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The Myriad Ways of Wiring Your Home?
Wired, or Wireless? RickMuller asks: "I have a cable modem feeding into an ethernet hub in my house, of off which I string anywhere from 2-5 different computers. Currently these are all clustered near the cable modem itself. I would like to be able to spread the computers through my house, and particularly to be able to bring my laptop to other parts of the house and still be able to work online. I'm considering either hiring an electrician to wire the walls, or finding some wireless format. Wireless is definitely cooler, but I'm a little bit scared off by the 'tower of babel' of different formats. Plus the expense is a consideration. Can anyone else offer an opinion on wireless vs. wired at home, and if wireless, which wireless format?"
Sticking with the open solution is always the best, so I would go with an IEEE 802.11 based network for the wireless segment. Are there any wireless cards that do not grok 802.11? If so, then I'd stay well away from these unless the cost savings are really huge, which I doubt.
Building the Home of the 21st Century! Cactii submits: "My wife and I are thinkng about buying a home soon. We both have our own ideas about what the place is going to be like and the immediate improvements we will make to the existing structure of the house. My ideas involve electronic interfaces to different areas of the house. Wiring the house for a network and using the computer for almost everything that it can be used for.
First off - I'm going to wire the living room or family room into a total entertainment center. It'll have the usual stereo, TV, DVD, VCR, etc... However there'll also be a computer connected to a proxy server that allows instant internet access. The computer will allow us to surf the net and download MP3's to be played right off the computer hard drive through the stereo and other things as well.
I've been looking around for other 'Wired Home' solutions and all I've found were some programs and electronic gizmos that offer only a piece of the solution. X10.com is about as close to a solution as anything but I don't want all these little boxes hanging off of the wall plugs.
Has anybody found anything more integral? More of a total solution?"
Wiring A Home With an Eye on the Future? Oroborus asks: "My parents are building a new house from ground up, and want to try to be as 'forward compatible' as possible. They've asked for my help in incorporating as much technology as possible, and in preparing it for any future technology that we can forsee. The problem is that though they're excited by technology, they're not all that conversant with it, and anything they include will have to be extremely user friendly. My initial thought is to wire the house with shielded ethernet cable with all the drops in the basement, to be wired to a hub/router later. But they've got high hopes for a 'smart home', how else can they prepare for the future?"
A tough job, but maybe with a bit of thought, such things can be prepared for. How would you wire a home with an eye on making it so that future capabilities can be added in without painful construction bills?
Wiring Hostile Home Environments? Old Man Kensey issues the following query: "I've been annoying my roommate by populating every possible room in our apartment with a terminal of some kind (X over the Ethernet, null-modem PPP, or serial). There are two rooms I have not yet found suitable equipment for, though -- the kitchen and the bathroom. The bathroom has the obvious hazards, besides being pretty small, but the kitchen is even more hostile an environment. Besides water, you have various kinds of food and food-related goo, microwave radiation, heat, high humidity, and general cramped space.
Has anybody out there found cheap, readily-available equipment (serial terminals, etc.) that will withstand the worst hazards of a typical American home? How about cheap modifications like enclosures that fit in small spaces and might protect, say, a PowerBook-Duo-size laptop? I'm willing to deal with having to power up and down, but I'd like to have something that doesn't compromise the actual operation of the equipment (enclosures that block cooling fan vents, for example)."
You Can Wire in More Than a LAN, You Know... Cosimo Leipold asks: "I've recently purchased a house that is still under construction. The developer asked me what I wanted wired. Has anyone expiremented with what you can wire in a home sucesfully? The developer has no 'computer experience' of course, so beyond RJ-45 he didn't know what was feasible. He tells me that the cost of wiring is pretty minimal since the house has little more than the frame up at this point. I'm looking to the slashdot community for cool ideas as to what I can wire. (RJ-45, sound, s-video, intercom, etc). I'm thinking this might be a great chance to get X10 in. Ideas?"
It seems that a lot of people have discovered X10 for home automation, but is that the only game in town? Sure, it might be the most affordable, but for those people with larger pocket books, are there other alternatives that might offer more features for a larger pricetag?
...and Along the Same Vein, Why Not Wire for Sound? Last, but most certainly not least, wiremonkey puts this question on the table: "I hear a lot of talk about wiring homes, but very few people are thinking about anything except network/telephone wiring. I'm interested in how fellow geeks have wired their houses for audio. Right now, I have a system built around a Samson 24 channel mixer and two amplifiers. My audio sources include computers, CD players, ham radios, a tape deck, DVD, VCR, and TV. The current system lets me listen to different things in two 'zones' - the computer room vs. the rest of the house (I like my computers to beep in the computer room, but not the bedroom - yet I like my CD player to play music in both rooms). Note that I always have one compter's audio playing throughout the house, as it announces my telephone calls.
I'm looking at ways of distributing the control of the audio 'mix' to two locations (right now, you have to be at the main mixer to adjust something). I would locate the video equipment and an additional CD player in the living room, while I would locate the computer equipment and auxilary audio gear (tape deck, ham radio, another CD player) in the computer room. I'd like to be able to hear any audio source from any room. I'm a serious listener, and I hate 60hz hum (the current unbalanced audio lines I use cause nothing but problems with hum)! In addition, I live in a high RF environment, with HF, VHF, and UHF transmitters and 100 watts of power per band. I get sick of hearing my automated packet station while listening to Bach! At the same time, I would prefer not to run 20+ balanced lines between the two locations. What have you done in your house? What were the 'professional touches' that you added? What did you wish you did differently?
(Yes, I know there are turn-key systems that do this - however, I don't feel like spending $2000+ for a system which won't let me listen to my computer and CDs at the same time!)"
I don't know about the building codes or c.o.'s in your area, but running cable through air plenums is a bad idea. In case of fire the smoldering shielding on that cable could be the difference between life and death. In a commercial installation, if you HAVE to do it, you have to use cable approved for plenums. T'ain't cheap.
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Yup, conduit is the way to go. We built a house a few years back, and have conduit which runs from every room to the furnace room. It's all built with 1" PVC, which has been more than adequate. When it's time to pull a new line, I attach a nylon string with a cloth ball at one end, and bring this through using a vacuum. Pulling the cable through is then pretty easy.
If you want to run a length of cable for audio (or video for that matter) over 20 feet, you must install an unbalanced to balanced and balanced to unbalanced system in order to fight off the hum and RF interferance. This is what is typically called a differential system. All it really contains is a pair of tranformers for each channel and three wires for the long distance run. All it does is polarity reverse (some folk falsely call it phase) the signal then run a positive and negative polarity signal as well as a ground wire the length of the run; 3 wires total. At the end of the run the polarity is again reversed on the negative line making it positive then combined with the positive polarity line. You end up with one positive polarity line and the ground. All hum and RF induced during the long run is automatically phase cacelled. You can typically run 100+ feet with no problems. Even by wall warts, AC transformers, TVs, computers and monitors, though I wouldn't recommend it.
Why does this matter? Because plenum cable costs four times normal PVC cable, and is totally unnecessary.
Shielded cable is also a problem. It's designed to allow you to more easily run in areas where there are also power lines -- such as inside office building coinduits and other places where you're laying after-the-fact. But inside the walls of homes, shielded cable causes more problems than it solves, because shielded cable acts as an antenna, and without careful grounding procedures, it can significantly lower your bandwidth.
Other people were suggesting that you use CAT-5 instead of CAT-5e. CAT-5e at the Home Depot (which we discovered was cheaper than mail-order) is the same price as CAT-5 or lower now. It makes no sense to not use CAT-5e.
If you're building a new home, use ordinary unshielded PVC CAT5-E cabling. Just make sure you run your cables after the power guys have run their cabling, and work hard to keep your wiring far away from theirs, and to cross it only at approximately 90 degree angles.
If you check all reasonable ethernet cards, you'll notice that there's a pretty fat capacitor and resistor network attached to those "unconnected" lines. There isn't a direct path to ground, but there is an AC path which does help cut down on interference - something that the ethernet card designers probably used to 1) pass FCC specs 2) get the full 100meter ethernet requirements. Incidentally, there is a group working on suppling power over 100BT who do need to use those other two pairs (look for the "Power via Media Dependent Interface" group).
I've set-up a network in a older house (built in the 1920's) and described some of my experiences on my website. The network consists of a cable modem, an old Dell PC running the linux router project, 2 hubs (one in the basement, one in the attic), and 3+ PCs.
Retrofitting an older house for a Cat5 based network has some interesting challenges, like no air ducts to pass cable through (the house uses hot water radiators). Still all very doable.
The makers of Duck tape should sue the Fish tape makers. And yes.. I know its DUCT tape..
At 10Mbps over existing power-carrying copper, it could be a good solution for existing structures. Lets just hope it doesn't end up with the same types of problems 802.11b is now discovering.
Hopefully someone will start manufacturing home automation kit as well (light-switches with IP numbers, etc.) -- seems like the current primary focus is on providing TCP/IP between traditional computing and new multimedia devices.
It will be cool when the only wire going to the speakers is the power cord....
I've found this to be ideal. We've ended up primarily using our laptops with the wireless net (even when we're on the couch and could easily plug in). My poor desktop rarely sees non-Quake action anymore. Since our primary applications involve internet access, and since the wireless is faster than our DSL, we simply almost never need the 100bT speeds.
Now, if only Tessla were alive to advise me about wireless juice, I'd be golden.
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Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
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Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Why bother with wires? Just get a wireless card for your laptop and be doen with it.
jeez.
"When I die, I want people to say of me: 'Boy, that guy sure owed me a lot of money.'"
Dunno about alternatives, other than maybe some custom stuff...
Biggest problem with x10 for me is the horribly outdated housecode system... 16 housecodes with 16 devices doesn't cut it - I have a shload more than 16 things I want to control in my house! x10's biggest disadvantage is address space.
And some of the wireless x10 recievers (that take the signal from a PalmPad, etc. and put it onto the line) have this evil tendency to take a commend and repeat it in a loop for a minute or two. (i.e. hit "dim" once, and it'll dim all the way down, and stay off for a while.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
My goal is to make my home the perfect place for a LAN party. :-)
Anyone have a suggestions for connectors ... crimpers ... etc?
Linux is only free if your time has no value. Windows is only free if you threaten to use Linux.
So I'm up in the attic, and have dropped cable down into the walls. The cable has snaked around some obstacles (via fishtape or other flexible prod). And, I *think* the cable end is where I want it to be. Now I want to punch a hole through the wall.
.... ?
...
Where do I punch? Is there a little radio emitter or magnet that I can attach to the end of the cable, so that when I'm down in the room, I can find out where the cable end has gone?
