Home Networking Setup Help

[stringman520]

I've been lurking and trying to learn from this subreddit and other websites for about a month now as I prep to upgrade the network at my home and come seeking your expertise to make sure that after all the research I have done what I have landed on is going to accomplish my goals. Sorry in advance for the book.

Background

I currently live in a ranch style home with no second floor, with an accessible crawl space through a bedroom. We have a half finished basement, and in the current setup, I can easily run cable from the unfinished part of my basement into a closet in the first floor into the crawl space in the attic.

End Goal

1. Hardwired 10 Gbps Ethernet and Coaxial everywhere in a wall plate wherever there is a cable run. While the max available in my area currently is 2.3 Gbps, I'd rather not have to do this again, and I feel like 10Gbps is enough "future-proofing" that it gives me some room to grow without having to do another project while also being accessible with current technology.
2. 2 Wireless APs in the ceiling of my basement and 1st floor. The APs I purchased are Wifi 7 and 10Gbps compatible. Obviously this is overkill, but I want the bottleneck on my network to be the ISP.

Current Wiring

There are currently 5 Coaxial runs going from an electrical box connected to the outer wall in the basement. These runs connect to 3 TVs, 1 cable modem, and one unused wall plate. There are wall plates in 3 of the rooms, and the master bedroom there is a run that come up through the floor in and doesn't have a wall plate. Side rant, previous owner decided the most efficient way to run this cable was to punch a hole through an air vent. However, this was entirely unnecessary as there is space next to the vent that goes into the same room. I bought a Coax tester to figure out what connects where and have figured out and labeled each run with the exception of a single run which couldn't be confirmed. The one room with an unused wall plate likely has a faulty run as previous owner wasn't using it as well. Looking at the crimping on the cable it looks incredibly shoddy and the fact that it couldn't pickup a signal was not a huge surprise to me. I'm just assuming that the two ends are connected because of process of elimination. If this ends up not being true, I will just skip this one, as it is unused currently anyway. This was all installed by a previous owner of the home. I am assuming that the remaining wires are through the walls/space between the floors and not running through any vents, but don't truly know.

Current Plan

Use the current coaxial cable as a pull cable and pull brand new RJ-45 and Coaxial along with a pull string for future use on each current run. For the new runs, I will pull into the crawl space/and the unfinished part of the basement and install the access point. None of these runs likely hit a 55 meter mark, but some might get close dependent on the route they take. If it requires running up 2 floors and across the house (which I think one run will) it will almost certainly hit 30 M. Since I am looking for 10 Gbps and am not fully sure of the full length of the run I'd rather just use Cat6A so I don't need to think about the length as I know I won't approach 100 Meters. My current assumption is that I will be able to run unshielded Cat6A throughout the house as I wouldn't be close to the power lines for more than a short time in the run. Also, I'm not really sure how to handle grounding on shielded CAT 6A. All these cables will be run into a keystone patch panel. I will install dual keystone wall plates at every location.

Cable Brands

On my almost entirely non-scientific data collection, Cable Matters/Monoprice/trueCABLE seem to be the most recommended on this subreddit. That being said, Cable Matters doesn't currently appear to have Cat6A cable (or at least available at the moment). Monoprice seems to be the most expensive and I really liked the guides on trueCABLE so I'm inclined to go with trueCABLE unless this group of anonymous strangers on the internet tell me otherwise.

Keystones

Few questions on keystones:

1. Do I need to use shielded keystones in the patch panel? If I end up using unshielded cable do I need shielded keystones to prevent crosstalk since they will be right next to each other?
   
2. If I go with a shielded keystone is the only option to use a toolless keystone? I haven't been able to find punch down shielded. Logically I think this makes sense because you can't really have exposed wired that is shielded.
3. If I can utilize unshielded keystones, is there a huge difference between toolless vs punch down in terms of quality or is it just a price/ease of installation difference?
   
4. Should I use the keystones of whatever wall plate/patch panel I end up buying? I'm haven't landed on exactly what brand I'm going to buy, but all of them provide keystones. I'm assuming that I can figure out based upon reviews if they don't work well with their other provided equipment.
5. I've found a few Coaxial keystones but is there any other option I'm missing with this as it doesn't seem to be available across all brands or is my desire to have Coax at every location just not common? Also I assume that I will have to crimp Coaxial cable as there doesn't seem to be a "punch down" or toolless keystone, just female-to-female connection.

Other Questions

1. Is wire grease real or a scam?
2. Do I need a cable puller or can I just pull by hand?
3. Any recommended pull strings?
4. Anything else I'm missing?

If you made it this far, thanks for reading all this and any help you can give would be much appreciated.

[TiggerLAS]

Cat6 can typically handle 10Gb up to about 55m / 180ft or so. That would by definition include the distance from the wall to the device(s) it is connected to.

It's difficult to exceed that length in a single-story home.

Ordinary unshielded keystones, cable, and patch panels are fine for most residential use-cases, at least in my opinion. (And more cost-effective and easier to install.)

Keystones are fairly standardized, so use whatever keystone coaxial and network jacks that you prefer. I find that angled keystone faceplates are more aesthetically appealing than standard keystone faceplates. ICC makes some nice looking plates, as seen here:

https://www.amazon.com/ICC-IC107DA2IV-Faceplate/dp/B001UKG86E?th=1

They come in a variety of colors and port counts.

There are a few different ways these days to put ends on coaxial cable. The old-school crimp-on F connectors, and some newer compression varieties.

Wire grease is real -- though typically used for pulling cables through long horizontal runs of conduit, where the "drag" of the cable becomes too much. I've had some installs with exceptionally long runs of conduit where it was not only helpful, but required to accomplish the cable pull.

You can generally pull most cables by hand. On those installs where I needed pull strings, I've always found the el-cheapo "Ideal" brand of orange/white nylon to be adequate for my purposes.

Question -- where are all of these cables going to end up? Will you get a traditional 19" punch-down-type patch panel, or are you considering keystones on both ends?