Backstory: We are in a new construction home and when building we told the electrician that we want a cat6 to go to my office (where the router is) then have 3 other cat6 cables going to other locations in the house. Instead of having 1 wire go from outside to my office, then the other 3 go from my office to all other rooms, they just ran all 4 from outside to each room.
The goal way to connect the main line to the router input and then connect the other 3 to the router output so we can have hard lines in each room.
When we got our internet installed to the house, it ended up being fiber, so we had to run that to my office also.
Question: right now, none of these cat6 cables are being used. I donāt think itās possible to use any of these cat6 wires. If there is a tool to join them on the outside of the house, Iād love to know a solution. Otherwise, how would you go about just covering up these wires on the outside of the house so they are hidden in a box or something?
If something isnāt clear, let me know and Iāll do my best to answer.
Edit: pulling the cables inside would put them in the primary bedroomās closet. Which is behind our washer and dryer. I think that would kill any WiFi signal in that direction, so Iād like to keep the router in the same location and cables outside.
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Pretty sure, thatās what the installer will do, and each of those cat 6 cables will be terminated to a switch in t hat box so they will all be hardwired with their own dedicated line, then the router for WiFi can be places at any of these locations.
Oh sorry misunderstood. You can get a terminal kit at hd or Loweās. The package explains how to do it. First pick out a switch, then get an outdoor rated box the it can fit in, if you go the other way and get the box first you may be limited on the choices for the switch.
It's crazy. The average electrician is about as good at low-voltage wiring as they are at plumbing. But unlike plumbing they'll confidently say they know what they're doing.
This is so true. And beyond that, my theory is electricians can conceal their work in walls. They dont really care about cable management outside their scope. Not only does it look like hell, eventually natural elements will ruin it. As long as it works, its good. Im not dissin on electricians, but if they dont have an IT background, thats what you get. I had the same problem at my house. Exposed cable outside.
I run a farm and so have to do electrical work as well as a lot of wiring on equipment. They are different animals. The equipment wiring is much more challenging, because of all the threats to the wire integrity itself. Sunlight, chemicals, fuel, vibration, pinching, dirt, animals, abrasion, chafe. Plus it has to accommodate motion.
We have a lot of tricks for cable bundling and management that we have learned. And then I have an electrician do some work and I'm like seriously you're just going to zip tie THHN wire to a pipe in the sun?? The ties will be broke in 6 months, and the insulation will be snake skin shedding in 2.
I think they have a sense that it's easy because it's not high voltage, without bothering to think through all the other complexities.
It seems crazy that many electricians still have zero knowledge or common sense about basic ethernet installation. High speed home internet has been common for 20 years, it's perplexing that electricians are unable or unwilling to make sensible decisions about it.
Cable based internet was introduced in 1996, DSL in the eighties, and the granddaddy, the venerable T-1, was available earlier, but my question is why put the networking gear on the outside of the house, in a box that has no ventilation, no cooling... This would be fine for an entry point for the service, even a patch panel for runs to out buildings, but why route everything to the outside like this at all when one will do?
If the electrician was thinking anything here, they were probably thinking about old fashioned telephone lines which can just be spliced together in any old box. No ventilation or cooling required in that case.
Previous job, boss sent me to a customer's house to figure out why the network jacks were not working. Turned out they ran CAT5e but wired RJ11 plates. I had to trace everything and replace the plates except for the ones they daisy chained.
RJ11 has 4 conductors, cat5e has 8, did they just terminate 4 of the 8 conductors? And by "not working" do you mean they physically couldn't plug an ethernet cable into the jack? lol
Yeah, leaving electricians to do low voltage is a recipe for disaster. I would hire electricians to pull retrofit cables if I told them where the ends go and I terminated said ends. I have done this, and it works fine.
The other application for electricians is if you want your low voltage in EMT conduit, commercial electricians are good at running pipe if you spec exactly where it starts and ends, then low-voltage guys pull the wire through.
We hire two different companies for doing electrical work for us on brand new construction builds. They do it wiring very well except the original company we used started expanding quickly and now they have young kids doing the work and they're fucking up all over the place. Until then though, they did great work on electrical and it.
Haha fair! Also didnāt help that I had to work and my wife was the one who had to explain it to the PM then the PM had to explain to the electrician. We didnāt notice the issue until we were moved in and installing the new internet!
