New House Network

[Poontos]

Greetings,

Envrionment:
New house in construction, dry-wall installed next week.

Requirments:
1.) Several rooms wired with CAT?(what would you recommend -best bang for buck). 8+ port Switch probably in the basement.
2.) Wireless internally and between two homes (this one and another one) 1000ft.

Any suggestions on hardware, tips, anything really, would be very much appreciated!

 

[amdskip]

You could either go with Cat 5e (10/100/1000) or Cat 6 which is still kinda a new technology. I would personally go the Cat 5e route (Gigabit in a house should last forever) and wire rooms up with cable coax (just do it now even if you don't have cable) and phone all in one jack. Looks real nice when you are all done. Cat 6 is more expensive as are the connectors for it.

When you run whatever cable you choose, do yourself a favor and run twice as many cables as you need to every location. Just leave them in the wall and someday you can thank me because you will need that cable you ran. Some people say to run the wire in pvc tubing so you can put a string in the tubing and pull cables through in the future but I've never done this and you really don't need pvc IMHO.

 

[cmetz]

Run conduit - then you can pull different cables later to upgrade.

 

[Poontos]

Thanks guys!

Any others?

 

[Praetor]

An old article I bookmarked from slashdot for just such an occasion.

 

[alocurto]

I did that about 4 years back. I put 3 cat5e in each room and 2 RG6 with infrared recievers so I could control my DVD changer from any room in the house. You may want to look into running fiber if you can get a good price and you intend to have the house for a while.

 

[TJN23]

home depot has nice wall plates, jack modules, snap in coax, cat5e, rca, and telephone modules all made by Levitron...they are really nice and I've installed some myself already in our new house...

you can also get your cat5e in bulk there like i did...

 

[Poontos]

Thanks for the info. Any more tips/experiences?

 

[JackMDS]

If you are not experienced with RJ-45 crimping do not crimp.

It is much easier, and better results to Install in the wall Keystone Jacks, and connect the computers with commercial made RJ-45 to the wall.

The following link will provide an actual description.
Link: Physical Home Networking

Link: How To Terminate & Assemble Keystone Jacks.

You can buy in Home depot, or on line here.

Link: http://www.9thtee.com/networking.htm

Link: Ethernet CAT5 Patch Cables.

If you insist on crimping, full instructions here.

Link: How to make CAT5

To avoid future headaches, do Not Wire Crossover in the wall.

For occasional use of Crossover cable you can use a Reversed Coupler.

Link: Reversed Coupler

Two Straight Cable with this Coupler make a Crossover cable.

In very general terms, evaluating CAT5e cables for Home LANcan be done by:

1. Measuring DC continuity.

2. Using RF signal.

3. Commercially Certifying the Cable.

The 1st method is basically useless, since DC continuity can be OK yet the Cable will be very poor RF conduit. (The cable has to deal with a 100Mb/sec. signal).:Q

To employ the 2nd method. For about $50-$100 you can find a Tester that is constructed of two units.

One unit is placed at one end and inject RF signal to the Cable, the second unit receives the signal (or not).

Cables tested by this method are fairly safe to use.

Example: KTCT-902 Lan Cable Tester.

The 3rd option involved very expensive hardware made by Fluke Co. However it is the way the pro go.

This is the Entry Level Tester ($600).

Link: Fluke 620 LAN