In existing homes, a tape measurement can only give me about six inches of certainty. And six inches off might be on the other side of a beam, or in the middle of a joist, or
Thanks for any advice
Yep, I've got a Greenlee too. Mine is 5' and very useful. But in one case where I'm trying to track the cable, I'm actually fishing in through the space between a 1st floor ceiling and a the floorboards on the 2nd floor. Damn house is at least 60 yrs old, and belongs to a friend of mine, so I can't get too adventurous with the drill :(
In my case, transmitting on 20 meter brings down the DSL connection. With any other band, no problems, but a few minutes on 20 meters and the DSL connection goes down, typically requiring that I reset the DSL modem to get it going again. I'm not sure if the Alcatel SpeedTouch Home I have is just sensitive at that frequency (I'll note that putting ferrites on every wire going into the DSL modem didn't affect it) or if my ladder-line fed doublet just manages to put a lot of RF into the DSL line at that frequency (I'm about to replace the doublet, so I'll find out, I guess).
The rest of the home network doesn't seem to have EMC problems, but I'm using 10Base2.
I may have to think about replacing the Cat5 from the demark to the inside connection with shielded cable. It also just occurred to me that the demark/inside connection cable is probably close to a quarter-wavelength on 20 meters, which might explain why that band is the problem.
Oh, and on another note. Who's four year old kid did the web design on X10's site?
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Care about electronic freedom? Consider donating to the EFF!
Feh - attackers cheat. They will likely go after the weakest link, which may end up being the hardware attached to the fiber, if you go that overboard. Honestly at the point when this is happening you've got much bigger problems: these guys are getting into your frickin' house, man.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Well the solution is well known. Install conduit, but have flamethrowers and crushers and such in it to keep things out unless they know just the right pattern to follow to get through unscathed ;)
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Some may laugh at this... but I remember my first "lan"...
it was put up using duct tape...
Reason?: We lived in a campus residence hall, and were not allowed to make any alterations to the rooms/hallway... so what to do when %70 of the people in the unit have PCs.... aahhhh the days of warcraft, command and conquer.... and yes... even file/print sharing... [between all of us, there were at least two laser printers, one color printer, and a 20gb drive... {which at the time was HUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGGEEEEEEEEEEEEEE}
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Amarillo Linux Users Group
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Time is on my side
Or, if you have no choice, get shielded cables. It really is a Big Deal. I'm sure there is plenty of anecdotal "evidence" of your people having "fine" networks with the cable running with power cables, but they don't know what it's like without it. TCP/IP is pretty good about fixing itself, but it obviously works better if it doesn't have to every other packet!
Send your friends messages of love at fuck-you.org
Or you could be really exotic and get some pull core at Graybar for about a penny per foot in 1000' boxes. It's pretty similar to nylon twine, but in an easy-feeding box.
And even if you think you will need less than 1000' feet of cable in your entire home, buy as many boxes of cable as the maximum number of runs to any one jack. Pulling them simultaneously will save tons of time.
A potential to solution to wiretaps (even fiber) is the idea of pressurized conduits... if someone breaks the conduit to put on a tap you'll know. ... but thats all very neat for the 3 letter acronyms and paranoid troopers.
-- schubert
www.focenter.com (1-800-IS-FIBER) We have termination procedures and if you call, we'll provide tech support or produce termination procedures for you. If not provide training.
You can be cable assemblies pre-terminated and connectorized at nearly any length from a myriad of suppliers and assembly houses. With pre-made cables, installation and creating receptacles is as easy as for phone or category 3/5 cable.
Seriously. We have 18 year olds employed that we trust to installations and field terminations, and not very geeky ones either.
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Some people might think about fiber also. I'm not sure as to the costs/benefits. I think fiber is a pain to run (it can't be bent to much, can't be pulled to hard, ...)
Oooh! Myth debunking time! =) I'm an installer and I work for a fiber optic distributor, so I'll throw in my few cents.
Benefits? Security is first. Fiber is very difficult to tap. Even if someone wanted to do it right, fusion splicers are expensive. $30,000 - $40,000 man, and yes, they are quite portable.
Next would be interference. Lack thereof. Fiber isn't affected by EMI or ESD at all. Run it wherever you want and it doesn't care about environmental factors.
Distance. Typically you can run several kilometers before repeating a signal. Granted your house isn't that big, but if your cable assembly was well done, you don't hafta worry about signal loss (just different modes combining after a while on multimode, but no one has a house that big).
Price. Fiber, in the long run, isn't expensive. You can get some multimode fiber and run 10Base-FL, 100Base-FX, 1000Base-SX or 1000Base-LX, or whatever on it (up to about a gigabit). Just change the devices on the end (and possibly use a different adapter) and that's it. Don't need to run new cable. Want more power? Single mode is pricier, but I think Lucent is pumping 40Gbps over it nowadays (PER fiber), and it'll keep getting better.
Bending? Well, not because of breakage, but to minimize loss. Even indoor rated riser/plenum jumper cables can take a BEATING. Typically you'll have an outer jacket, then strength members (kevlar usually for indoors), a coating, the cladding, and then the core itself. You just don't want true KINKS or 50,000,000 loops in how you're running it, to minimize loss. But at work we've done some REAL hack jobs in the office (we run fiber to EVERYTHING we can) when we've had to, and we've never had a problem.
NICs are about $150 nowadays for top name 100Mbps Ethernet topology (like 3Com's 100Base-FX cards). Hubs can be a bit pricey, but hey, fiber can be well worth it if you're willing to invest in it.
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If you go wired, and you're installing in an extant building, while you're laying out where you want Ethernet jacks (you *are* planning to lay it out on paper first, right?), try to avoid exterior walls if you can. The fewer of these that you do the better.
Exterior walls are:
"Beware by whom you are called sane."
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
Slow, unreliable, impossible to bring up lights to a preset setting without turning them on first, no way to get feedback on the status of your stuff.
:)
Just homerun all the wiring for your lights, buy a nice CD80 pack, and make some DMX512 lightswitches.
So just use ssh for everything, it can forward every service you want to run, so everything over the air is protected with strong crypto.
How do the electricians get that cable through the wall and conduit? Fish Tape. Probably run you 20-30 bills at Home Depot or such. It's a long skinny relatively stiff length of steel, you run it through the wall or hole in the floor or whatever, then take your cat 5 (or electrical wire), tape it to the fish tape with a piece of electrical tape, and pull it through. Works wonders. Beats the hell outta trying to stick coat hangers through the holes...
Regards,
ehintz
I'd initially tried to spec out all the possible things we'd want to have -- network, phone, amplified audio, line-level audio, cable/Satellite TV, distributed TV, HD-TV (hey, we can dream, right?), home automation, temperature sensors, voice control, etc.
In the end, we decided that's a lot of cable. And much of it (amplified and especially line-level audio) requires more expensive equipment than I really wanted to deal with. So, we've made the decision to put amplified audio in only a few rooms (and we'll figure out some way to get it into the ceiling), and to put Cat-5 and dual coax into every room. We'll try and put a pair of cat-5 near the light switch, one for audio controls (should we put amplified audio in that room), and one for home automation use (voice control, touch pads, whatever). Then have a single jack with a pair of coax (TV and video), and a pair of cat-5 (computer, phone, whatever). The bulk of the audio/video distribution, however, we're going to do via Video LAN technology. Just put a set-top box in any room that wants it, and you get super tivo, web, playstation emulation, mp3, etc.
The quality might not be as great as doing 100% pure video over good coax, however, it might actually be better, being all digital until just 6 feet from the TV (and, eventually, all digital right to the tube, once we've made a gazillion dollars and can afford digital flat panels).
I've described this a couple times before, and so far, haven't heard any naysayers. Anyone out there this time who thinks that the idea of doing it all over switched ethernet isn't the way to go?
no, no, no, no again. 100 BaseTX uses 2 pair. 1000Base-T uses 4 pair. (There aren't 8 pair, but I'll assume you meant 8 conductor.)
-marius
I just wired a portion of my house. I recommend using the Leviton QuickPort outlets or outlet covers. These are outlet covers with square holes in them. The holes accept snap in QuickPort jacks. Leviton sells QuickPort jacks for RJ45 jack, RJ11, and coax (they may sell more, this is what I saw on the shelf). They come in 1, 2, 4 and 6 hole varieties.
For my computer room, I bought 2 of the 6 hole variety, 8 RJ 45 jacks and one package of 4 blanks to cover the 2 unused holes. That way I have 4 ethernet ports on opposite walls with 2 spots on each wall open for future jacks.
You can buy them from http://smarthome.com and probably elsewhere online, but you might also try your local Home Depot (they were cheaper there). While there, pick up some blue 3/4" flexible conduit that they sell in 10' sections. Even if you don't have a junction box, you can still run the conduit to your outlet holes keeping you from having to fish through walls each time you want to pull wire. Of course, having conduit everywhere would be nice, but even just running conduit through those difficult areas is a big plus.
Also, when you run the first wire, drag a piece of nylon cord with it. Then you can pull your wires through always dragging along a nylon cord so you can do the next pull.
Always do it right.
It's kinda funny because I recall seeing a lot of the first gen (late 80s/early 90s) of corporate ethernet installations being junked about 5-6 years ago, usually because they made the same mistakes you listed (half-assed, not documented, damaged cable, etc). Now home installers have the same lessons to learn.
One common mistake back in the old days was laying cheap cable. There was a whole school of "Cat-3 is good enough" network installers out there, all of whom got schooled when 100BT came around. I would be thinking about what the next step beyond gigabit is going to require, or at least make sure that new cable can be easily installed to replace what you have.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
My network has been evolving over the past couple of years... ever since I got a cable modem. Originally, it was just a couple of old machines with my main machine, and since I didn't have a hub, I would switch them out by hand between the cable modem and each other... not very practical.
So, of course, I did what anyone else would do... I bought a hub. But I still had the problem with not being able to share the connection. Hence the Linux router box.
And this went on, until I had a room full of computers (8 at it's height) that could really only be used practically by two people at once.
I've now switched gears and taken a different route.... wireless. Currently, I have a Linksys router w/4 port switch and wireless access point. Right now, I only have one wireless enabled machine, but I plan on adding wireless cards to two other machines and start spreading those machines out.
In the future, I don't plan on buying desktops, except for one machine which I'll use as a server, hosting things like DNS, HTTP, SSH, and more. It's just not very practical in my case to have to go to a room, away from everything else in the house just to surf the web.
