Anyone building a new home or office would do well to prewire the structure with Cat 5e data cabling and RG-6 Coax. With one or two exceptions, cable and components are relatively inexpensive and easy to install during the construction phase. Labor cost to do the wiring can be fairly high but owners with a little mechanical and electrical aptitude can easily to the job. Those in existing homes without data wiring will find the task quite a bit more difficult but not impossible to accomplish.

The most desirable configuration is to have all cabling star or homerun back to a central location. This location would typically be a utility room that also includes an electrical load center. I personally prefer to locate cabling components on a simple painted plywood backboard rather than try to put everything in some type of cabinet but either will work. If you have satellite TV or wireless Internet, it's important to properly ground these feeds from outdoors for protection against lightning strikes. A nearby electrical load center can provide a good earth ground source for the cabling protectors. It's important to not daisy chain cable runs but run a dedicated cable from each location you want data or coax to appear back to your centralized wiring distribution point.

With the current very high price of copper, cable can end up being the most expensive item. The last time I looked, Cat-5e data cable was in stock at Home Depot for a relatively reasonable price. The same was true of RG-6 at the time but both can be purchased from several on-line sources. An excellent reference on Cat-5e cable and how it is connected can be found here. Cable terminating jacks can be found at Home Depot but are often cheaper on-line. At the central distribution point "110" type blocks are typically used to terminate the cabling. These blocks are good for up to 100 Mbit speed. For higher speeds such a 1 Ghz and 10 Ghz, Siemons S210 blocks are typically used. Cat-5e cable with different jacks can, of course, also be used for standard analog telephone wiring. In a typical home or small business network, the only remaining components are switches, a singe router and patch cords to tie everything together. To use single or multiple printers from a common location, a print server is typically installed. Cost of a reliable Ethernet switch can be as low as $12.25 for a five port switch. A typical router from the same company runs $25.00. Check with your Internet Service Provider (ISP) to determine what they normally supply vs. the customer. Telephone companies are especially bad about supplying/requiring components that have proprietary software loads that limit what the customer can do.

Any metallic cable feed that comes into your structure from outside should be routed through a protector. If you run cabling between buildings or structures, a protector should be installed on each end and grounded to the local electric load center. All of this is, of course, for lightning protection. Local telephone companies will install protectors on their cable feeds but everything else is likely your responsibility. A typical product line can be viewed at this address.

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