Wired Ethernet at Home: Still a Great Idea

Wired gigabit Ethernet is going into our home remodel and I am sooo glad we did that. I will detail how I did it, including setting up dual digital TV tuners, a media server, DVR, HTPC, large-screen projection system, dual-band WiFi, VOIP phone, better-than-average WiFi security, and most of a 1000-foot roll of Cat5e. I've tried to do it all relatively cheaply too.

Why is (wired) Ethernet better than WiFi?

1. More secure, if you care about that. Much harder for someone to sniff your wired Ethernet.
2. Much better throughput. 1000BaseT is over 4X faster than 2.4 GHz WiFi and 2X faster than 5 GHz.
3. No channel congestion. Use a sniffer (e.g. Fing or WiFi Analyzer) and it's astonishing how clogged 2.4 GHz is. No one else is on your wired Ethernet but you. 
4. Easier management of guests: they just plug in. No need to enter their MAC addresses into a table of allowed WiFi clients.
5. Wire is cheap: 1000 feet of Belden UTP Cat 5e is $136 online. Jacks and other hardware are reasonable too. You do have to wire up the jacks and connect to switches. But this is easier than you might think. If I can do it, so can you.

Why is WiFi better than wired?

1. Those damn wires. It is a bit of a hassle plugging in. WiFi is so easy. But like too often eating fast food, easy does not mean best or even good.
2. Those damn wires: retrofitting into an existing building can be a hassle. In my case, we are tearing out most of the walls anyway so we have a golden opportunity.
3. Phones, tablets, and even some netbooks don't have an RJ45 jack, so they have not choice but WiFi.
4. No switches, jack, routers to deal with. Well, at least fewer than with WiFi.

More to come!