Wireless is really the future... and don't go for the silly Intel AnyCrap stuff... stick with products that implement the 802.11 standard.
dennis
You can get them from just about anywhere first off (start at Radio Shack) and secondly don't be a retard about cabling. Run signal cabling away from electrical wiring and if you have to run it by make sure it crosses the electrical wiring at a 90 degree angle (perpendicular to the run of the electrical wiring) or else you'll have lots of signal problems. Do you NEED RJ-45 jacks every ten feet? THink about that before you install them. Think along the lines of a wall mount with two or four jacks in it rather than a mount with a single jack.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Electrical wiring alternates at 60 Hz in the US. Wires running parallel to it will means you're putting them inside the wires' magnetic field. This causes induction in your audio/video/network cabling and thus static and in the case of audio wiring a 60Hz hum. This happens even with well shielded wiring so always run cabling perpendicular to electrical wiring. You can easily LAN party with a single RJ-45 jack by wiring the jack to cross over and plug a cable into the jack and the uplink port of a hub or switch. This will connect the hub to the rest of your network and you'll be rocking and rolling. Even better set up a LAN party room with a hub and plenty of power jacks in it. Maybe wire your garage to be your LAN party room. Instead of a 24 port hub get an 8 port switch and assign each port to a wired room of the house. You can plug hubs into your switch if you want multiple comps in the same room connected to the rest of your network. The good thing about a central switch with hubs on star branches is if your nodes are only talking locally (in the same room) the rest of the house won't have its bandwidth filled up by their chatter.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Why not just pull a length of pull twine that's 2x as long as the conduit? That way you can reuse the same length every time.
The even simpler solution, albeit mildly destructive, is to use an existing run of cable *as* pull cord. Pull 2x the required cable so you can return the line you've used as a pull line. The excess line returned can just be recoiled. I've done this with existing electrical runs where there was no string used and the pipe was too full and serpantine to run my fishtape through.
Which reminds me of my other gripe, I wish the 1000' pull-paks of cat5 were actually dual 500' spools. I've never pulled a single line and always find myself having to handcrank the line onto multiple spools so I can pull more than one run at the same time.
I know, I could buy multiple packs, but I'm cheap, and the plywood, conduit and empty spools were available to make my multispool rig for free..
be aware that a basement outside wall often is thicker than other outside walls. So the holes might not come through where you expect.
No doubt! we were wiring a cable from the little digital dish into the basement of a friend's house and he decided to drill right next to the electrical main comin' in the house with like 240v 50amp service... he said he thought he was several inches to the right of the line, but as things normally go that wasn't quite the case. He drilled just through the insulation on the electrical main and caused some very scary fireworks about 3 feet from my face. (i was the lucky guy on the inside in the basement)
Luckily nobody was hurt and the house didn't burn down. melted half the drill bit, but at least it didn't melt me or my friend.
so let that be a lesson to ya kids! big wires don't mix with big drill bits!
-freq
"Tension is the great integrity" -- R. Buckminster Fuller
Some of the firecodes are outta control. THere is absolutely no reason why I should run 9million feet of expensive fragile and hard to fish plenum cable just because the drop ceiling doubles as a cold air return in my 2 story building! Its not like the people on the non-existant 18th floor are gonna die, and its not like the entire freakin' drop ceiling isn't going to be turing my office into a towering inferno way before the damn pvc jackets on the wire are going to melt and release some deadly fumes.
:)
And same goes for all the firewall crap. the network guys have to fish everything through a couple undersized conduits and seal them up with special fire-retardant goo while the heating and cooling doods just leave big gaping holes between the drywall and the ductwork. Nice double standard there. Half the building inspectors out there are brain dead anyway.
firecodes suck, except for the parts about exits. those are kinda important.. i like fire exits
"Tension is the great integrity" -- R. Buckminster Fuller
...How exactly did that work? Wouldn't you need a balun to convert the shielded coax to utp?
-- Veni, vidi, dormivi
*sigh*
The other pairs are there for a -reason-.
They are ground wires. They also provide protection against attenuation and signal leakage. That's why they're twisted in there.
If they didn't need to be there, they wouldn't.
-j
"To err is human, to forgive is simply not my policy." --root
If you're looking for something a little more sohpisticated than X-10 for home automation, talk to a good lighting design firm - they've got stuff that you can afford to put in a middle/high-end house that in the words of my uncle (who owns one of these businesses) "will make X-10 look like tin cans and string".
The "smart home" folks who do this for a living refer to this as "structured wiring," so that's probably the right search term.
The best solution I've seen is a single bundle that contains:
2x 4pr CAT-5
2x RG-6 (75ohm Coax)
2x 1pr 16ga speaker wire
2x Multi-Mode fiber
This whole bundle sells for about $2/foot in 500' reels, which is about a house worth of wiring. If you're going to put cabling directly in the walls (as opposed to the excellent suggestions for going with conduit) then this is the stuff to use.
Given the installed infrastructure, I think emerging technologies are going to be centered around getting more speed out of CAT-5 and MMF. Heck, my new G4 has a 1000Base-TX port...CAT-5 again.
Myself, I'm cheap. So I've just been running 2xCAT-5 and 2xRG-6 everywhere I go, more if I need it. I live in a single-story house with a crawlspace, so it's easy to go below and pull more wire if I need it.
Add 802.11b for connectivity to the couch, hammock, and john, and you're set.
As for the kitchen machine, I really like the idea of mounting a Webplayer upside-down under the cabinets.
You have violated Robot's Rules of Order and will be asked to leave the future immediately.
That's why ferrets are used professionally in this situation. No joke.
http://misterhouse.net/
--
Two broad classes of options are apparent here.
First, you can add wire for whatever you expect to need, like phone, cat5, coax for video, cat3 for an intercom, wires for home automation, etc. and hope it's enough.
Or, you can install conduit with what you expect to need in it, and leave it for other stuff. If you're reasonably mechanically inclined (a good test here would be whether you have a fish tape or not), pulling wires around isn't terribly difficult. You will want conduit for main runs though, such as from the first to second floor, or from both floors to the basement, etc.
Some things to keep in mind: when you are running one type of cable, run others if there's a remote possibility you'll want them, since it's easier to cut holes in drywall once, pull cable once, mess with faceplates once, and the like. While you're pulling a mass of cable to the second floor, pull a few extras (at least two, and perhaps as many as one per room) and leave nice long runs so you can drop cable into any room on that floor. Do it yourself or make sure the electrician knows what he's doing. Getting a full 100Mbps requires careful installation, and an electrician used to yanking on 12AWG copper power lines will have to be reminded to be careful.
Good luck!
High-speed Road Trip (18.000KPH)
Based on the experience of a friend of mine, I advise those with home networks to back up their systems, or at least back up critical configuration files.
His home router crashed and burned. Well, not quite, there weren't flames, but about all he could salvage from the very dead computer was the floppy drive. He spent a couple of days reconfiguring a new router, and he wishes he had backed up the configuration.
--
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
Wireless has it's place in the home.
I *loved* having my WaveLAN card in my laptop..I could sit in front of the TV and work on stuff... I could sit out on the balcony in the evening.. it was nice. Going out in the yard (if you are lucky enough to have one) and lounging with your laptop.. what more could you ask for?
But nothing beats some good cat5 for stability and speed. Take the time to run some cat5.
If it's your own home, do it properly, even get contractors to do the cabling if you like. If it's an apartment, you can run it along the edge of the carpet, usually doing quite a nice job. My lat apartment had hot-water pipes for heating, so there was open conduit between all the rooms.. very handy.
Two words: RACK MOUNT
it's not going to stop until you wise up, no it's not going to stop. so just give up.
Re: hum in a fairly complex, dual-zone enviroment:
:)
The first step in creating a successful system like this seems to be consolidation of equipment. Put as much of the electronics as possible in the same place (same rack, pile, shelf, whatever). This keeps cables short, and minimizes the chance of ground loops. Plug everything into a single outlet if possible, or the same circuit, or (at the very least) the same transformer leg.
Second, keep things as simple as possible. You don't need to hear the TV in the bedroom, while using the computer at the other end of the house, and so you don't need cabling (or more to the point, antennae) for that. Ideally, the only long lines present would be for speakers, and in this situation those should probably have at least a ferrite bead clamped on, or maybe a small coil in series, to keep induced RF from pissing off the electronics.
Probably also, it does not serve you to listen to two different CDs in the same house at the same time. Throw a couple of hundred bucks at a changer that will contain your entire collection, if it suits you, and invest in some stuff from Xantech (http://www.xantech.com) or Channel Plus (mostly the same stuff) to repeat IR commands from a one place to equipment located elsewhere. This can also be used with VCRs, DVD players, and probably an LIRC-using MP3-playing Linux box.
Don't use a huge, burdensome mixer to negotiate different sources. Samson isn't particularly well-known for the quality of their gear, and that combined with long, unbalanced lines is probably the root of your whole-house AM reciever symptom. A dual-zone preamp or stereo reciever, or two normal stereo preamps/recievers (and a mess of Y cables) will serve well to differentiate sources for different zones, particularly when combined with a minimalistic Xantech system and a learning remote (or several, depending on needs). And, you get to remove lots of rather hideous electronics from the loop - no mixer is as transparent as a minimalist preamp.
I can hear you whine "But, then I wouldn't see the display on my CD player from the bedroom!" Realistically, when is the last time you actually used it? It's not as if you'll be doing cueing for post-production while laying in bed, watching TV.
I can also hear you whine "But, then I wouldn't be able to listen to the TV in stereo while in the bedroom!", which is similarly untrue. Forget about the tuner in the TV, and use the VCR, cable box, satellite reciever, or whatever you have in the computer room. Run 1 (one) drop of RG-whatever to provide video from this point to the remote TV. Control it with Xantech. If you choose a dual-zone A/V preamp, it will facilitate the switching of video sources.
And for the final whine: "But, with this configuration, I won't be able to hear my computer beep at me while I'm listening to a CD!" Well, if you eliminate all the present complexity and the 24-channel console, you won't be hearing your packet station whenever someone checks their email, either. At any rate, Midiman (http://www.midiman.com) sells a few small, minimalist stereo mixers. Use one in the computer room to combine the output of the zoned switching machine (whatever that may end up being) and the computer, again using the shortest cables possible. If that's not hi-fi enough for your tastes, scope out Ashly (http://www.ashly.com). Ashly equipment is not inexpensive, but the trouble it saves is invaluable.
Sorry to rain on your parade, but the problems you experience using a mix board as the heart of your audio system are precisely the reasons why they're best avoided if at all possible, and also a firm demonstration of the "less is more" phenominon.
I'd write more, but the power just went out, and I have no idea when it might be back. The UPS is howling.
Kid-proof tablet..
If you are on the West Coast make a trip to your nearest Fry's, They have patch panels, computer parts, aisles of cables, almost anything you would like. Why they don't expand to every city with a strong geek cluster is beyond me. Some friends and I made our Disneyland or Disney World decision based on the fact that Cali has Fry's.
actually it is ok ...if you use PLENUM rated cat 5 cable... thats what its for, and thats why its costs more too
use Signature::Witty;
One high end alternative I've found is Radio RA, but I haven't get tried it. I think it's like 10 - 20 times more expensive then x10. Anyone else try this?
