Home networking cable or wireless

[Daysleeper]

I'm in the middle of building a house and have the opportunity to wire it for LAN. It would be a fairly simple affair of a hub in the study in the middle of the house and about 6 "outlets" one in each bedroom and 2 in the lounge. It would be mainly to share a single ADSL connection but also printer/scanner and perhaps a central storage hard drive. The question is ; is it worth doing or shall I stick with the wireless network I'm running at the moment?

If it is worth doing does anyone have any recommendations as to network switches or similar.

TA.

[seacue]

I am strongly in favor of wired networks due to their simplicity and security.

But houses endure for a long time. Network technology is sure to change a lot within a few decades. This will render today's wire networks obsolete. Not only the protocols and switches, but the cables themselves. Note the different spec Ethernet cables as speeds have increased.

Given my aversion to wireless, I see three possible routes.
1) Permanently install the highest spec of today's Ethernet cable.
2) Similar to (1), but put cable in conduit so that higher-spec replacement cable can be pull through in later decades.
3) Scheme (1) but realize that you'll probably want to switch to wireless within a decade or two.

No doubt most replies will advocate using wireless straight away.

seacue

[Gouabafla]

If you've got the chance, and it isn't going to cost to much, put some conduit and wiring in. As Seacue says, you will probably want to upgrade it sometime, but we also don't know what is coming round the corner in terms of connectivity in the home. Having the conduit there opens up possibilities that we haven't even thought of yet.

[Mac the Knife]

Agree with seacue

These two strings walk into a bar and sit down.
The bartender says, "So what'll it be?".
The first string says, "I think I'll have a beer è+? +›++ "=/¦) ¦=-+¦+Pquag f b o^CjfdLk jk3 #f67 ho^U r9n vy ~~o wmc 63 ^Dz."
"Please excuse my friend," the second string says, "He isn't null-terminated."

[Capn Notarious]

Cat five cable and ethernet sockets all over the place, that was my choice. At installation first fixing, put in the biggest conduits. More sockets and conduits means more flexibility.

[bladewashout]

I did cat5 everywhere in conduits, with the design philosophy that I wanted to have sufficient cable access to be able to change the cable in future. I'd probably use Cat6 now.

You can't have enough! Minimum of a connection in opposite corners of each room, always run 2 cables to each point (waste of time doing 1, you'll always want another). I also ran some to the garage....

You need ONE central hub with a patch panel 0 once done, you'll reap the rewards for years.

If you use 20 or preferably 25mm conduit, re-running cable will not be a problem.

I'm looking at replacing a few runs with fibre now to do some audio patching :hmm:

Wireless aint too good through several layers of wall, and Gigabit ethernet for backups saves a lot of time over even 100Mb ethernet. I do use wireless, but just for convenience.

BW

[Conan the Librarian]

Built in is great, providing that you have conduits to allow replacement/more to be shoved through etc. The only thing is that although you can make a discrete installation to every room (Thought of bunging Hi Fi speaker cables in as well?) Sods' Law states that your output sockets will be on the opposite side of the room to wherever and whoever it is, decides they want the equipment, so dont be surprised if you end up in a year or two having a wireless gateway after all this


Conan

[seacue]

More outlets:
Every time I've had to run a wire from one side of a room / office to the opposite side I discover that at least 30 ft (10 m) of cable is required - no matter how small the room. Scatter outlets around the room. In my county, electrical outlets are required at least every 10 ft (3 m) in new construction. Computer outlets probably don't need to be as dense on the ground, but think about it.

[Keef]

I remember my firm spending several million pulling double coaxial cables through the walls to sockets spread all over the building. Within a couple of years, they were obsolete and new cables had to be pulled (all over again).

Put in conduit! Put in the cable you think you're going to need for the next five years. Who knows what's coming after that!

[Daysleeper]

So is the cost of cat 6 or cat 7 worth the extra from cat5e ?

And has anyone any experience of UK avaliable brands of cable/outlets or a central node thingy.

[Saab Dastard]

Suggest you have a look at a tutorial about Cat 5 and above Ethernet cabling.
For Example (http://www.lanshack.com/cat5e-tutorial.aspx)

Bear in mind that Cat 5e supports gigabit ethernet - in a switched environment (assuming switch ports are Gb), that provides 2Gb bandwidth per device, using full duplex. That's a heck of a lot of data - you can easily stream HDTV over that. It's 1000 times more than a chunky broadband internet connection!

Cat 6 supports 10Gb ethernet. The mind boggles!

Cat 5 / 5e / 6 are all ratified standards, and are backwards compatible.

Cat 7 is not yet ratified - although the standard is generally agreed - and is NOT compatible with any of the others - no more RJ45!!

Bear in mind that Cat 5 - 5e - 6 are physically identical, the difference being that they are made to a progressively higher tolerance and - crucially - installation, termination and connection are also carried out to a higher standard.

Thus it is perfectly possible for a well-installed Cat 5 system to support GB ethernet (particularly over short distances), while a poorly installed Cat 5e may struggle to actually provide GB up to 100m. This I have witnessed!

It is therefore essential to ensure that all components - not just the cables - are rated to the standard required and installed to the tolerances required.

If I had the choice I would go with Cat 6, but I would accept 5e if cost was an issue!

So of course the answer is - fibre! ;)

[bladewashout]

You need a wall mounted 19" rack, about 20U high with a nice glass door, about £150 and you need two or three 24-way patch panels, i.e.

http://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Main_Index/Computer_Accessories_Index/Network_Patch_Panels/index.html

You also need a 19" rack-mountable hub or some 19" shelves to put a little hub on. You mount your ethernet hub in the box and patch the outlets you want live through to the hub. You can also wire your telephones into the patch panels, and then patch phone outlets to any RJ45 outlet. I also have things like infra-red remote control distribution going through the cables!

BW

[Daysleeper]

Thanks for the links though I got a bit lost a 568a and 568b.

Am I right I can put my ADSL signal from my router into the patch panel and it will split it XX ways.

Is it worth puting phone cables through as well?

[Saab Dastard]

[QUOTE=Daysleeper]Am I right I can put my ADSL signal from my router into the patch panel and it will split it XX ways.QUOTE]

No.

A Patch Panel is for connecting the physical cables around the house to an Ethernet network device such as a hub or switch.

Wall socket - physical cable - patch panel. It is a distribution system only - just like a telephone exchange.

So if you connect your ADSL modem to (say) patch socket 1, all you are doing is connecting the ADSL modem to the wall socket cabled to patch socket 1.

You should think of each socket on the patch panel needing a one-one relationship with a port on a switch or hub.

Now, if you plug your ADSL modem into switch port 1 (may require x-over cable) and connect switch port 2 to a patch socket, and connect your PC to the corresponding wall socket, you have connected the ADSL modem and the PC.

Just continue connecting switch ports to patch sockets to enable other PCs to connect to the ADSL and to each other.

So in summary, you need a network device (hub or switch) in addition to a patch panel.