How are homes being installed? Do most homes have their router/modem in the living room were the hopper will be installed? My modem/router is not, it resides in a different room. Are most homes just drilled in the ceiling or floor and RG6/cat5 dropped into the room? or are people upping the extra $50 an hour wire management fees and having cat 5 put in the walls? The ethernet connection on the joey, what is it for? Thanks guys for sharing your experience/knowledge.
That really depends on the situation and what type of service they have. If you have cable internet it could be in living room with a wireless router, sounds like the most logical place for it. If it's DSL then it could be anywhere as most homes would not have a phone line at the TV.
Most installers are paid based on the number of installs they do. With that said, they will do the easiest route for the install that also looks the best for the time. I very seriously doubt there is a cable dropped from the ceiling unless there is absolutely no other option, then they would probably install a cable track to make it look neater. Most installs will be drilled through the floor right next to the baseboard and run through crawl space or basement if possible, then others will have a cable run along the outside of the house and a hole drilled from the outside to the inside and they might put a plate or other type of box there. I doubt most people are paying the $50/hr to have it run properly and i also doubt most installers would have the time saving tools to install it through the walls, so since the installers would not have much more than a drill and fishing rod, the amount of time increases for the install, and having just 2-3 drops could take 2-3 hours for a single installer. Having two installers doing a cable drop decreases the time required tremendously, but I doubt that is the case most times. Now, as far as Dish installers, I very seriously doubt they have cat5/6 in their truck to do an install. Now if you have the cable already, and where the end of the rg-6 was going to be located was ok with you for the cat5/6, then it would take no extra time to run the extra wire and i doubt they would mind doing it. If the rg-6 was terminating differently than the cat5/6, then they probably would run it down the wall for you, cut it, and let you run it after that leaving it bundled up in the attic.
An ethernet connection is not required on the Joey except for the apps to work properly, but you do not have to run ethernet to the Joey, just make sure your Hopper is connected to the internet, and turn on bridging and it will share the network over MoCA.
I just recently did my whole home in a central wiring with both RG-6 and cat6, and I did it with minimal help from my wife and using a fishing rod only with no other location type device. This took me a while because I had to try and figure out where my walls were in the attic, then once I thought I was close to the wall, I had to dig under the insulation to find the header, then there was several times I drilled in the wrong wall cavity and had to redrill it several times. I have also done installs with mangepull and magnespot and doing the install is 1000x simpler and 1000x faster. With that you would put the remote receiver right next to the wall on the ceiling where you want the jack, go into attic, locate the transmitter which is accurate to a very small amount, like 1/8", drill the hole in the header, drop the magnet pull with the cables attached in hole, go back downstairs, attach the magnet puller to the wall, pull it down to your hole, and you're done. I spent about 7 hours doing 5 drops with rg-6 and cat6 on each drop, one drop had 1 rg-6 and 3 cat6, cutting the holes, putting low voltage old work boxes, punching down the cables, putting plates on, making a central wiring location in the closet with a punch block for both cat6 and rg6, relocating my DSL line, relocating my satellite feed lines, the node, router, modem, switch and my wireless access point and my server to that location. By far I am happier because I have so much room for expansion plus I have several locations to be able to re arrange the rooms and I have a cat6 and coax connection and all I have to do is make sure the jumper is connected to the right port on the punch down to the node and switch.