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
Thankfully I only had 3 rooms to do. Two holes in a wall and the rest under the baseboard. Only problem was finding the concrete inside the one wall...
Casio, Sony, 3Com, and others have Windows touchpads with a slot for your 802.11 card. They are perfect for surfing the web while sitting on the pot. :) They can also be wall-mounted to avoid spills and splashes.
Yeah, it's Windows, but you're booting from ROM with most of these, so it doesn't take much time to reboot.
If you're wiring an existing house, I have one word: fishtape (go to your local home improvement big-box and ask). If I was building a house, I'd ask the contractor to put some thick cable conduit in the walls, terminating in key spots. That way, you could fish wires in and out later, with minimal hassle.
Greg
Hi,
In reference to the small home network and metal shelves that fjordboy talked about above. Here are some pictures of the stuff:
Our Server and such
Our UPSes on the rack
All that this is is a metal shelf, but it works great to keep the batteries off the floor (wetness is bad for batteries), and it's all good!
Hi, In reference to the small home network and metal shelves that fjordboy talked about above. Here are some pictures of the stuff:
Our Server and such
Our UPSes on the rack">
All that this is is a metal shelf, but it works great to keep the batteries off the floor (wetness is bad for batteries), and it's all good!
I installed a 100 baseT cat5 LAN between my first and second floors, with a Linksys 10/100 hub, a Linksys DSL router, and an Efficient Networks DSL modem. The first problem was that when I transmitted only 100 W at 3.5 MHz ("80 meters"), my Linksys hub lit up like a Christmas tree. Even when transmission stopped, some of the ports remained hung up until I reset the power.
The remediation here was to go to shielded Cat5 lines, which use grounded RJ-45 connectors and help to keep RF out of the signal path. Further, I added ferrite chokes (like you see on monitor cables) to help block common mode RF. This seemed to tame the problem for the most part, but if I were to run a kilowatt, it might not be enough.
On the other side, it turns out that my receiver was quite noisy, again on the 80-m band. Often this comes from AC power line interference, so I tried selectively shutting things off. In the end, it turns out that my 100 baseT run upstairs was increasing my receiver's noise level by 10-15 dB.
The upshot: 100 baseT interacts with radios in the 3.5 - 4.0 MHz band (and possibly others), both transmitting and receiving. Switching back to 10 baseT seems to have reduced the problem quite a bit.
Martin, AA6E
Fiat Lux.
Many years of experience as a cable installer (aka cable rat--no, not tv cables) and many, many problems I have encountered have taught me these things. Your mileage may vary.
If you haven't gathered by now using conduit is so far superior to not using it that I really shouldn't have mentioned not using it. If you use conduit you will almost never have to climb up into the attic (again) later. If you use metal conduit you will protect your wires from all manner of electrical, magnetic and soccer fields. Clumsy people such as air-conditiong repair men who crawl thruough the attic will not step on or trip over your wires-just the condiut which will survive the encounter. Stored-in-attic junk will fall on the condiut and won't slice the wires or worse damage them so that they work only sometimes. If you use condiut you will not hate adding more cables to your routes. If you use condiut you will improve your karma.
Remember that HQ analog audio cables are always expensive-otherwise they are stolen or broken. Long HQ analog audio cables hate radio waves-especially digital cell phones. They should not be routed in the same condiut as copper data cables.
Wireless networks are almost always insecure. Also, they don't like microwaves.
Coaxial cable (for television, etc) is generally ok next to cat5 copper.
Duct tape. Lots of duct tape. Sticks good on carpet, walls, ceilings, and even pets.
Every time you pull a cable through, pull through a new string. Leave plenty of slack on each end and tie each end to a nail or something solid (so someone won't accidentally pull it back into the wall).
Others have not mentioned how to get new wire pulled. If you'll be doing a lot of pulling you can get the same roll-of-flexible-metal-tape that electricians use to pull stuff through awkward spots. Or if a coat hanger isn't quite enough, there are 10-15 foot wires available...even if they were intended for things like hanging suspended ceilings. Then pull your cables and string through.
If you have to do things such as drill inside walls, you can get drill extenders to hold a drill bit. Both rigid and flexible extenders are available. But before you make a big hole, it might help to first drill a small hole with a stiff wire to check where exactly where you're aiming at.
Incidentally, if you're trying to measure from outside walls to find the right spot between floors be aware that a basement outside wall often is thicker than other outside walls. So the holes might not come through where you expect.
Also use "keystone jacks" in the walls. These are plastic wall plates with almost-square holes in them, and jacks which snap into the holes. There are many jacks available such as Cat5 RJ45, "F" (cable TV), RJ11 (telephone), and speaker cables. Keeps the wall looking nice, covers a hole which gives you access for pulling more cables, and holds the wires in place. Keystone jacks are available from some hardware stores and mail-order network shops.
There also are metal plates available for holding the cover plates -- cut a hole in the wall, fold the plate inside/behind the hole, and you've got a frame with the proper screw holes.
For those who want to spend more and don't like the X-10 design, there also are other technologies for power control. They tend to require running additional wires to a controller. A little searching for "home automation" or chasing the other links in these articles will find the current selection.
I agree with your statements regarding the benefits and uses of wireless; however, my wireless setup is slightly different.
;-)
I went the cheaper route, and bought 2 of the Lucent Silver cards, and did *not* buy an access point. One card sits in my firewall on a separate subnet, and the other card is (of course) in my laptop. The laptop connects to the wireless card in the firewall, which is connected to my cable modem, so surfing Slashdot from my neighbors house is also a breeze.
I can also print files, etc., from my laptop to a machine on the "wired" network (which is a different subnet than the wireless network) without any problems.
For me, speed has been outstanding. Obviously, surfing the web is not a problem, and even transfering files is about the same as two machines that are "wired" together. The only time I've ever noticed any delays are when I'm running remote X sessions, running things like Vim from across the street.
I'd be happy to explain more details of how it works, but I just wanted to say that I would definately recommend some sort of wireless solution -- especially if you have a laptop. I absolutely love it!
I've got these interfaces on my firewall:
eth0 = external interface
eth1 = 192.168.1.1 (wired net)
wvlan0 = 192.168.2.1 (wireless net/silver card)
And the routing table:
Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface
192.168.2.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 wvlan0
192.168.1.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth1
xxx.xxx.xxx.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth0
0.0.0.0 xxx.xxx.xxx.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0
The firewall serves up DHCP IP's for the wired network, and the wireless network (which only includes my laptop for now) are hardcoded. So, my laptop is configured to use 192.168.2.2 with a mask of 255.255.255.0 and a default gateway of 192.168.2.1. I also have DNS running on the firewall on eth1 (192.168.1.1), so I've just told my laptop to use that IP for its primary DNS.
Routing on the firewall is automatic. Any packet that is sent from the laptop to any external host is easily routed:
192.168.2.2 -> 192.168.2.1 -> eth0 on firewall -> external host
and vice-versa (with a NAT'ed laptop):
external host -> eth0 on firewall -> 192.168.2.1 -> 192.168.2.2
In other words, the router (firewall) is smart enough to talk back and forth between the 2 subnets, provided you *allow* it in your firewall ruleset. I'm using debian and ipchains for my firewall, but I'm sure that BSD/ipnat will allow the traffic to flow just the same. Updating my firewall was the one thing that I forgot to do initially -- until I allowed 192.168.2.x traffic to flow, *nothing* worked.
The *only* issue I have right now is trying to get Samba (on one of my "wired" machines) to exist in both subnets. The only way I can see the shares on the box is by IP address, not Netbios name. I'm sure this is something simple in the smb.conf file, but I haven't figured it out...yet.
One things that nobody has mentioned.... after you run a gazillion cables to multiple jacks in every room, be sure that you punch down everything onto a block so that any cable can be disconnected by pulling a shorting connector, or unplugging a connector.
If a network link goes bad, or your phone line starts acting up you don't want to be pulling wires apart. Mucb better to just unplug something. Takes a bit more space in your wiring closet. But well worth it.
In my case, I have all the voice lines running to the left side of the punch down block, and the right sides are all tied together (since I don't have a pbx). The two sides are connected together with shorting connectors.
The Ethernet lines come separately on the left and right side of the punch down block, and the center terminals are wired to RJ45s, which then plug into my ethernet hub/switch.
(Thanks to Tom and Peet for teaching me this and other important wiring lessons.)
I agree fiber cabling isn't much more expensive, but wait till you start to pay for the network electronics (NICs, switches, routers, etc.) OUCH!
BTW, security of fiber is not what many people think: Anybody that wants the data on a fiber bad enough to try to physically tap it is going to know that they can simply dunk the cable into some really nasty solvents to eat away the jacket, then simply flex the cable enough to cause a little light leakage in the bend and hook up an optical receiver and amplifier. Note that this method avoids ever severing the cable, and is quite hard to detect...
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
This is total and complete bunk. Common Cat 5 wiring is also know as UTP, or Unshielded Twisted Pair. There's no shield, and nothing to ground.
;-)
And yes, I used to design premises wiring systems. This was so blatant an error, I thought it should be stomped out now before someone believes this BS.
If you really want to understand how to do wiring right, spend a little time at the Siemon or Leviton web sites. This stuff is not that hard, so long as you listen to people who know what they're talking about.
My recommendations for homes in a nutshell:
1) dont' fall for expensive wiring centers (On-Q and their ilk)
2) use cat 5 wiring, jacks, punch-down blocks, and patch cables - that's plenty adequate. Run 2 jackets (16 wires or 8 pairs total) to each location you think you'll want a phone or computer device in the next five years. (Don't go overboard - I see a lot of new houses here in Austin with a ridiculous amount of wiring. I have only what I need, and I'm quite happy with it. Remember wireless is an option, too...
3) I like the little Leviton modular outlets.
4) The same little Leviton modules can be snapped into a very inexpensive 8-hole metal bracket they sell to provide the equivalent of a small patch panel at much lower cost.
5) Stick to well-known wiring standards: Use EIA/TIA 568A (general stds) and 606 (labeling).
6) There are also pair-to-pin standards. I prefer T-568A, although T-568B is also a good alternative. (Note the "T", which spcifies the "termination" spec, not the generic 568A spec mentioned above.) Avoid RBOC and other schemes as they're less common and will confuse other people.
7) Spend some time at web sites devoted to cabling before diving in. You'll be glad you did.
8) Look around for tools, too: There are a number of special drill bits, wire retrievers, string throwers, etc, that can make the job easier. Some are worth the money even for a home job.
