Best place to buy keystone jacks?

[JW310]

I'm looking into running a few network drops in my apartment, and am looking into places to buy what I'll need. I figure I'll need 10 Cat5e or Cat6 keystone jacks, 4 keystone jacks with a coax feedthrough, and roughly 200 feet of either Cat5e or Cat6 cable. What are the best sources for these? I'm trying to keep costs down as much as I can, but don't want to sacrifice quality for a low price.

Thanks.

 

[akshatp]

Home Depot/Lowes sells these but they are a bit steep on the jacks. When I say steep, I am comparing to what you could buy them for from a distributor. I have bought 1000ft box of good quality Cat5e cable for around $50-$53 from HD in the past. Price fluctuates based on the price of copper, so it may be +/- a few dollars.

If you are in NJ, there is a place in Dayton called Archtech that manufacturers them and are REAL cheap for the jacks. Not sure if they sell to the general public though.

Also, try blackbox.com I know they do network stuff.

Other than that, google search for "keystone" ?

 

[JW310]

Thanks for the reply. Around here, a 1000ft box of Cat5e at HD is ~$91 (even just for Riser, not even Plenum-rated). I'll have to check Lowe's. As for the jacks, all I've seen at HD & Lowe's are Cat5e jacks. I'd like to go with Cat6 if possible, but will settle for Cat5e if that's what it comes down to. A google search had turned up quite a few vendors who sell keystone jacks.

I was wondering if there's one vendor that's better than another for buying the jacks, or if I should be worried about the quality of the jacks from the least expsive vendors? I'll have to check out the prices at blackbox.

 

[wexsmith]

I'm always partial to Monoprice myself. Shipping is very reasonable, they combine shipping and they're close enough, for me, to drive and pickup large orders. I've yet to be disappointed with quality too.

http://www.monoprice.com/products/subdepartment.asp?c_id=105&cp_id=10513&style=

Too bad I don't get a deal for linking them.

 

[skyking]

Don't bother with CAT6 jacks unless you get CAT6 wire, patch panel, etc.
http://www.deepsurplus.com

These folks have been good to me for this size of job. For bigger jobs, I deal with graybar or platt locally, they deliver.

 

[JW310]

Thanks for that info. I don't plan on doing too complicated of a wiring job in the apartment. One jack in each of the 3 bedrooms, plus one in the living room and one in the dining room, coming together on a wallplate between the living room and dining room. The common wallplate would serve as the patch panel in this case.

I also want to add coax jacks to the 3 bedrooms and the common wallplate, with a splitter in the basement for cable TV.

Would of course need the landlord's approval to do the wiring, but I figure I'll at least see what it's going to cost me before even proposing it to him. If it turns out to be too expensive, then I'm just going to deal with wireless around the apartment.

 

[skyking]

I used a couple of 6 hole wall plates to do just that in my house. I did not have a good closet for a network center, so I ran 9 drops to the two plates and certified it. The extra holes were filled up with coax for the cable internet and phone drops
Be sure to drag two wires while you are at it to any location that might get a second computer OR a network printer. Cheers!

 

[JW310]

Eh, normally I would run the extra wire, but in this case I'm just going to run the cables for the drops that I'm putting in right now. The landlord provided cat5 runs between the 3 bedrooms, leaving one bedroom to be the room where the cable modem and router would go. I'd prefer to have that equipment in a common part of the apartment, as opposed to one's bedroom, just so it's in a more convenient place in the event it needs to be power-cycled or whatever, so I'm going to see if he'll let me do the wiring myself.

Since I've got a first-floor apartment, I should just be able to drop the cables down to the basement and run them along the joists in the basement. Seeing how the installer for the existing cat5 runs mounted the wallplates and ran the cable, I should be able to do something similar for the drops I'd be putting in. Just a matter now of getting a layout together and getting the landlord's approval.

Thanks for the link to deepsurplus.com - looks like I'll be ordering my jacks and wallplates from there if/when the time comes. Think I'll have to find a local distributor for the cable, though. Home Depot and Lowe's around here only carry Cat5e cable.

 

[cmetz]

JW310, check Lowes. Their jack system looks suspiciously like Ortronics' TrackJack.

Home Depot's Leviton jack system sucks. Don't get it.