a cable tester. I have never fitted Ethernet before and making sure everything was wired up right before finishing the job seemed very important!
The installation itself
It actually went very smoothly. I’d bought the right length of drill bit, and managed to get through the wall easily. I’d planned the entry and exit points well and there were no obstructions.
Obviously running a cable through a hole in a wall is a bit of trial and error but with a bit of jiggling around it worked! Terminating the cable was also fairly easy - the punch down tool worked well and I got everything lined up correctly.
The fitting - this was a minor snag! The faceplates needed extra space behind them, which is something I didn’t plan for. Presumably usually they are fitted more flush to the wall but I’d only drilled a small hole. So I needed a patress box4 to allow for the extra depth of the keystone and the cable. Off to Screwfix I went! I picked up white ones, which are mounted directly to the wall and look tidy enough.
Before fitting the boxes, I pushed a grommet into each end of the hole to protect the cable from the rough edges of the drilled hole. Once those were in place, fire sealing and fitting the boxes and faceplates to the wall was a doddle. Testing the link was seamless too, with the lights going from one to eight on the tester first time. With a quick pre-terminated cable run along the wall, the Deco was connected to the router!
Rough cost
All in, the whole project came to around £120, including the tools that will now live in the garage forever.
The result
The garage Deco now gets a proper wired backhaul. Speeds went from 100-150Mbps down to a solid 500Mbps, which is comparable to the rest of the house rather than a large percentage of the speed being lost. Ping has gone from varying wildly between 50-250ms to a steady 30ms. Job’s a good ’un I would say.