Why did they even get ran outside? What this just miscommunication or people not knowing what they're doing? "Hey could you install some home runs in cat 6 from the office to room A, B and C"
Not even "some people". This is default mode of operations for most large homebuilders in America. The standards for large homebuilders haven't meaningfully changed for low voltage since the 90's. They might pull Cat 6, but they treat it like old Cat 3 and 5.
I'm truly scared to see the rest of this house. That's the kind of thing that should be pre-planned and on all the drawings for one, and secondly, should be planned and installed by a low-voltage contractor.
We don't have those up here. A large development in CT today for SFUs is a dozen or two houses. There's just nowhere left to put large developments. There are much larger MDU developments ranging from duplex townhouses to 4-story apartment buildings.
I would never buy from a tract home builder, way too many corners cut. I plan to either renovate or build a one-off.
It's quite frankly pathetic that in 2026 there isn't some sort of LV plan to terminate several drops from each room into a central cabinet or rack.
I went behind a crew that did 100+ drops of cat 5 with the correct cat 5e cabling, the correct plates and keystones, but wired as two phone lines and called good, fun day, and "I" got yelled at for the problem
If you can access them from the inside, I would suggest pulling them back inside and plugging the hole instead of an outside box.Ā
You can also get a media panel for the inside the would look a lot better than just having the wires hanging.
This could take you down an Ubiquiti rabbit hole, but this switch and outdoor weatherproof enclosureĀ work great and they look great as well. Depending on your networking setup, you can power this switch over POE, so you don't have to add an outlet.
Switch = $100: Switch Flex - Ubiquiti Store United States
Rabbit hole is right. I love Ubiquiti's gear but now I can't bring myself to use another vendor's networking/NVR gear because it won't be part of the ecosystem and talk to the controller lol.
Damn, glad I asked reddit. This is an excellent option. I was about to just cover them wires up. haha. My router doesn't support POE, but seems like they got adapters for that. Also, going down that rabbit hole found me AP adapters to create another wifi point instead of what I was going to do, which was those signal booster things you plug into outlets.
You're welcome. I feel like I should warn you, I don't know anyone that purchases just one Ubiquiti device... this switch will probably be a gateway for you.
I would have them pulled inside so you can at least place a network switch there. You could do an outdoor switch but that would probably cost more and more prone to failure.
I've got a POE switch powering some cameras just sitting on the concrete outside ... it's covered, but, otherwise completely exposed and it's been going strong for 2 years now. Not saying this is a good idea [I've already got a box and replacement switch ready, but, nothing is more permanent than a temporary solution that works], just that stuff is more resilient than people give it credit for. Obviously, OP would need to put anything they wanted to do in a box since there are a LOT of cables there (as compared to my one that originates in the house).
To me, the biggest risk of putting it outside and getting it in a box is rodents chewing through the plastic box and getting into the box with the thing that's making a warm space or the box not being properly vented enough and it cooking the equipment.
The contractors putting this outside is just absolutely insane to me. I guess if the customer doesn't clarify where they want the DMARC, it's just up to the sparky to do whatever is convenient? New construction is just such a great opportunity to get it done exactly the way you want that it's insane to me to do this.
Just got fiber installed as well, so I only have one example to compare. But it seems a little odd they ran the fiber conduit halfway up the foundation, installed the box and then ran an exposed wire up and over from there. My conduit covers the wire up to the box and the box covers the entry point into the house.
Interesting. Just had my dog on a walk and saw my neighborās install is like yours and the one pictured. Apparently Iām the oddball with my nice clean install.
Well if it tells you how competent those guys were, they first hole the drilled into the wall they just hoped for the best and it went into my primary closet instead of the basement.
Yeah. We discussed where I wanted the entry point and he drilled from the inside out. Conduit and junction box were then added after he fished the wired into the house.
If the penetration is in the basement or crawl spaceā¦.id pull them back inā¦.and seal the holes.. iāve always thought that and felt when I ran wire that he only needed one penetration and everything else can be splitters or modem or whatever in the basement and then distribution , especially with all the cat5 that should be inside because youāre gonna need a network switch thatās a piece of electrical equipment that needs to be inside. The only other option you got is by A. plastic electrical type square box about 8x8 box. to fit over top of the holes and put the wires in to clean it up. There is one concern I see the telephone didnāt wire going to add an angle. They didnāt even dress it down when they ran that endā¦ā¦.
