How many data points does a home need, and where should they go?

A data point is an ethernet socket on the wall, with its own cable running back to one place, the hub, where the router lives. Deciding how many to have is the cheap part of the job and the part most often got wrong, because a second cable to a room costs very little while the ceiling is open and a lot more once it is closed. This post is the list we would make with you on the phone, room by room, and it is where data point installation, planned room by room starts.

How many data points does a home need?

The short list: two at the TV, two in the office, one in each bedroom that is used for work, study or gaming, and one wherever a WiFi point will go. Past that it depends on what you need: one for everything that stays put and needs a steady connection, two where several devices meet, and one for each WiFi access point or mesh unit. Two cables to the same spot cost barely more than one, because they are pulled together.

A house wired throughout gets a point in every room, and two at the office and the TV wall. If you are choosing where to start, a phone, a tablet or a laptop that moves around the house is what WiFi is for. The cable is for the things that sit in one place and suffer when the WiFi wobbles: the TV, the console, the desktop, and the WiFi points themselves, so the WiFi that is left has less to do.

Data points room by room, for a typical home

Room	Points	Why
TV and entertainment	Two, on a double plate	The TV, a console and a streaming box. A small switch adds more ports if a third device needs one
Home office	Two, on a double plate	A desktop or a dock and a second machine or a printer. Two people working from home may want two each
Bedrooms on the far side	One each, where the room is used for work, study or gaming	The rooms furthest from the router get the weakest WiFi
WiFi access points or mesh units	One each	On the ceiling or high on a wall, one per level in a bigger house. A cabled WiFi point gets the full speed
The hub	Where every cable ends	Beside the NBN box and the router, or where the router should be. A switch and a patch panel live here
Spares	One in the lounge and one in the office	The day a new device arrives, it plugs into a socket instead of needing a new run

Pick where the hub goes

Box in the garage One cable to the middle Two storeys

Garage Kitchen Lounge Office Bedroom Bedroom Ground floor Upper floor 1 2 2 3455 6 3455 66 7 7

1. 1NBN box
2. 2Hub: router and switch
3. 3TV, two points
4. 4Office, two points
5. 5Bedroom, one point
6. 6Access point
7. 7Riser or outside conduit

7 cables back to the hub

Box in the garage

The hub stays in the garage with a switch beside the router, and every point runs from there. The far bedrooms are the longest runs.

7 cables back to the hub

One cable to the middle

One cable takes the internet from the box to a cupboard in the middle of the house. The router and switch go there, and every run is shorter.

8 cables back to the hub

Two storeys

Upstairs is reached from the roof space; downstairs needs a path between the floors. One cable to an access point on each level covers the WiFi.

Every one of those points does a job, and any room you are unsure about is worth adding to the list while the ceiling is open. How to set up a wired home network covers why the cabled WiFi point matters as much as the TV.

Where should data points go in each room?

Where the device will sit, at the height the furniture needs. Behind the TV cabinet rather than beside it, under or beside the desk rather than across the room, and on the ceiling for an access point, central to the area it has to cover.

• At the TV, behind the cabinet or at the height of the wall bracket, so the leads are short and out of sight.
• In the office, at the desk end of the room, beside a power point. If the desk might move, a point on each side of the room is worth considering.
• For an access point, on the ceiling or high on a wall, facing down into the space it covers, not on the floor behind a couch.
• On an outside wall where you can. In a single-storey house, a cable dropped from the roof space reaches almost anywhere on an outside wall. Inside walls have horizontal timbers that block a cable coming down, so the point may need to move along the wall or sit at skirting height.

A cable in a wall cavity goes straight down from the roof space or straight up from under the floor; it cannot be steered sideways across a wall.

Why does the NBN box location decide everything?

Because every data point runs back to the hub, and the hub is where the internet arrives: the NBN box and the router. The box’s position sets the length and route of every run, and whether the house needs one cable or ten.

• The box is in the garage. There are two ways to plan it. Either the hub stays in the garage, with a switch beside the router and every point run from there, or one cable takes the internet to the middle of the house and the router and a switch go there. Moving the box is rarely the cheaper answer; NBN box in the garage weighs the options.
• The box is not in yet. On a new build or a fibre upgrade, decide where the hub will be first, and ask for the box there or as close to it as the installer allows. If it ends up somewhere else, one more cable from the box to the hub fixes it.
• The box is somewhere it should not be. A front bedroom, a wardrobe, one end of the house. One cable from the box to where the router belongs fixes most of these. Where the box itself has to move, that is NBN box relocation, done before the cabling starts.

For a fibre upgrade, NBN’s own installation guidelines for the connection box (opens in a new tab) set the limits: within 12 metres, in a straight line, of where the fibre is attached to the house, within 1.2 metres of a power point, and not in a wet area. They also say a cable from the box to where you want your WiFi router is not part of NBN’s installation, and is at your own cost. On a new build, pre-wiring for the NBN box puts the conduit and the cable in before the walls close.

