Ethernet wiring--is it this simple?

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Bill V

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Some questions for those of you more familiar than me with wiring a home for an ethernet...



My house is new enough to have all the telephone wiring throughout the house done with Cat-5e wire. However, when I look at the distribution board in the basement, only four of the eight wires are plugged into the board--the rest are hanging loose, even though the board has spaces for them. It clearly is wired only for phone service, not for ethernet usage.



We only use two phone jacks in our house. One is for our main phone base--all the other phones in the house are wireless offshoots of that one main base. The other connects into our modem for DSL. All the phone jacks in the rest of the house are sitting vacant.



I'd like to connect a number of items in our house to the internet and/or an intranet using a wired connection. I'm thinking I could just use some of that existing wiring in the house to my advantage. Would it really be as simple as the following to turn most of my home's phone wiring system into a wired ethernet system?



1) Go to the distribution board and determine the three cables which are the phone company incoming line, the one going to the modem, and the one going to the main phone. Disconnect them from the board, and then connect them to each other (either by putting plugs on them and using a splitter, or by adding another board).



2) Run another Cat-5e cable from the computer to the distribution board. At the computer end, terminate it with an ethernet plug, and plug it into the router. Connect all 8 wires from that cable to the distribution board.



3) Take all the unconnected wires from cables connected to the distribution board, and connect them.



4) Go to all the unused four-wire phone jacks throughout the house, and replace them with eight-wire ethernet jacks.



Is that it? Or am I missing something?



Also, once I do this--there are a couple rooms in the house which don't currently have phone jacks, but which I will likely want to add an ethernet jack. However, there is no way to get a Cat-5e wire directly from the distribution board to those rooms. What I'm thinking to do instead is to go to a different room upstairs room which would now have a live ethernet port, and run a Cat-5e cables down through the wall from the attic to that port. At that jack, I'd add a splitter, so the jack can remain live while I can also connect the wire in the wall to the ethernet at that point. Then, up in the attic at the other end of that cable, I'd add a second distribution board--from which I can then connect Cat-5e cables running to any other room on that floor.



Does what I'm describing make sense--or are there technical details I'm not familiar with which are going to mess me up if I attempt this?



Thanks!!!!



Bill
 
Ethernet only uses 2 pairs so you really don't have to punch down all 8 wires but I always do. Its use position 1 and 2 for one pair and position 3 and 6 for the second pair. Remember each cable drop can only go to one jack, its not like phones in that respect.



 
This is the wiring project I was just working on.



Before

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After

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That sounds about right to me. The only thing I think I would do differently is put the dsl modem and router all right in the same area as the wiring panel. That would save you from running a line back from the computer area. You would have to terminate all the wiring on your board as rj45 and then just plug them into your router. You could do the same with the upstairs rooms that you are talking about except instead of running them all into a router it would be into a switch which would then have a single cat5 back down to the router. You can't really "split" cat5 (in computer uses)
 
Bill,



You got it. As JDB said, it's cool to have your broadband modem, wireless router and other gear in a wiring closet or next to your other wiring stuff. We have one corner of our basement where the cable, the telephone and breaker box all sit, and I put a shelf on the wood panel holding the breaker box, mounted a surge protector, and powered all the periphs (modem, voip box, wireless router), and put a 6 port ethernet patch panel there as well. That patch panel has cat5e that runs to three bedrooms upstairs, and two areas in our basement (home theater and home office).



TJR
 
This will not work. All off the jacks in your house will need to run back to a switch. You can not simply tie them together and get connectivity to every outlet.
 
Rob is correct, you will need to connect the network cables to a switch...(Not very expensive)

and you can use the existing wires in the walls by just buying new phone/network jacks and face plates.



Then again, it is cheaper with less labor to just put in a wireless router. They are not as fast as a hard wired connection, but probably still much faster than your Internet connection speed.



...Rich
 
Rich, part of the speed increase is not just internet connectivity, but internal connectivity. (For example, transferring programs from on Tivo unit to another.) In that case, the speed limitations of the internet don't apply.



JDBoxes, TJR, is there a need (or even if there isn't a need, is there any advantage) to have the modem or router adjacent to a computer?



Rob, when you say "this" will not work, are you referring to my proposal, or what JDB and TJR propose?



It's sounding like a) instead of the distribution panel, I need to use a "switch", b) I can use my router as the main "switch" in the basement, and c) I'll need another "switch" (a sub-switch?) up in the attic, which would take the signal from the primary switch in the basement, and distribute it from there to any jacks on the upper floor. I assume that such a switch requires independent power? If so, I will also need to add an electrical outlet up there.
 
Bill, My house was prewired to a panel in our master BR closet. It has the phone and ethernet jacks all in one place. I'll try to take a picture and post it so you can see what you'll need. There is a special punchdown panel you'll need for the ethernet lines vs. phone lines you want so you can plug in a patch cord from the router to the panel to get connectivity.