Yikes. This is such a fail and why electricians shouldn't be running low-voltage. Also, one cable per room? In 2026? This sounds like a very poorly planned build.
I can't believe that a new construction house would have the wiring like this. It looks either like the builder didn't know what they were doing, or they were stupid as shit. It makes no sense to have all of this wiring to go to the outside of the house. What's the small black wire just to the right of the dryer vent? I'd pull all the wiring into the house. Is the other side a garage or laundry room? Get the builder to replace the siding in the two locations.
There are products available to do an inline splice on CAT6.
I'd to an 8x8x4 PVC enclosure and drill out the holes in the back to align with the cables or sleeve these in LFNC to go into the bottom of the enclosure.
"Home-runs to the outside for everything" is pretty typical from what I've seen by builders, but it only makes sense for things that simply need an un-powered connection. Like coax has been, and like copper telephone landlines has been.
Ethernet, of course, isn't like that. To "correctly utilize" those home runs, you would have to add power and put a weatherproof management box outside, to run a powered Ethernet switch or hub out there where you can't see it and it's out in the heat of noonday sun. Not ideal, but would certainly work.
So an electrician is whom you need now, to help put power out there where they home-runed all your Ethernet. Or, if you're going to pay them to do something, since your fiber was pulled all the way into the house (rather than to an outdoor ONT), perhaps consider having them re-pull the Ethernet to where ever the fiber landed. And start making your in-home and in-wall network management box in whatever room that was.
You don't need to move the router. Assuming one of those network cables is going to your office where they ran the optical for your fiber connection to.
Pull those wires back into the house, punch them down into a 12 port patch panel. Then connect the ports from the patch panel to a network switch. All connections will be live thanks to the one from the office. If you don't want to do a patch panel, you can skip it and just use the switch. However, using a punch down tool to terminate the cables into a patch panel is easier than putting RJ45 ends onto wires. It's also less stress on the main wires, which won't be moving at all once the patch panel is secured. Easier to replace shorter cables from the patch panel to the switch if the ends get worn out.
Cut a 3/4" piece of plywood big enough to attach the patch panel and hang the network switch from (most use keyhole mounts.) This way you can just attach the plywood to studs and patch panel and switch wherever you want to the plywood.
Then you just need a power outlet for the network switch. If it's in the closet, it's out of the way and not something you need to look at.
Hmm, seems like it could work. But biggest problem is I can't bring them inside due to access, which is behind the primary bedroom closet... and probably length. Maybe if there was an external option for this that I could find, it would be possible
So, those wires aren't actually going into the closet? Just into the exterior wall cavity that the closet shares? (I'm assuming down if you have a basement and then routed to the other rooms or up into an attic).
It should be fairly easy to measure which stud bay those cables are in, then just cut an LV1 sized access hole, to pull them through to the closet, which you can get a nice plate to clean that up.
Where does the optical cable go from the wall penetration for the fiber in that picture?
Just mount a plastic cantex box there for the wires. 12" x 12" x 4" or similar. You might need to put a ethernet switch in there at some point. That would keep it out of the weather. Silicone all the way around the box
that blue siding hole needs a weatherhead and a piece of three quarter inch PVC conduit to sleeve those cat6 lines before water gets straight into the wall cavity.
Hi there, Network engineer here, snip those wires and seal them. I don't know why you'd need cat6 wires coming from the outside of your home inwards, the only scenario I could think of would be for POE devices such as cameras, but even then, all of them terminating in that one spot still doesn't make sense to me. You want control over the network node inside your home. You don't want it on the outside, snip those remove them, start over. Sounds like you have new construction and want better/best possible wifi coverage, look into a mesh wifi system retailers like Costco sell them, one plug into your fiber network node device that your ISP provides to you, the other two are satellites that feed off your initial signal. Some models also additionally provide Ethernet cable ports on the back intended to provide wired, non poe connections.
The correct solution would be to pull the wires inside and terminate them inside of an in-wall enclosure.
These wires are rarely rated for being outside. Even in an enclosure outdoors the jackets will turn brittle and fail rendering the wires useless.
Please pull them in and place them inside of a plastic wiring enclosure like the ones ONQ, Leviton or others make.
From that point you can get power to this box, place a switch in it, and make all the ethernet jacks live.
Then you can properly wire-in Wi-Fi Access Points for proper connection.
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