9)There's just no subsitute for a 3-foot long drill bit when you really need one, and despite what someone said elsewhere in this discussion, don't open up the drywall if you can help it. It's not usually necessary, the repairs always show, and doing so represents a substantial failure of creativity and imagination.
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
How about setting up a computer area with all the things you need with easy reach of a patch cord? Unless you live in a very large mansion, how hard is it to walk down to the family room to log on?
The idea of kids with ethernet drops in their bedrooms gives me the heebie jeebies. It isn't just the rare incidents of Internet stalking. It's just that I think that a parent should stay involved with the media his or her children consume until they are ready to undertake adult responsibilities on their own.
Of course, I don't like TVs in bedrooms either...
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I've got some experience with setting up a wireless home network, and here are some of the things that I discovered. First of all, my general setup: I've got a ZyXEL Prestige 642 DSL router that I wanted to share between several machines, most notably a Dell laptop that I wanted to network wirelessly. The first thing that I did was buy a 5-port Linksys 10/100-BaseT autosensing Ethernet hub; I had been running the DSL router straight into my main desktop PC's NIC with a crossover cable. Now there's a hub, so the ground work is done.
.. the access point needs to be plugged into either a 10BaseT or an autosensing 10/100BaseT hub! It will not work with a 100BaseT-only hub!
.. anything above that is frosting on the cake. 802.11b offers a theoretical maximum bandwidth of 11Mbps, but in practice you'll probably get half that, even if you're in the immediate vicinity of the access point. If all you're looking to do is be able to sit out in your backyard and read Slashdot, that's probably more than sufficient. If you need 100Mbps+ speeds to your local machines, you need to drill some holes and run some cable. Personally, I think the wireless cards are just plain fun. I can read Slashdot from the neighbor's yard, for Christ's sake. :-)
The first thing you'll need is (obviously) a wireless access point. For this, I would recommend the Linksys WAP 11 wireless NAP. This is an inexpensive (~$240) piece of equipment that has worked flawlessly for me thus far. There are more expensive and more capable access points, but IMHO you can't go wrong with this one, at least for a home setup. Note that this access point is a straight pass-through; it does not do DHCP or anything like that. For me, this isn't an issue because my DSL router acts as a DHCP server.
Some more notes about the WAP11: it comes "out of the box" configured with an IP address of 192.168.1.250. Again, this was fine for me since my home network is 192.168.*.* based. Obviously, this can be changed, but the provided configuration software is Windows-only. You can configure the unit either by plugging in the provided USB cable and running the USB-based configuration program, or you can do it via a SNMP-based configuration client. Oh, and before I forget
Okay, so now you've got an access point plugged into your network hub. The next thing you need is a wireless card. If you're networking a laptop, grab a Lucent ORiNOCO 802.11 Silver PC card. Linksys makes its own wireless PC card, and if you're buying the Linksys access point, you may be tempted to buy the same brand for the PC card. Don't. Linksys's card works fine, but its range is limited; it is far less than what they advertise. The radio that the Lucent cards use is far, far better. Many people have reported tripling their ranges when switching from the Linksys to the Lucent card.
I've had no problems with the Lucent card. Hell, they even include the source code for Linux drivers on the installation CD! The Linux driver you're looking for is "wavelan2_cs", and it supports 64-bit WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) (40-bit, actually) encryption. For the sake of full disclosure, however, it should be pointed out that WEP's security is under fire (expanded PDF version)
In general, if you're looking for raw speed, you're not going to get it with 802.11b (or, at least, you aren't going to get wired speeds.) For me, I mainly use my network to surf the Internet, and my DSL downstream bandwidth maxes out at 1 Mbps or so
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
The problem with this is whether the mouse is strong enough to pull the cable through, and of course, you have to train the mouse to pull the cable through to the correct locations in the first place.
MrCreosote Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump! "You're right! There isn't enough room to swing a cat in here!"
To the submitter with the 60 Hz hum - the solution is at Radio Shack (You have questions, we have blank stares.).
March in there with 15 bucks per RCA cable you want the hum removed from and purchase "ground loop isolators". It'll be a small round transistor with RCA jacks on each side. 60 HZ hum begone.
The sad thing is that the local movie theater (Hollywood in Mobile, AL) has a 60 Hz hum in every one of its brand new statium theaters. I'm sure Sony would be glad to know their new state-of-the-art theater sound is being ruined by some rednecks in Alabama. I personally avoid the theater because for 7 bucks a pop, there really shouldn't be a 60hz hum in the theater.
Linux - Because Mommy taught me to Share.
Ew! Sawing at your existing cables with a hard conductor instead of a soft insulator. I presume you don't mean leaving a fishtape in place, that's obviously expensive.
Lee Valley sells (or sold, I should check) three grades of nylon braid that would probably be ducky for this. The smallest was 45# strength, and all wonderfully smooth and straight (off the spool :). I've had some out in the fish pond, in the sun and/or underwater for a year, and no serious damage yet. Would probably last nearly forever in a dark dry conduit, assuimg no cable jacket reacted with it.
I absolutely agree that wiring through ducts is convenient. Occasionally, the ducts don't go where you want them to, or they take a longer route, but that's the price to pay for great convenience.
One thing I find very helpful when doing this is to first of all take a ball (NOT a roll) of heavy string or nylon and pass that down from the exit. Hopefully you'll be able to guide it a little by tapping on the ducts on the way down.
When you reach the bottom, tie the string to the end of the cable, and pull back up. I find it particularly helpful to put a small sandwich bag over the end of the cable, tied in place with an elastic band. This ensures that the cable stays clean.
Good luck!
you should trademark that BAN thing ... hilarious!
Mindy: "Well...desserts aren't always right." Homer: "But they're so sweet!"
One other thing I forgot to put in:
Plan out your Network.
Before you cut any holes, or pull any cable, walk around your house and figure out exactly where you want to put the wall plates. Then go and figure out how you want to run the cable. Drill exploratory holes and/or probe with nails if you need to figure out the structure. When you have a coherent plan, then start laying cable. You will obviously run into unexpected issues, but hopefully they will be minimized.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
First some background, my home is totally wired. We have some 30 ethernet drops spread throughout the house, all terminating in a central wiring/server closet. Based on this experience, I have a few peices of advice to offer.
:)
1) Always do it right.
By this, I mean don't do anything half-assed just because it's a home installation. This is a mistake I see a lot of people making. Network cable is rather fragile (if you want to maintain 100BaseT capability). This means that running it over the floor, through heating ducts, and what not is generally not a good idea. Plus, running the cable that way is just ugly, and a potential danger. And besides, drywall is easy to patch.
Also, it's incredibly important to document which cable is which. There is nothing more frustrating then trying to figure out which jack/end in one room matches up with which cable down in another room. The easiest way to do this is to come up with a numbering convention for your home, and then mark these numbers on both ends of the cable with some sort of label (Masking tape/pen works fine).
All the cable in our network terminates is laid to cat-5 specifications, and terminates in a proper wall plate on one end, and a patch pannel (see Ours) on the other. This has saved us hours of trying to track down problems, and allows us to quickly bypass problems should one occur. If I were to do our network again, the only change I would make would be to use a 50 pair horizontal cross connect cable to go from our second floor to the wiring closet.
2) Don't underestimate how much cable you need.
The other mistake I see people making is that they underestimate how much cable they need to run to their bedroom, or any other room. Invariably, this leads to chaining hubs, and all sorts of other problems. It's best to pull lots of cable, and if you don't need it right now, just leave it in the walls for future use.
In our place, we pulled 4 lines to each of the bedrooms, and that's barely enough. As it stands, the three of us that live in our home are all using all four drops in each bedroom.
3) Always pull a string.
Whenever you pull cable through floors/ceilings/walls always pull a string along with the cable, and do your best to keep it from getting tangled or twisted around the cable. This string can then be used, in turn, to pull the next cable. When you're done, leave a string in place, in case you suddenly realise you need a nother cable. Your cheap Polyester twine that can be had from Home Depot will be more then adequate.
4) Don't go totally overboard.
Don't spend too much on stuff that you don't need. Cat-5e isn't really worth it, since gigabit can go over properly laid Cat-5, don't lay fiber unless you intend to actually use it, don't buy plenum cable unless your fire code requires it, ect.. Really, always just keep an eye out for the best price/reliability values out there.
This is more important for things like jacks and connectors then for hubs/switches. With a good quality jack, the wires will not come loose. We've been bitten by this more then a few times, and have had to punch things down more often then we'd like.
Hubs and switches, in general, are pretty reliable no matter who makes them. For home use, there really isn't much point in purchasing the latest and greatest 3Com switch, when something less expensive will do the trick. It's highly unlikely that you will need to use all the bells and whistles an expensive one would provide you with.
5) Think Safety.
When opening up walls to pull cable and/or drilling exploratory holes, always be weary of hitting electrical cabling. 120V is not something that you want to hit with a hand saw. Also, be careful if you're up on a ladder. It's very easy to come un-ballanced while doing a hard pull.
6) Add Toys.
The last thing to do, once you have a stable platform to work on is to add toys. 802.11 is fun, and incredibly cool, but still much more expensive then a wired solution (as long as you're handy, and can do a reasonable job yourself).
Anyway, I hope this information helps people out with their plans. If there is enough interest, I can put together a list of materials that we used, to give an idea of what works. (Most of our equipment comes from Lin Haw).
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
I recently helped my parents build a house. They also wanted to be forward compatible whereever possible. Right now, however, they didn't want to spend the cash on all of the different types of cables they would need to run Cat5, Cable TV, Satellite etc. all over the house.
Instead we chose to run conduit. (almost as cheap as Cat5) all over the place. This is 1" PVC pipe with glue on elbows to go around corners. The elbow have a radius of about 1 foot so they aren't to sharp. We even ran it underground to where the guest house is going to be, to the public utility interconnect at the edge of the property where the phones and the cable will come in, and to the neighbors house where they are temprarily parking their camper.
Using a modified nerf ball and a good strong vacuum (actually it used to be a hot water carpet cleaner) you can pull 2 pairs of cat 5 and 1 TV cable through about 400 meters of pipe in about a microsecond. The only real problem we had was retrieving the nerf ball from the guts of the vacuum. In each run we also pulled a pice of string to that we can pull more cable though later.
Inside the house the conduits terminate at electrical boxes every 10 meters or so around the house. The other end of the conduit is to a "patch closet". This has worked out VERY well.
Since the walls have gone up we have pulled everything from phones, to 100baseT, to satelite dish cable, to speaker wire. There is even an ethernet jack in the front yard...
Of course this is hard if the drywall is up already..
