New home is wired with cat5

[ceemcbee]

Help! My new home is wired with cat5 cable and I can see the box with all the wires out in my garage. I recently connected my cable modem to one of the cable ports in the box and then proceeded to connect the ethernet cable from the box to my cable modem.

Afterwards, I was able to connect my pc in the basement to a drop that says "modem" and have internet access. I recently got a laptop with and purchased internet cable. I plugged into another outlet in the upstairs portion of my house and get nothing (network icon says nic unplugged).

Do I need a router or something to get the other drops in the house connected to the internet? I thought, since the whole house was wired, I only needed the cable modem at one location and the rest of the computers would get access. Is that were the router comes into play?

Can someone please point me in the right direction as to what hardware I need to purchase to allow me to connect to any port in the house and have internet access.

I hope this makes some sense, if not I'll try to explain again. Unfortunately, I have no diagram how the house was wired and the labeling on the wires aren't very good. It was done by Bell Atlantic and I guess it must be the phone and internet coming out of one box.

Thanks for any help!

 

[Concillian]

Yes, you need to have a router. Right now it would work if you had multiple static IPs and your boxes were each assigned their own internet IP address. But you want all your boxes sharing a single internet IP address behind a small local LAN. To do this, you need a router.

If your switch is auto-detect, you should be able to do:
cable --> cable modem --> SOHO router (like $50) --> switch
At that point you should be able to connect any wires in the house and it will pass through the switch to the router. You should not have to change any wiring that they did, only wiring from the switch to the source of the internet connection (cable in your case)

Most recent switches should auto detect an uplink. In this config (with a router) if any ONE port works for the internet, any other port in the house should too.

The bothersome part is that your laptop says NIC unplugged. This should not be happening if you are at least connected to the switch. Does your switch have a bunch of wires into it? or are there a bunch of empty ports? Maybe if you could take a picture of the cabinet it would help. Before worrying about the router, you need to be sure your PCs can see each other. Try getting them working with each other by unplugging the cable modem from the switch and seeing if the PCs recognize each other.

I don't know how up on terminology you are, but the switch is what will be on the other end of the network cable from the cable modem. There should be at least 4 pors on the switch. Can you tell us how many are open and how many are full, also how many ports you ahve in your house. The number of full ports in the switch (minus the cable modem's port) should be equal to the number of ports in your house.

 

[ceemcbee]

First of all -- Thanks for replying to my message. I will take a picture of my panel box in the garage and hopefully that will help explain my situation. I just purchased this house, and didn't get any details about how everything is configured but I'll do my best to explain. All I was told is that there is CAT5 throughout the house. -- Except in the basement, which is where I have my computer located. I'll explain more about that later.

In my garage there is a panel box that has ethernet cable ports and coax ports inside. It was put there by "Bell Atlantic" when the house was built.
It has several ports called internal/external which appear to have some sort of coax coming out of them and to the right is a panel that has many ports with ethernet cable coming out of them. Those cables have labels with various rooms throughout the house (FR, LR, Bed#1, etc.)

When I first moved in, I attempted to hook up my computer to my cable modem but realized there was no cable in this part of the basement. So, I went to the panel box in the garage and there was a splitter that had an empty coax port and that's what I used to screw into my modem. I then took one of the ethernet cables and plugged into my modem. Somehow, I am able to connect my computer (using an ethernet cable) into a socket on the downstairs wall that has a jack that says "modem". It's working and I get internet access just fine.

I know have a new laptop that has a built-in nic card and I thought that I could just purchase a new internet cable and plug into any port in the house and should get internet access. 2 things happen when I tried that -- 1) It knocked me off the phone (so the port I thought was a internet port appears to be a telephone port - I thought phones were rj11 and were smaller than rj45). The 2nd thing that happens is that the network connection on my laptop still says it's unplugged. It's not recognizing that I plugged it into the wall. I really don't know what I have in the house!

How do I upload the picture to this forum?

Thanks again.
ceemcbee

 

[JW310]

Originally posted by: ceemcbee
First of all -- Thanks for replying to my message. I will take a picture of my panel box in the garage and hopefully that will help explain my situation. I just purchased this house, and didn't get any details about how everything is configured but I'll do my best to explain. All I was told is that there is CAT5 throughout the house. -- Except in the basement, which is where I have my computer located. I'll explain more about that later.

In my garage there is a panel box that has ethernet cable ports and coax ports inside. It was put there by "Bell Atlantic" when the house was built.
It has several ports called internal/external which appear to have some sort of coax coming out of them and to the right is a panel that has many ports with ethernet cable coming out of them. Those cables have labels with various rooms throughout the house (FR, LR, Bed#1, etc.)

When I first moved in, I attempted to hook up my computer to my cable modem but realized there was no cable in this part of the basement. So, I went to the panel box in the garage and there was a splitter that had an empty coax port and that's what I used to screw into my modem. I then took one of the ethernet cables and plugged into my modem. Somehow, I am able to connect my computer (using an ethernet cable) into a socket on the downstairs wall that has a jack that says "modem". It's working and I get internet access just fine.

I know have a new laptop that has a built-in nic card and I thought that I could just purchase a new internet cable and plug into any port in the house and should get internet access. 2 things happen when I tried that -- 1) It knocked me off the phone (so the port I thought was a internet port appears to be a telephone port - I thought phones were rj11 and were smaller than rj45). The 2nd thing that happens is that the network connection on my laptop still says it's unplugged. It's not recognizing that I plugged it into the wall. I really don't know what I have in the house!

How do I upload the picture to this forum?

Thanks again.
ceemcbee

I recommend using http://pics.bbzzdd.com for picture hosting... then just post the links to the pictures here.

JW

 

[Concillian]

As far as telephone being wired into an RJ45, it's possible, and is done in some homes. I decided to keep my phone jacks RJ11 simply to be less confusing to anyone ELSE. Generally if you do RJ45 phone you'd do the phone and network ports in a different color jack (like phone = white and ethernet = blue or something).

So in your case you have two separate issues:
1) getting your laptop on the LAN
2) capability for the cable modem to be used by multiple PCs

1) should only be a matter of using the right port. It should show connected if it's plugged into anything that has something on the other end. Try it in the port where your computer is plugged into the wall and and it should at least show connected. No go through the ports in your house and verify which ones work for the ethernet.

2) can likely be done by simply plugging a router in between the cable modem and whatever the cable modem is plugged into.