For every residence—single-family home, high-rise or apartment – Leviton offers an unparalleled selection of structured wiring solutions for home networking. Only a few years ago, residential structured wiring was used mainly to distribute telephone service throughout the home. Today, it has expanded to deliver a host of services. Homeowners need reliable distribution of Internet for surfing, online gaming, and streaming music and movies, as well as other services such as HDTV, IPTV, VoIP, and FTTH (fiber to the home). Supporting the in-home network with a structured wiring provides the reliability, security, and flexibility these technologies require.
With all of these technologies becoming commonplace, a centralized distribution point provides a straightforward solution for managing the needed cabling and hardware. Leviton Structured Media® enclosures house all the equipment that distributes of signals coming from outside the home, including copper and fiber optic lines for cable, Internet, and telephone.
A well-prepared floor plan done in advance of your installation will save you headaches later. It isn’t enough to simply plan one phone jack or cable termination per room. Your plan, or a designer’s plan, must be thoroughly discussed. This plan should include:
• The specific locations for each type of device (phone, audio-video, data, etc.)
• The types of cable that will be run to these locations and cable routing
• Allowance for future expansion as needs change and new applications are introduced
• Allowance for changes as the role of various rooms change (a bedroom becoming a home office, for example)
• Allowance for multiple Cat 5e or Cat 6 and coax jacks in location of planned modem location
• The minimum-grade cable you should run is Cat 5e. If you’re unsure of a specific wall location for a device, then we suggest that two or more be installed to cover all possible choices. You can’t predict furniture placement and you’re better off running more cable, than coming back later to add to the run.
Mark all your proposed locations with blue masking tape or similar material and do a walk through prior to installation. When you are satisfied with your plan, you can decide the best system installation to the plan requirements. Be sure to plan beyond the basics. The Cat 5e or Cat 6 UTP and RG-6 coax cabling will cover three applications: telephone, data, and coax video (CATV) distribution. Additional applications such as multi-room video, multi-location stereo and home monitoring all require additional dedicated wiring.
Remember that low-voltage structured cable requires gentler handling during installation. When developing your floor plan, be sure that you have sufficient access to pull the cable without damaging it.