I currently live in what my GF and I affectionately call the "70's Mystery Mansion" - think of the ugliest damn block constructed home you can think of, add avocado and rust colored carpet, popcorn ceilings (with sparkles!), and dark walnut paneling - and there ya go!
Anyhow, when we moved in (it is a rental), I decided to get @Home service (we are too far out for good DSL), and we needed to wire up a LAN so both my machines and my GF's machine could share the modem.
We now have 3 machines on the network, and can actually put more on - I use a FreeSco box for NAT/routing - works pretty sweet.
Anyhow, one thing I did in order to wire the house, since I didn't want to crawl in the attic (think a basketball court size attic, with blown in insulation throughout, and you will understand why I don't like going up there) to run cables, was to run the CAT5 along the molding the edged the paneling along the ceiling. Where I had to traverse rooms, I simply drilled through the wall.
If you pull the molding back, you will probably find you have a bit of room for one or two runs of CAT5 or CAT3 (most likely only one). Simply place the wire in the crevice, and attach the molding back, using care not to nail through the wire (baaad).
If you use CAT3 instead of CAT5 it will be a bit cheaper, plus, because of the tight bends anyhow, you probably won't be able to run over 10 MB (10BaseT). For cable modem sharing, this isn't a problem. However, if you will be doing a lot of internal network sharing or such, go another route. I must say this method has worked great for me, and the CAT5 I did use came from a leftover pull from my employer, that they pulled from the ceiling...
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
A friend of mine when they had the floor put down while the concrete was layed put boards all round the end of the room, making a instant space for any kind of wires you want to run, conduct is fine for walls, but laying a cable from one side of the room to another is a pain... How you going to do those rear speakers... pulling the floor and drilling the beams?
Even easier in drywall is the EZ Plate mounting bracket sometimes sold with telephone accessories. These things are just an open frame you bend into place in a hole cut in the drywall. It has a hole at the top and bottom for the coverplate. Since Cat 5 is low voltage, no need for a real electrical box at all!
It's so cheap, there's no point in stuffing around making everything exactly the right length. If you do that, you'll waste far more when you discover that each length is exactly n. inches too short to reach your wall plate.
I left at least a couple of feet inside each wall plate so I could do stuff like use it to pull down extra lengths as needed.
2) Plan
At the moment, two runs reach from the cable modem/hub to the two bedrooms and my machines are set up next to the modem. Both runs are cat-5 and pass under the hallway closet where there's about 6 feet extra bundled up on each run. Phase 2 will see the cloest turned into a network cabinet and a 100 MBit switch installed, at this stage, the runs will be cut into half to provide 2 runs into my room plus one to each bedroom.
Take some time to ponder where/how cables will run. My initial plan was to go up through internal walls, but a little exploration showed that I could get through the exterior wall cavity using nothing more than a craft knife.
3) Punchdown blocks and solid core
Much easier than mucking around with soldering irons. Strip the cable and push it in. Done.
4)Stick to the rules
While you don't *have* to use the assigned pins/colours, you be glad you did after you stop for lunch and can't remember where you got to.
5) Test somewhere discrete first
Do the lounge room wall last so it'll be the neatest. Do the closet first in case you make a mess of it.
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
Its pretty nice, but I'm wishing I had torn down a few more walls :)
All the conduit goes down to my utility room (where the washing machine, heater, etc are) and I've got a 110 block and my 10/100 switch there.
Ars Technica - Physical Home Networking: An Installation Guide
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Forget about air ducks
air ducts. air ducks quack too much. Picky, I know. Sorry.
One possible idea if you're building from scratch is to look at a professionally installed Wiring solution.
Check out the "Home Director" product line (originally from IBM). http://www.homedirector.com/
I've got 1500 feet of CAT5 under my 2300 sq ft house and it's not enough. I've got two cables to each box and two boxes in each room except the bathrooms and closets. It's all home run to a central wiring closet. Total cost of the cable, $150. Took me two weekends to install crawling under the house.
If I had it to do over I'd run four or six cables to each box and use sheilded CAT5. I've gotten some noise problems from power cables and from the timing pulse on the ISDN phone line. It wouldn't take that much longer to run more cables nor cost that much more.
I use the CAT5 for dual networks (home, work), phone, and audio. I think I could get video to work as well, but I haven't tried it. I could have pulled coax for video, fiber, or even "future-proof" (hah!) cable. Each of those would cost much more ("future-proof" is $$ per foot) and is much harder to work with.
Sure six shielded CAT5 per box is too much, today. But so what. The cost of the cable is minimal and if you are pulling it, be sure to pull too much so you won't be saying (like me) "I wish I'd pulled another cable."
8 port netgear hub on 2nd floor serving 2nd floor area, 4 jacks in office (old computer area), 1 in my room, 1 in sister's, 1 in parents bed room. Ran a drop down next to chimney to basement for uplink.
:)
:(
Basement 8 port netgear hub, 5 running to my new computer area, 2 servers (all hidden in back room).
Basement 8 port linksys switch, 1 from upstairs, 1 to center of newly finished basement for convienent lan party uplink to cable modem, 1 to basement hub, additional space for servers and future wiring of 1st floor. uplink to cable modem (soon to be uplink to linksys router then to cable modem, damn road runner stealing my 5 ip's back
i had a ascii diagram but the crappy lameness filter wouldnt let me post it
Could you please explain to me exacty what an RJ-45 Coaxial cable is? I'm kind of confused...
:)
Oh that Stuff I ran it along with CAT5, It's a bitch to pick out the pairs though...
=1000101
Yes, sending cable through ductwork can save a lot of time and drilling, but violates NEC electical code, and is therefore a very bad idea. PVC covered cat5 is not much fun in a fire, and the last place you'd want those fumes is in your ductwork.
..now where did that
When I wired my house last year, I decided to go ahead terminate every wallplate with dual RJ-45 jacks. All the cable is Cat-5, and terminates into a small patch panel in a closet. I brough my telephone lines into that closet, and bought a couple "1 to 5 way" phone splitters at a local discount store. When I need to route phone lines somewhere in the house, I patch from the phone splitter to the patch panel w/ RJ-11 patch cables. RJ-11's fit into RJ-45's fine-- albeit a little sloppily-- but they work.
I went the extra step of using gang outlets that support CATV terminations, as well. I brought my CATV feeds into the wiring closet, since I needed it there for the cable modem and firewall anyway-- so I have an amplifier there and panel to distribute CATV to the rest of the house. Someday I'll add an RF modulator and patch an external camera in on some channel... *grin*
I would agree w/ all the posters that say that cheap metal shelving makes for a nice rack. Paint it black and fill it with computer gear-- it looks pretty boss and doesn't need to be bolted to the floor to be stable!
If you're shopping around for a house, look for phone jacks in areas where you might want data jacks. Phone wire makes GREAT pull-wire for your new cables.
I HIGHLY recommend a patch panel. I've seen a lot of small offices and a couple homes that were just "crimped on RJ-45 ends" at the "wiring closet" end. This limits your flexiblity in regards to patching phone across the wires, and will make you very unhappy when you jerk on a wire, pull off a termination, and have to reterminate the wire. Patch panels are comparitively cheap, given that you want this wiring in place and functional for a long time.
The Attitude Adjuster, I hate me, you can too.
You are not limited to one house code for the entire house...I have all my motion sensors on 'A', everything downstairs on 'D', the Master Bedroom is 'C', the other bedrooms are on 'B', and the outside lights and pool area are on 'O'. I use Mister House as the home automation system. I have palm pads about the house, set to the proper code for that area. I decided to run all the wire myself...I tapped into the cable and phone system on the outside of the house and ran it into a closet. From this closet, I ran 1 Cat5e, 1 Cat5, and 2 RG6 cables to each room. I figured that the Cat5 would be for phones and the Cat5e would be for the Lan. The Lan lines are connected into a 24 position patch panel, then wired to the switch. The Cat5 is run to a punch down block. I already have three phone lines active in the house, so you can plug into any one of the numbers. I'm wishing that I had run a second Cat5e to each room. For video, I put the cable box, DVD player, sat dish, and vcr on modulators and fed that back into the basic cable line (filter strips off channels 68 - 106) to run out to all the rooms. Want to watch a DVD in the kids room? Turn to Channel 92. Cable box to watch a scrambled channel? 94. For all unscrambled channels, just turn to it. Extra RG6 is to feed more signals back into the video run (maybe another VCR in a room on a modulator.) What I learned from doing all this: 1 - All the information you need is on the web. Just look for it. 2 - I'm not a carpenter. I really screwed up the drywall. 3 - It really isn't mentally difficult, but can get physically difficult. 4 - Next house will already have all the wires run :-)
Why string? Why not just use fish tape?
geek. lawyer.
Not true at all. First, there are no ground wires in ethernet cabling. In fact, the spec *specifically* states that no conductors are to be grounded. This is because ground potential can vary in large installations, and you would get ground loops with potentially large currents flowing through your cat5 if you tried it.
Instead of grounding, ethernet uses differential signals. Each direction (send and receive) has a pair of wires. If the wires are at the same voltage, it is a physical "0", if the + pin is 5V higher, it is a physical "1". (I belive it is 5V logic, but am not actually sure). Since the pairs are twisted, any "line noise" will affect both wires the same, and the difference will be the same at the other end. This is also the way differential SCSI, and most multi-drop physical protocols work)
10BaseTx and 100BaseTx require two pairs. Many premade cables don't even have the other two pairs, and the spec allows you to use one or both of the unused pairs as phone or other connections (that is why the wiring diagram skips the center two pins -- those are reserved for phone use). I wired my parents house, and most of the cables are split so one run of Cat5 gives two 100BaseTx ports.
100BaseT4 (a competing 100 Mbit ethernet standard that never took off) requires all 4 pairs, but works with only Cat3 cables, instead of Cat5.
One word of warning: If you run ethernet along exterior walls, consider adding surge supressors to the ethernet. We has a near lightning strike that as near as we can tell grounded through the chimney, inducing large currents in the ethernet cable running right next to it. No physical damage to our house, but it destoyed or damaged 4 motherboards, CPUs, and ethernet cards, a laser printer, and the hub.
-p.
The first task was to clear out the spider webs from under the home, so I spent a fair bit of time crawling around with the vacuum. A big tarp, safety glasses, and a filter to cover the mouth are nice assets while doing that.
Then, I pulled some of the wood paneling off the walls (not sure what I would have done if I'd had drywall), drilled a hole down through the floor in the middle of the wall (NOTE: if your wall runs parallel to the floor studs, it will almost surely be right on top of one, so aim to the side a little as you go down--if the wall is perpendicular to the studs, make sure not to start on top of a stud), stuck a piece of PVC pipe through it and ran CAT5 cable and 3 A/V lines between the front room and the bedroom (along with an extra phone jack in the front room and a TV antenna splitter connecting the antenna to both rooms).
