You'd never dream of building a home without air conditioning or indoor plumbing. These are basic infrastructure needs for any building.  It would be tremendously short-sighted not to consider your networking plan in any facility you are working on today--whether you are planning it, building it, or currently in it and using it. I believe a wiring plan can be useful even within the context of the church and its facilities--and moreover can significantly improve the long-term stewardship of technologies and technology funds.

There are two reasons why a networking plan is important.  First, you will need it to support your technologies.  Besides your general office computer needs, so many other areas of your infrastructure are becoming network-capable. For a church, sound and lighting systems, HVAC systems, copiers, video systems, telephones and fire and security control systems--all of these are becoming networked.  The low cost of networking cable makes it affordable to have a facility prepared to support the activities within it.

Secondly, the cost of implementing networking from the outset is several orders of magnitude less than doing it after the fact.  The typical cost for wiring a building for ethernet or phone systems will be about 4 to 5 times more if done after initial construction.  And it likely won't be as useful, because sometimes you can't get cables to where they need to go after the walls are up.  You may counter, "Hey, we can just go wireless." That's true, but some systems will always need a hardwired connection (security, fire control, or HVAC for instance), and the fact is that a hardwired connection is always going to be more reliable, and it's also cheaper.

What kinds of things should you consider when wiring your building to support your network?

The hub. Start with a room where all your cable terminates.  A central hub can be as small as a closet or as big as a network center, but you'll want to plan on the space ahead of time.  If your building is already built, you'll need to designate a hub.  It should be centrally located and easy to access.  It should have dedicated power circuits, good ventilation and room for equipment racks.

Many hubs end up being in maintenance closets, stuffed next to the air handling machines on the lowest floor away from everything. Trouble with these locations is that fire code often means they have to be sealed by firewalls, so adding cable later means drilling through brick or concrete, if that is even allowed. Worse, they get stuffed with stored boxes or stuck behind cleaning supplies, where access during troubleshooting means clearing a bunch of stuff out of the way. 

Storing materials in an electrically-charged environment like your communications hub will also likely be a violation of fire code in your area.  Space is always a premium in a church building, but play it smart, bite the bullet and designate a room for your wiring hub.  A good hub will save you time, energy and money down the road.

Wire everywhere.  Run wire to every room in the building.  A single Category-5E cable can carry virtually any kind of data.  Have an Ethernet outlet on the wall of every room.  One such outlet in a room means you can hook up a computer, access the internet, hook up a phone and receive and transmit video and audio in that space--and that's just for starters.  Remember, networks can grow like trees.  If a room eventually becomes an office or is broken into several rooms, you can add a smaller hub at the Ethernet outlet to increase the number of available ports. 

Wire your maintenance closets, your kitchen, your lobby, your out-buildings, your classrooms.  The time is quickly coming when your heating unit will call for service when it's not working right, your refrigerator will order food to restock itself, your toilets will call your cell phone when they back up, your security cameras will email photos to the police if they see suspicious activity late at night. If none of these ideas have ever occurred to you, don't worry--somebody's already working on them.  But they're going to need to wire in to your network to make it happen.

Plan for wireless access.  Wireless computer access (802.11 or Bluetooth) is everywhere. Though you may not be able to afford wireless nodes in your facility, when you wire go ahead and put in cable to connect future wireless nodes to the network hub.  Plan on putting wireless nodes in heavy-traffic areas where access may be needed--your lobby, Fellowship Hall and office meeting areas would fall into this category.  Wireless access is often less secure than wired networks, so there are benefits and drawbacks to both approaches.  Mark my words, though, you will need wireless access, so plan for it!

Make a map.  For heaven's sake, have a detailed, accurate and accessible map of your network.  This will include labeling all of your wall outlets, wireless points and hub arrangement.  If you hire a company to wire for you, they will likely not make a complete and detailed map for you.  Insist on this.  When troubleshooting, expanding the network, moving offices around or upgrading equipment, a good network map is essential.  How good is your map?  Can you trace any phone from it's desk to the line coming into your building?  Can you trace any computer to your internet access or printers?  If your answer to either of these questions is, "I don't know," then you need a network map.

Plan for speed.  How fast is your network?  The old standard was 10Base-T (10 megabits per second) a few years ago.  Now we have gigabit Ethernet (1000Base-T).  The cabling for this type of network is only slightly more expensive, but carries 100 times the bandwidth--enough to send all the full-frame, full-motion HD video you want from point to point within the office (if your hub is fast enough, that is).  No matter what you have right now, you are eventually going to need much, much more bandwidth.  Plan for speed by looking at how you can increase your network's capacity in the future. If you're at the limit today, don't find yourself limited again at your next upgrade.

Cost for these technology components will not always be a major consideration. What cost thousands a few years ago costs hundreds today. So some of the technologies that are out of reach now might be mainstream, and could save you money and resources in future years. But not wiring properly from the start could increase the expense of simple exansions tremendously in the future.

About the Author. Eugene Mason has more than two decades of experience in ministry communications and technologies. More...