Would you LAN-ify your home?

simon333

Hey,

looking to buy a house, and it's not built yet, so there might be scope in getting them to put ethernet ports in several rooms. Has anyone here done such a thing?

My current house (rental), I've a 35m LAN cable running from the modem downstairs up to the bedroom, and it's basically a bit messy for long term.

Simon

sunnysoutheast

If you can get it done when building then you should definitely put the cables in at least - even if you never use all of them.

We've put 2 or 4 CAT5e cables to every room (except bathrooms!) plus extra upstairs for phones running back to a location in the garage. I'm about half way through terminating it all.

SSE

neacy69

With wifi becoming more and more common in devices these days would this not be pointless when a wifi router can do the same job?

sunnysoutheast

Our house has r/c floors and foil-backed insulation everywhere. No usable wireless signal penetrates from the router in the garage.

Wireless has serious privacy and security issues and is easily hacked.

A wifi router will have nowhere near the performance of a properly-configured wired network.

If you can add the cables at build stage it's an absolute no-brainer to run at least a few cables, 300m of CAT5e is what, €80?

My opinion anyway.

SSE

neacy69

sunnysoutheast wrote: »

Our house has r/c floors and foil-backed insulation everywhere. No usable wireless signal penetrates from the router in the garage.

Wireless has serious privacy and security issues and is easily hacked.

A wifi router will have nowhere near the performance of a properly-configured wired network.

If you can add the cables at build stage it's an absolute no-brainer to run at least a few cables, 300m of CAT5e is what, €80?

My opinion anyway.

SSE

I know of the privacy and security issues (all of which can be easily overcome with a basic knowledge) but what I'm saying is that your average joe soap will only want to share internet access and is it worthwhile to spend €80 on cabling and time and effort on configuring and maintaining....

I agree with you entirely on the usefullness and preformance of a properly wired network but is what I am trying to say that it may not be worthwhile for the OP depending on its intended uses....

FusionNet

neacy69 wrote: »

With wifi becoming more and more common in devices these days would this not be pointless when a wifi router can do the same job?

Ok can we all just step away from the Wi-Fi...!!!

Look Ive been at this a long time and Ill put money on it, wi-fi is not going to replace the wired network for a long long time. Firstly there are serious security issues, I have a friend that can hack WEP in under five mins. There is compatablity and backwards compatible problems. There are too many interested parties and it also has a very very short shelf life. Cat5 came out many many years ago and is still being used today, wi-fi has been replaced at least four or five times since. Also you just do not (in a commercial instance) have the flexibilty with wi-fi. If I need to jumper a leased line, and ISDN, a digital phone and computer across a commercial building its simple, with wi-fi it only works for certain things. Today I needed to bounce voice, video and data around a building because the sparky wired it incorrectly. It was no bother....

So after that rant. Yes wire your house up to the teeth. More and more equipment will be put across data cables in the next few years. Between, voice, high def CCTV, high def video, audio you name you can pretty much stream it across a well wired, well connected CERTIFIED compuyter networks.

neacy69

Look I agree with both you FusionNet and Sunnysoutheast and I am not saying you are incorrect in anything you are saying.....especially with security and performance issues


What I am saying is that if the OP simply wants to use his desktop in the attic and his laptop in the bog and any other simple home device in another room then he might same himself some hassle and some cash by just using a wi-fi router......

ps anybody who is still using wep deserves to hacked!!

sunnysoutheast

Laptop in the bog? ewwww

Anyway if you're just browsing t'internet you could be right.

The issues could come when you're trying to combine heavy downloads with streaming music/video internally etc. - a friend of mine had to go and sit in the garage with his laptop plugged into the router directly for this combination to work. Eventually he bought two Powerline network adapters to avoid this and he's happy, although he still has issues with >2 PCs connected and music streaming, I think the router's melting.

I remember we got back from holiday once and were quite happily using wireless internet for a couple of days in our old house, until we noticed that our cable modem and router were turned off at the mains. We never did find out whose network we were using.

SSE

Snaga

Whichever way you look at it - it will never be cheaper to get the cabling in than during the build. If there is the slightest chance you might use it - then get the cabling done now.

If you can, get a nice little patching cabinet and have the installers patch everything back to a neat 24-port patch panel. This will make later cabling life much easier. (You can always disconnect a cable if you want to run one of the cables to a set of speakers or something) - but most things will run over IP in the next few years.

If it was me Id dedicate a closet to the job and leave some room for a switch, server and whatever other FutureTech that will be in our homes in 5 years time

FusionNet

Wiring a house from build is cheap as cheaps. If possible Id pull in the cables and if funds dry up leave them un-terminated but at least your future proofed. But certainly use wi-fi at the start but trust me if you dont at least pull in the cables you will regret it. All my opinion is based on the fact that I presume you will be staying here for some time. If you are only going to settle for a couple of years then maybe it is not worth it.

On the Wi-fi, 50% of all wi-fi networks are un-secure, scary eh?

FruitLover

Apart from security issues, it's doubtful that wi-fi will be able to compete with wired ethernet for bandwidth. Currently, gigabit ethernet NICs are the standard in new home computers, and I don't know of any wireless ethernet adapters that can touch that kind of speed. If you wire the gaff with Cat6, you should be future-proofed for 10gig.

simon333

Interesting views from all. And I certainly don't discount wi-fi.

But, for example, I have a wireless Philips device at my TV (downstairs) that streams movies from my PC (upstairs), and the connection just isn't good enough. I'm not sure how I would do it for a wired connection, but it would be cool to have a connection between both rooms, and the internet.

Another basic example is that I prefer to run torrent downloads over the wired network, as I don't like having gigabytes of data floating through my head. Having a wired access point for a desktop in several rooms would be good.

For the setup, would you run all the cables from each room to a switch you have somewhere in the house?

Simon

sunnysoutheast

hi Simon

Essentially, yes. You bring them all back to a convenient location - remember to put a couple of cables to this location from wherever your phone/internet comes in if not the same place.

Also put in a few sockets here. Get yourself a cabinet, couple of patch panels and some basic tools off eBay and you're away. I got a 24 port Gigabit switch for about GBP80. You can use the router you get from Eircom etc. to distribute internet or get a proxy server going.

The main reason I put all this in was for distributing music and video around the house, most of these devices now have NICs in them - some even have mini-switches with 2 or 4 additional ports. I'll probably put the Sonos kit in for music and I'm tempted to get a couple of Shuttle XPCs to act as PVRs.

Remember CAT6 needs to be installed very carefully to get 10Gb performance, kinks, sharp turns etc. will ruin it.

If you're only sticking around for a couple of years and want stuff you can take with you I can receommend the Devolo HomeplugAV adapters (they would remove your current 35m patch cable ).

SSE