My system is ... well, not ready

@erik_squires 

Well, glad to hear it is NOT a catastrophe! Again, hope you get beyond this quickly.

Before buying this house I got really excited that most of the rooms had 2 Ethernet jacks. Fabulous! No more dropped streaming signals! No more competing with Wifi with the neighbors! I was ready for 1 GigE to all my Roku streaming devices!

Well, not so fast...

Turns out the data panel in the closet is a straight pass through with no jacks.  That is, it's a set of eight punch down terminals, all wired to each other.  That means I can't use more than 2 devices at a time in the whole house. 

OK, replaced the data panel with an 8 gang punch down to female RJ45. 

Now I can use an Ethernet switch and light them all up with independent data paths, but wait!  The wiring at the wall is all wrong, so I get to punch those down again.  Sigh.

3 1/2 hours later and I have 3 ports in the house enabled.  Only took a punch down tool and Ethernet test kit.

A week after moving in, I have installed a whole-house surge suppressor.

Siemens has a hard to find unit called "BoldShield" which are in panel protectors. $150 at HD or Lowe's currently.


I learned two things:

1. Surge suppressors are required as of NEC 2020, including remodeling work.
   
2. You can use multiple BoltShields, to give protection across ground AND neutral and increase the current protection before it's completely disabled. This seems like expensive excess to me.
   

"  This seems like expensive excess to me."

Hello Erik,

     Isn't 'expensive excess' the standard operating procedure in this hobby?  

Enjoy,
 Tim