For your points above... #1 - I think you can do it, but I wouldn't cuz you need a different board for the ethernet lines anyway. #2 - Won't work. Phone and ethernet patch panels work different. #3 - Won't work. Can't do that with ethernet cables. #4 - Yes, you will have to do this.
 
Bill,



What you called a distribution panel I was thinking was a "patch panel".



I built my own patch panel using a modular faceplate/receptacle from home depot. It is moduler in that you can put cat5, coax, or phone sockets in it. It was a 6-opening faceplate (3 rows, 2 colums). I terminated 6 cat-5e runs into this box, and wired them all up with the Cat5e terminator blocks, sold to plug into that receptacle. You will find these in Home Depot. The other 6 ends to these cat5e runs terminate at wall sockets in various rooms in the house. I labeled each spot on the patch panel using a Brother P-Touch labeler as to its destination (Home Office, Home Theater, ...).



I put that patch panel about a foot from the shelf holding my broadband modem, and wireless broadband router.



The rest was easy. We have our broadband through cable, so...



1. Cable Coax to cable modem.



2. Cable modem to Broadband Router via short ethernet patch cable.



4. Connect 4 of the 6 rooms from the broadband router to the various ports on the patch panel described above.



My (as do most) broadband router only has 4 output ports. If and when I need more to fully connect the other rooms I don't have connected I will buy a lowcost switch to sit between the router and the patch panel so one port on the router can be fanned out to multiple ports on the switch, then to the currently vacant ports on the patch panel.



Lastly, the home office has multiple computers. There, I purchase a pretty good 12 port Netgear switch. That switch is wall mounted under a desk in the home office. So the terminated cat 5 (from the patch panel) comes into the room, a patch cable from it to the input on the switch, and I can plug any computer onto any output port on the switch.



You want to use switches, not routers, whenever you can to distribute a single run to multiple devices. Switches are faster than routers. You probably only need one router in your house...the one that is your broadband router. Broadband routers today act as a proxy of sorts, taking that one connection to the internet and sharing it among all the other connected devices in your house. As such, they include DNS server software, handing out local IP addresses to all the devices that connect, and share the external IP address provided by our provider and in use by the broadband modem. That's why you only need/want only one router.



That works for me, but YMMV (your mileage my vary).



P.S. As I said, I have a good setup where my modem and router are in the mechanicals area of our basement, not near ANY computers. That's where our cable and phone lines come into the house, and were we have our electrical breaker box. It just made sense to put everything there and run all the cat 5 from there to the various rooms.



I prefer that setup if you can make that happen.



TJR
 
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Bill V,

Was not aware that you were going to use TIVO systems on the network so I guess you would need a hard wired network for them if they do not have wireless capabilities? I only mention the Internet speed issue because most home wireless networks are used for Internet surfing with laptops anywhere around the house. Wireless has adequate speed for most home or office use to share Internet, Files, and Printers, but I don't know the requirements of the TIVO's



...Rich



 
Tivo units do have wireless capabilities (if you get the add-on USB Wireless-G Adapters). We have this, and it works--but none too quickly. If there's a show on one unit that you want to watch on the other, it takes roughly three to four times the duration of the show to transfer it to the other unit. I was thinking a wired system would work better. It would also clear up some of the sporatic spottiness of the connectivity our Wifi gives us.
 
Although not in english, this is a pretty decent pictorial of what you need to do.



As far as internet speeds, hardwiring with cat5 will only double the speeds you were getting over a typical wireless network. Most likely you have a 54 Mbps wirless router and the hardware limitations of a typical cabled network is 100 Mbps, assuming you are using standard 10baseT ethernet cards.





<img src="http://wwwens.uqac.ca/~pguerin/8SIF111/images/home-network-diagram.gif">
 
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Keep in mind though that wireless speeds of 54 Mbps are the theoretical max. In reality the most people will get is half that, and as you move further away from the router it is only going to drop more.
 
Rob, thanks for the diagram--that helps a lot.



Now, instead of having all the cables from the switch go to components, can I have one of them go to a second switch, which then distributes to additional components from there?
 
Each of the listed specs is the theoretical max. 10, 54, 100, 108, 1000.. In a perfect world you would achieve those speeds. In the real world there is interference and signal attenuation, and who knows what else. You reduce those issues by wiring (vs wireless) but chances are even wired you won't get 100 Mbps. Your speed at great distances will always be better wired vs wireless though. Thats why I wire everything I can, and fill in with wireless. Wireless is great for convenience, but if you actually need the speed it's not the right answer.
 
For the switches you can do it that way. But each wire is only capable of 100 mbps. So If it works for your wiring it's better to only have 1 switch per router port. Then you aren't limiting yourself as much.



It's highly unlikely that you will notice any difference though since more then likely you won't be using full bandwidth on more than one device at any given time.

 
Check the switches you are using. Some have a button to allow a switch to switch connection on a particular port. Others will need a crossover cable to allow for a switch to switch connection. Not sure if you are using home grade or professional grade equipment.
 
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