To reduce airflow through the PVC and into the walls, I stuck a piece of foam in each end after all the wire was in.
Now the time has come to move so I'm selling the place--hopefully the improvements will help to entice some tech-savvy person to move in!
Convert RSS to HTML - integrate webfeeds into your website
As to X-10, I really looked into this, you have a number of choices if you want to upgrade. I went with PCS, switchs (checkout Bass Home, Future Standard or Worthington Distribution - each of these vendors has faults, but they have reasonably good prices). You can get the nice looking reliable switch, but it will set you back, quite a bit more than an X-10 brand switch. If you really want to do it right go with the OnQ/Ageis lighting system. I was going to do this; however, my builder made this prohibitively expensive from an installation perspecitive. I still might do it my self, when I have lots of time (or move again ).
pth
My name is not spam, it's patrick
Home Automation & Linux -- now I know I'm a geek
If you are building a house, or re wiring the electrical system, look into getting an UPS for the entire house. Yes, it would be expensive, but think of the benefits. :-) You could have one UPS protected outlet in each room of the house.
If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck.
As far as wireless LANs go, you have two choices - either Proxim (HomeRF/OpenAir) or 802.11b. 802.11b offers a higher data rate (Max 11Mbit), however the HomeRF protocol supports both voice and data over the same protocol (the latency on 802.11b makes it so that voice cannot be supported). The HomeRF protocol also has better multipath which means that in most homes you should get better range. The downside is that the HomeRF protocol currently only supports ~2Mbit speed. However the FCC recently ruled that the HomeRF protocol can now operate at four times the speed, which means that companies will probably soon come out with 8Mbit units sometime in the future. Another thing you may want to think about is that using a GSM cellphone has been known to interfere with 802.11b wireless networks.
We moved into a house of rather poor wiring and capacities. Our intention was to have DSL in every room, and also to have a dining room that could handle up to 13 players with a full computer system. That room didnt have sufficient power (in amps), so we ran a new power circuit. We also rewired every room in the house with Keystone Jacks, and cat5. Every room had a networking jack, a cable jack (standard coax, but the best we could find), and a cat5 cable for telephone.
In each of the bedrooms, we also had a second networking jack, for a private network we never did set up.
To do so, a *wondefully awesome* friend came out and did the majority of the work. We cut through plaster and slat walls, we dropped lines thru the ceiling.
We set a de-marcation point in the attic, with a punchdown block, for the telephone lines.
When all was said and done, the DSL installer came, and upon checking it out, was rather shocked. He said he had never seen such a setup.
We went from crackling phone lines, and 30k dialups to 50k (EVERY SINGLE TIME) dialups, and when DSL got there, we maxed out the connection.
The installer said he had also never seen a connection get full bandwidth usage.
Needless to say, we loved that house, and had many gaming sessions from that room.
Sadly, I had to move to pursue my career, but my friends are still there, although only for a bit longer.
The point is, cat5 and patience can make for an excellent house. The only thing I can imagine doing differently is to maybe add speaker wire, and use conduits for the wires.
And I would definitely reward my friend better next time. (Thanks Simba!)
GPL'd web-based tradewars themed space game
Imagine a computer room setup AS a farraday cage. That wouldnt be impossible to implement, just setup a mantrap outside the room, ie, one door closes before the other opens, and you have entry/exit AND farraday.
It *would* be rather nice.
GPL'd web-based tradewars themed space game
If you're building and you're not sure what you want in there exactly, I'd suggest putting in lots of ducts - 1" pvc piping would be ideal. Even if you don't put any wires down initially, it'll probably be a good idea to put some string or something similar to make it easier to pull the cables through when you do decide to wire in.
--
Consultancy: If you're not part of the solution, there's money to be made in prolonging the problem
I was talking to a friend recently who says he had a meeting with some guys that had come up with a technique for wiring houses with VERY little work. They were taking little plastic tubing, and running it along base boards, and then connecting it all up. After they had a closed circuit of empty pipe, they were injecting in the fiber for the house. Takes a couple hours to get your whole house installed with fiber networking.
www.punkmafia.com
"I am insane, and you are my insanity"
--Bruce Willis, 12 Monkeys
Saw this on a home improvement show...tie a little piece of plastic baggie or wrap in to a little balloon. The the balloon to a string then use the vacuum to suck it through the wall. This probably will work better with fewer cables to get snagged on, but I don't know. Never tried it for sure.
I just finished wiring up my house recently, myself, and found an electrician's tip to be invaluable. Basically, I was having trouble figuring out how to span floors without going wireless or destroying my floors, or going into a tremendous tearing-through-the-walls operation. What this electrician suggested - and for a very modest fee, completed - was to have the wiring go directly outside, into a pipe painted to match the color of the house, and back in at the basement level, where the ceiling's so coated with wires already that aesthetics aren't a problem. He then threaded the wire up an existing hole for a heating vent, and slapped 8-pin plates on both ends and popped them in the walls. Neat, tidy, and quick.
I think the best thing is to have everything run in conduits. That way, you can easily add new wires / remove old ones.
...)
:), maybe even wires for cameras so you can see the pizza guy at your door from your TV :)
The problem with running everything in conduit is the price (much more $$$), and you have to do it while the house is being built (unless you want to tear down walls..)
I think the 2nd best thing to do is run 2 or 3 Cat5 (or better, cat 6?) wires everywhere, even for the phone jacks. That way you have spares incase you want to add a network jack somewhere.
Some people might think about fiber also. I'm not sure as to the costs/benefits. I think fiber is a pain to run (it can't be bent to much, can't be pulled to hard,
Also, don't forget the coax for cable TV, and speaker wires for the cool surround sound system
As far as data networking goes, I'm renting an apartment now, so I'm stuck with cables running all over the floors. One useful thing is 1/2 round wire hiders that you can buy at any home improvement store. You can generally choose a color that more or less blends with your carpet.
_____________
I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
Here's the proceedure:
Don't tie all the cables on in the same place: stagger them by about a foot or two. Tape their ends as above: start at the end that will go in the wall first, and keep things smooth and snag-resistant.
Don't get too ridiculous with the number of cables you pull in this step: one or two additional cables at most, until you get a feel for what you are doing.
You ALWAYS leave a cord pulled in line, so that the next time you can just tie onto the cord and start pulling.
Also, the number of cables you can pull will depend upon how big a hole the original installers made in the joists: if they left a nice, 1 inch hole you can pull quite a bit of cable. If they just bored a hole big enough for what they were pulling, you are out of luck unless you can get access to drill larger holes.
Lastly, DON'T MIX LOW VOLTAGE LINES AND POWER LINES! Don't try to pull Ethernet, video, or RF cable through the same holes as power unless you like frying your gear, electrocuting yourself, or burning down your house and not having insurance cover it.
www.eFax.com are spammers
A useful product is Belden 7878A Home Automation cable. Expensive, but just one pull gets you two Cat 5e cables, two RG-6/U coax cables and two multimode strands of fiber. Plus, it's green and 1.6cm thick. Specs should be here.
I am sure some of them are good but some of them are just 2x 4 port shared curcuits that are switched [eg between port 1 & port 2 it is the same as a hub, between port 1 & port 5 it is a switch]
For my money, I'd go a good switch (in the basement, just for effect ;-) and skimp on the hubs, but it's up to you, what suits your $, house, patents you may hold...
/bin/fsck_it, Just get a Cisco Microwave and Toaster :-)
If you're building a house, and therefore don't have to pay much for the labor in running the wire, run lots of pairs. Make a wild guess about the maximum you'll ever use, and double it.
The wire is cheap compared to the cost of running new stuff later, and almost anything can be run over good twisted pair.
I'd recommend two 4 pair runs from each room to a "wiring closet" or similar location for networking, two more 4 pair runs for phones (yes, I know a normal phone line only takes one pair--what if you later want a home PBX or key system?), a 4 pair run for speakers and/or intercom system, and toss in another run of 4 pair for future expansion.
It doesn't cost six times as much to have them do six parallel runs of four pair cable. Take advantage of it. Even if you never use half the runs, the one time you need an extra pair to a particular spot you'll be glad you had it run in advance. When we had a new office wired at my last job we did this, and it came in handy when we found that the new copier wanted to be able to "phone home". If we'd bought one that could take a PostScript RIP we would have had Ethernet available there too--no new wire run needed.
If you're really gung-ho, run some nice fat conduit so you can pull fiber later....
It's pretty simple, but when I build a new house (or any new building for that matter) I will make sure that there's an adequate and sensible system of conduit and access for installing cable later - whether it's CAT-6, coax, or fibre.
That, plus I'm going to make darn sure the electrical system is beefy. Nothing bugs me more than running my PC, stereo, cell charger, desk lamp, room lamp and occasion other goodies off one power bar in my bedroom.
I think each room should have at least 1 or 2 outlets per wall, with at most 2 outlets per breaker. I'd probably go for 20A everywhere, too (if you're speaking North American 110V systems, that is).
Christopher
Mozilla
You need wireless or at least a healthy mix of wireless and fixed. Bed surfing is awesome, and wireless is allot easier to spread around the house. Of course masquerading is essential too.
Someone you trust is one of us.
When I added my office to the house, I put Cat5 everywhere. In existing areas I ran it through the duct work. My house is high efficiency so the ductwork is all insulated dryer vent. (Okay, they give it a much better name, but that is what it is)
Then I run those through a linksys dsl/cable router that gives me 4+1 ports. (Since this time (six months ago), I believe they now offer an 8+1 with print server capabilities) I like that it acts as a basic firewall (still use a good firewall program), DHCP and DMZ server.
Then power. I gotta have the power. Two 20 amp runs into the office. Not two at the switch, two to the switches. I put in 4 gang boxes, but I am not certain I would do that again. Put 2s in and spread them out. The fours never let me plug in multiple transformers without cursing. [Hint... Mount one outlet prong up, the other down) [Hint 2: put in GFIs in the first outlets. They will take a lightening hit before your boxes]
Keep the lights on their own circuit and split the power to the boxes so that we never have more than one box on a switch to outlet line. (Hint#3...Put in a whole house surge suppressor, I do not trust it to protect everything, but expect it to blow out first and give the other stuff a fighting chance $50 at home depot)
If you are going to go wireless, buy with a return policy. It is funny (strange, not haha) that connections fail to connect in the living room, but will connect from the deck outside (25 feet further away). However, if it won't go where you need it, then it is useless.
Running through the ducts, I have not had a need to do wireless, but I did price it for fun. Way over the top for less throughput. Unless you cannot wire, do CAT5.