Data points come from the router, not the NBN line

On fibre to the curb, fibre to the node and fibre to the building, the NBN arrives on the old phone line, and it wants one socket only. A second socket on that line is a bridge tap, and it causes dropouts and slow speeds. So the extra rooms get data points fed from the router’s ports, never a second NBN socket. What a bridge tap is explains why.

What decides where the cables can run?

Access. Connecting a cable to a socket takes minutes; getting it from the hub to the room, out of sight, is the job, and the questions we ask on the phone are all about that: single or double storey, can you get under the floor, can you get into the roof, and what are the walls made of.

• Single storey with a roof space or a timber floor. The easiest house to wire. Most rooms can have a hidden cable, from above or below.
• Single storey on a slab. Through the roof space and down the walls. Outside walls are easy; some inside walls need a different spot for the point.
• Two storey. Upstairs is reached from the roof space. Downstairs needs a path between the floors: a cupboard that lines up on both levels, or a conduit up the outside wall into the eaves.
• A three-level townhouse. The floor above is the ceiling below, so there is no way through, and shared walls are often solid brick with no cavity. Cable goes on external walls, which may need strata approval, and cables the builder clipped to the frame cannot simply be pulled through. With one cable on each level, a WiFi access point or mesh unit on each floor usually does the rest.
• A unit with concrete above and below. Surface ducting along the skirting, or a neat run behind the furniture, and usually strata approval for anything on common property.

The wired network guide has the same picture as a table, by type of home. Where the house will not take a hidden cable at all, a cable to one WiFi point per level, or mesh on its own, may be the better answer.

Single or double wall plate?

A double plate is two sockets with a cable behind each one. Put doubles at the TV and in the office, and singles everywhere else.

One cable cannot feed two sockets. Data cable runs one cable to each socket, and the way to get more ports from a single cable is a network switch at that end. Network switch vs router explains what a switch does and where it goes.

If you are running one cable to a room, run two. The second takes the same time to pull while the ceiling is open, and it is there the day a second device needs a socket or the first cable is damaged.

What about the ports already in the walls?

Test them before you plan anything new. Plenty of houses have ethernet ports in every room and none of them working, and the usual reason is not the cable: nobody finished the other end, the ports were wired for a phone on one pair, or they were fitted off without being tested and the pairs are split.

Pull a plate off and look. Blue cable with eight wires is ethernet and can usually be made to work; thin cable with two or four wires is phone cable and cannot. If the cables run back to a cupboard or the garage and stop there, a switch and a patch panel at that end, tested and labelled point by point, is often the whole job. Cat5e vs Cat6 vs Cat6a covers whether older cable is good enough for a fast plan.

When a room needs more ports than it has points, a small switch adds them, and short leads connect each device.

We earn a small commission if you buy through our Amazon links, at no extra cost to you. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.

Gear mentioned here, on Amazon Australia

Product	What it is for	Link
TP-Link TL-SG105	5 ports, plug in and go	View on Amazon for the TP-Link TL-SG105 (opens in a new tab)
TP-Link TL-SG108	8 ports, plug in and go	View on Amazon for the TP-Link TL-SG108 (opens in a new tab)
UGREEN Cat6 lead, 2 m	Laptop to modem, modem to switch	View on Amazon for the UGREEN Cat6 lead, 2 m (opens in a new tab)

How does the cost estimator help?

The data cabling cost estimator turns this plan into a price range in about two minutes, before anyone visits. It asks the same questions we do, works out the time on site and the materials from the rates in our terms, and shows what could move the figure.

1. 1

   Count your points

   Use the room-by-room list above. A point is one socket with its own cable, so a double plate at the TV counts as two.

2. 2

   Answer the building questions

   The kind of building, how many storeys, whether there is a roof space you can get into, whether there is a way under the floor, and what the inside walls are. Not sure is an answer.

3. 3

   Say where the cables finish

   At the router, or in a cupboard on a patch panel with every cable labelled. Then whether there are wall ports already, and whether they work.

4. 4

   Pick any gear you want from us

   A network switch for more ports at the router, or WiFi access points on the ceiling, cabled back.

5. 5

   Send it for a firm price

   The estimate is an estimate, not a quote. Send it through for a quote, and if a floor plan or photos of the box and the walls would help, we ask for them when we reply.

When you need a technician, and when you don’t

You do not need anyone to make the plan. Counting the points, deciding where the TV and the desk will sit and marking up a floor plan are yours, and doing them first makes the quote quicker and more accurate. If you rent, or the house is on a slab with no cavities, it may turn out that a cable to one or two WiFi points, or mesh on its own, does what you need, and a WiFi technician can say which.

Putting the cable in is a registered cabler’s work: in Australia, fixed cabling in walls, ceilings or under the floor is done by a registered cabler, who certifies that it meets the wiring rules, as the ACMA’s guide to finding one (opens in a new tab) explains. When you are ready, send the estimate or the list through for a quote; we ask for the plan or photos when we reply if they help, and the quote comes back with options where it helps.