[zx10guy]

Originally Posted by sethwas

I've been reading through this, and as someone who works in this industry, I can make some comments. And again this isn't for a data center, just a home use with your basic smarthome stuff.

first, lets discuss copper v fiber.
The only time you run fiber is if you are running distances longer than copper can handle.
Depending on the quality of your switches and bends in the cable this can be 2-300'.
For most homes you won't hit this limitation, and in the truly large stuff (no longer the homes of mere mortals) you just put another rack to link back to the first over fiber, but you always run copper to each piece of equipment.
There is no advantage in real world residential use in terms of bandwidth or latency of fiber. (this is like asking which is heavier, a pound of bricks or a pound of feathers).

I agree and have stated in this thread fiber in a residential setting is useless and a waste of money. However, I mentioned the use of single mode fiber in one of my posts. The use of single mode fiber is advantageous for the person that is awash with cash and wants to ensure they're as future proof as possible. So far in the many years I've been in the business, single mode fiber has held up to the test of time in being able to support each successive speed protocol. But as I said, deploying single mode fiber is ridiculously expensive and a home user won't leverage the fastest speed support it would provide.

Second, same issue with cat5e or 6. You won't realize any difference. Your quality of terminations will have a larger impact on performance than the cable itself. I would only recommend cat-6 if there's no financial hurt in doing so. It's more complicated to pull and devices in a home do not take advantage of cat-6's improvements over cat5e. Still, if your source finds them to be equally priced go cat6.

Agree quality terminations are important from just a fundamental data transmission stand point. But for people installing new cabling now, there's no reason not use Cat 6, 6e, or 6a. I keep recommending the use of 6a as it has the highest bandwidth rating for any of the Cat6 cables and will give a person the biggest chance to be able to support a possible next step speed standard above 10 Gig. So this brings to question why would one put in any of the Cat6 variants if 1 Gig is the de facto standard? That's because 10Gig is starting to get to the point where the power home user can afford it now. Linus of Linus Tech Tips did a video on putting in 10 Gig in his home. From soup to nuts, the total cash out lay for him to get 10 Gig up and running was about $800 to $900. Not outrageously expensive. Apple's desktop products have been shipping with 10GbaseT already included for some time now. I only expect the factory adoption rate to increase in the near future.

Lastly is what to wire, and the answer is everything but your phones. Ideally you should not have any piece of equipment that sits in your house on wifi. Make wifi devices the exception no the rule. Every PC, printer, TV, refrigerator, smart speaker, whatever, should all be wired.
That just leaves tablets/phones and laptops riding the wave. Plus the occasional thermostat.
Most important is to not install 2.4GHz wifi or purchase any device that is limited to that (stick to 5ghz). Most home access points have both bands, turn the 2.4 band off. Your devices and neighbors will thank you. This will have a much larger real world benefit than deciding cat5 or 6, or fiber/copper.
Because 5ghz has a considerably shorter range than 2.4 you will need a proper mesh setup (with wired backhaul) that has access points in every common area (if this were a hotel, I'd suggest an access point in every room or every other room depending on size, with the power of the radio to be as low as realistic so that the wifi bubble of one does not interfere with the other). Do not run 'extenders' under any circumstances.

Even for someone that plans and has every room wired, there are situations where the best laid plans go awry. Changes to how you furnish a home could make connecting those devices a challenge. And more and more connected devices are jettisoning the wired port. Wireless isn't so bad if it's planned properly with the proper equipment. The mindset is turning around when you have Federal agencies which traditionally have said absolutely no wireless either considering their use or have already implemented it. I've worked with a few very secure Federal facilities which are now running wireless. Also, the push to expand the wireless use has now moved into the classified space where there's been proof of concepts and tests of using wireless up to the Secret level layering in enhanced security methods.

Finally cameras. For ease of installation, get analog. There is zero programming this way. Just plug in the cameras at each end.
However, if you want the fancy stuff, you go IP, but each camera has to be individually programmed and you need to run a separate power over ethernet network for cameras (do not run them on your network with your other equipment, the video packets interfere with other data traffic).
It is for that reason, especially in instances of 16 cameras or fewer, that it's just less of a headache and easier to troubleshoot if you run analog. There's just less stuff to go wrong.
From a footage/recording standpoint, real world, you won't notice a difference. The software that manages the recordings is more important than whether the source was an analog or digital feed.

Seth

I'll just have to disagree with you on this one. I've set up my 5 camera Hikvision system with zero prior experience and had no problems getting everything working correctly. But I do agree with the software being an important aspect. But the quality of the cameras is equally if not slightly more important. If the source of your video is crap, having the best software out there won't fix this.