Structured Wiring: Wire is cheap. Opening walls is expensive.


What is structured wiring?
Structured wiring is a method of providing the communications infrastructure of your home in a well organized, easy to understand, and thorough way to provide a general solution to your present and future wiring needs. Rather than run a coax here, and a Cat 5 there, and another coax somewhere else as you guess at the future needs, the structured approach is to consistently run a full bundle of wire to every significant room. The full structured bundle often consists of two Cat 5 cables and two coax cables.

How does it work?
As a starting point, it is useful to think of a structured wiring system in terms of your house's electrical system. Electricity flows into your house through a main power cable. This cable connects to a circuit breaker box, where it is separated and sent down smaller electric lines. These lines wind their way through your walls, ultimately ending at power outlets placed throughout your home. You then plug devices into the outlets and use them.

A structured wiring system functions similar to this. All external data lines (such as cable television, telephone, or Internet) come into the house and are connected directly to a central control box. This box is usually the size of a large electric circuit breaker panel, and is placed in a similar location, such as in the basement or a utility closet. Within the control box, each incoming signal is split and sent down wires to multiple rooms in the house.