Good Lan set up for apts.

[Lorne]

I live in an apartment along with a few friends (in different non connected rooms ( buildings) ) about say 50 to 100 feet from eachother.
What would be the best equipment to set up a local lan to eachother ? Cableless or if it would work the ones that connect to telephone jacks.

What is the limit of a rj45 wiring?

 

[ojai00]

If you're not going to be sharing an internet connection, just get a hub or a switch and connect all the computers to it, and you should be fine. If you want to share a broadband connection, then get a router and a hub/switch. How many friends are you living with? You can hook 4 computers up to a router without having to add an extra hub. CAT5 RJ45 wiring is limited to 100Mbps, which is about 12 MB/s. Or if you want to go wireless, then get a wireless hub/switch/router. I'm not really too sure about wireless and how it works, but someone else will be able to help you. Good luck.

 

[DaveK]

The distance limitation for cat5 cable is around 300ft. For most wireless devices, it's around 100-150 ft. at 11Mbps. You can go farther at slower speeds if the devices support it. (ie. 5.5Mbps, 1Mbps, etc.)

I'm using wireless in my house for my laptop, and it works great.

DaveK

 

[flippinfleck]

Well, you say you live in an apartment. What are your landlord's rules about "upgrading" or remodeling the apt? If it's all good with him/her/them, your best bet would be cat5 cabling.

But that's a permanent type solution. What with putting cables in the walls and such. Although it would be a faster, more stable solution than wireless. It just depends on how much you want to invest (money and time) into this network.

 

[ktwebb]

Your definitely not going to get 11 meg at 100 feet indoors. Not unless you live in a warehouse but wireless is certainly a viable solution. Might want to wait a month for 802.11a if speed is an issue. You will still get considerable signal degradation and thus, slower speeds as you move away from the Access Point, but while 802.11b stops at 1 Megabit, the similar end cell for a 802.11a is 12 Mb. Still relatively fast. In the same room in turbo mode the advertised speed is 108 megabit. Understand that is not realistic. My testing has been about 35 mega bit in the nearest cell. still pretty good.

 

[777php]

Why not try homeplug technology? Check out this site to read up on it.

 

[Rapamatic]

I'm in a similar situation, we just ran cat5 down the hallway in our apartment... I little hot glue and some cable tacks go a long way. It doesn't look fantastic, but its inexpensive, and a lot faster and more secure than wireless.

 

[Garion]

You can't use your telephone wiring - That requires that everyone is connected together, sharing the same phone number. You aren't in the same apartment, so you have different phone cabling.

- G