Finally, if you have not read one of the may "how to wire your own network" articles do so. Simple test: If you cannot tell when you would use a cross-over cable, you are not ready. [BTW - that was the easy question] This is not hard, but you get out of it what you put into it.
Good luck...
I'm currently building a home, and I'm having an ethernet jack installed in every room but the bathrooms....
Wiring isn't the issue for me, or for most people -- the issue is, what do you hook up to all of those jacks? What kind of thin clients can you have around the house for a relatively cheap price?
If you are in any type of relatively high power RF environment, you need to go balanced- it should actually be cheaper than coax for audio, though the transformers will increase the total cost. I've worked at a couple radio stations- all professional (studio) equipment I've seen is balanced, usually 600 ohms. In a nasty EMI environment, balanced is the only way to go. Unless you are trying to make a studio with incredible S/N, you don't need to be super careful about wiring- you can get great sounding audio through punch-blocks. You do have to be careful about phase though- make sure you used polarized wire for your interconnects.
Most important: Label extensively, and take careful notes.
I want a new duck, one that won't steal the beer: one that won't make a mess of my fridge, one that knows the duck stops here! --Weird Al
:)
I drilled a few holes in ceilings and walls, but otherwise just pinned cables up along the walls and edges of floors, and I don't have any cable in the way anywhere... attics are good to drop cables out of, btw
--TheOrangeSquid Is it any wonder things seem so awry? We swim in a sea of confusion and don't have to think to survive
Running a DSL from Qwest since October 2000, and have been very pleased with it. I pay a little extra, but, last Sunday, I toasted my 675 with a CBOS update at 5:30 am, and, had a 678 replacement by 11:30 am Tuesday, courtesy of UPS as an RMA. My Hat's off to Qwest, for this. They truly came through for me.
Friday, I had a power outtage (first since I moved here). Was only about a minute and a half, but, that was enough to knock all the machines and the router off-line. So, yesterday, I headed to Fry's and picked up APC 500VA BACK-APC Back-Ups and started my planning.
I used Xfig to draft up a decent network layout and to plan my UPSes and which machines to plug into them based on power needs, and availability priorities. Then, I set out on the physical changes by starting from the left and moving right. I was able to remove 4 power strips (along with the concommitant electrical hazard and wiring mess) by using the 3 UPS-powered outlets in the APC's for the machines, and, the 3 surge-protected outlets for monitors, printers, alarm clocks, sound-card power adaptors, etc. I ran the RJ-11 phone chord through the small UPS that only has the router and the primary server to thwart electrical charges from coming through at the DeMarc.
I also made sure to take up all slack on CAT-V cables so there was little cable left dangling that might attract the cat (feline type of device) to chew on it. Trust me: this is important if you have one of these biological devices with access to the server room. Just coil them up and use twisties to secure them (the CAT-V cables; not the cat).
I use my 2nd bedroom that has a stand-alone air-conditioner in it that keeps the temperature at 78 degrees so they don't overheat. Also, don't smoke (if you do) in the room you reserve for your machines. I have one of these machines (can you guess which) in a different room with a 19" monitor that I use for all my other needs.
Lastly, I'm using Multi Router Traffic Grapher (MRTG) to keep an eye on things and check it in the morning to make sure no one's using the DSL router, but, me. A quick check on traffic usage, and, then, another check to make sure there are no machine crashes let's me start the day. Then, I start by checking mail to deal with the port-scanners, my customers, and, make my tour of the latest security news.
Linux rocks!!! www.dedserius.com
www.dedserius.com
VB != VisualBasic
(And no, I'm not a shill for x10.)
You don't need those heavy bricks to use X10. There are wired-in x10 outlets and wall switches. These units fit inside the regular electrical boxes that wall switches and outlets fit.
In my apartment, I replaced three outlets around the kitchen counter with X10 in-the-wall outlets. Each outlet has one controllable plug and one always-powered plug. From those, I got some of those 20" light rails, and adhered them to the underside of the kitchen cabinets. These come on at dusk, and go off at 2am, by a perl script I wrote. I can control them (and the rest of the lights in the house) any other time with remote controls I have placed here and there.
The wall light switches are also wirable; they have "decorator" versions now that look like the flat rocker switches (but they actually aren't rockers, they're spring-loaded momentaries). Tap to toggle, or hold to dim.
I just started using the motion sensors to turn lights on in the closets and hallway. Keychain remote controls to flip some lights from the car.
Some of the 1980s x10 stuff is big and clunky, but they're definitely getting smaller and slicker. They have their oddball stuff, though. A universal remote control with a built-in corkscrew bottle opener? Glad they gave that for free, I wouldn't buy it.
[
block for suggesting this, but:
You don't need a different server for each
server daemon.
It's cool to have lots of computers, and it's fun
to play around with new OSes, and it's nice to
have backup computers (so if the file server goes
down, the web server is still OK), but I think
most of the time it's just overkill.
A decent server should be able to handle
file/web/print/DNS/whatever, and maybe computer
#2 can be for testing/desktop/playing around.
Maybe you could have one desktop and one testbed.
A firewall can be added if you're paranoid or
it's needed (I feel fine running BSD without
inetd).
Although we can argue about what's causing the
power crisis in california, etc, limiting your
own resource consumption is almost always a
good thing.
note: it is fun to get random hardware to work though -- I guess you've just got to think about consequences. Don't mean to bust your high.
willis/
there is no thing
what else could you want?
This is good stuff. I especially like the way they used Cat5 for all the cables and then their use (voice or data) only depends on what is plugged into the other end, which means you have a very versitile system (add an additional phone line to a room, such as for a fax, really easilly).
I also really like Linksys's line of networking products. Their broadband router (for cable modem or DSL) is simple to set up and they have wireless and wired hubs that will stack right on top.
There are so many products out there now that there is no reason why you shouldn't have a home LAN. If you don't mind wiring your house, I'd very much reccomend that you go the wired route.
My father is a retired TelCo cable splicer and repairman. Some of his favorite stories are of going into very expensive homes to fix problems with the phones only to find out that the builder used the cheapest possible wire that actually met code. And with the whole house wired with cheap low quality wiring, there is little that he could do to correct problems like cross talk between lines in the home using normal voice frequencies, let alone handling network-type bandwidth.
So, when building a new home, be sure to be personally involved in the wiring and be prepared to have to spell out every detail, because when the builder has a choice, they will always pick the lowest cost option. For instance, if all you're doing is twisted pair, be ready to explicitly require (and pay for) CAT-5, rather than the more common CAT-3 which meets code.
If you have the money, work with a home wiring specialist who knows about wiring a home for networking and multimedia. Get them talking to the general contractor as early as possible to make sure that the wiring goes in right and at the right time. There are some really nice prepackaged wiring harnesses, jacks, plates, panels and assorted goodies out there now. A complete home wiring package with multiple phone, twisted pair ethernet, cable and fiber to every room from a central wiring closet only adds a few thousand dollars to a new home price, which is fiddling small change on a decent >$150K home.
Put in as much cable as you'll ever need, then double it. Sooner or later.
One thing on the fibre debate; some people are saying "fibre is cheap to put in" and others "yeah, but the interfaces are expensive"; a third option for real future-proofing it to run dark cable; i.e. while you're putting your CAT5 in put some un-used fibre next to it; then you can gradually migrate as time goes on.
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
You included the magic word "managed". To add that to a switch could easily add another $200 per switch, which may break the bank to many people. If you can afford it and know network management fairly well, i agree. But a hub will give you this ability and _reduce_ the cost. So I guess it's a matter of what tradeoffs you can live with
- Sig
yes, you can. it works fine...2 ethernet...1 ethernet, 2phone... whatever you need. That isn't to say it's _recommended_ ;)
Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.
A year ago, I set up a network in an old stone mansion built when network was what fishermen did ;o). We thought about other
solutions and settled upon RG-58. Why?
Specifications
The building is owned and used by the Alte Rostocker Burschenschaft Obotritia (a traditional, fencing students' fraternity). Up to 10 students live there, who at the time of planning all used their own modems over the one available POTS phone line for internet access - it was hard to get through. An ISDN line was ordered and a 24/7 dial-on-demand masq Linux router was to be set up.
Additionally, there were goodies like network printing, network file sharing (running around with diskettes can be annoying), and games (not so important).
This did not require any serious bandwidth.
Cost was an issue. We wanted to do it all ourselves. We didnt want to need up to 7 parallel cables. Some of the walls we needed to punch through are more than 50 cm strong (nearly 2')!
Luckily, I got hold of some neat hardware hack: A patch cable system for RG-58 that prevents users from being confronted with termination or interrupted loop problems. Pull out the plug and the wall connector reconnects the loop. I wouldn't recommend installing BNC without this feature (I have seen such installations).
We used a former chimney for connection between storeys. Apart from that, the cable just followed the outside wall around the house (inside, of course). It took roughly 100 m (~350') of cable, which was very little (and extremely cheap).
It all worked so well we impressed people into donating for an Okipage 12 i/n network printer.
The dial-in box was also used as a firewall (I know there are cleaner ways), internal web server, dns proxy, mail repose, print server, samba server and workstation, including a login option to use vmware (fullscreen, with win95) instead of a window manager, until it died. I have not been there since.
Kiwaiti
Member of the Legion Of Microsoft Haters
1) You can never have enough lan jacks in your own office. Plan at least 4. I don't know I just used them up.. 2) Plan where you want your firewall, the garage in AZ is NOT the answer. A Centrally located closet with power works great. Plan the power!! 3) Get Cat5E in every room. 4) Put two dedicated CAT5 lines with a RG-59 (Cable) to your services panel (electrical / Cable) home input and route these to you hub / Firewall location. 5) Make sure your closet has two telephone jacks. 6) Don't forget the mulitmedia!! It should be considered equal to getting a lan set up (since the walls are open anyway).. later
Just wanted to add my $0.02 to this thread.
1 73&grid=19
I recently went with a Linksys solution for my home network.
http://www.linksys.com/products/product.asp?prid=
Picked up a WAP11, and a WPC11 card for my laptop, and it works great. The range is pretty damned decent. It just totally rocks to be able to take my laptop to bed and surf the web, completely wireless, before I pass out for the evening =)
-Xian
SmartHome (www.smarthome.com) has a lot of really great automation and home network equipment. They have everything from your basic X10 light switches to automatic pet doors and feeders to whole-house stereo equipment. They also have literature that can help you get started.
Apparently, of the rich, by the rich, for the rich.
The apt i live in is a 3 bedroom, ~1300 sq ft apt, and we have 16 machines.
:)
We have the server closet which houses our switch and 2 hubs, our main gateway box and an old box that just performs dhcpd. From this closet we make use of some prexisting holes that a previous tennant drillied in the ceiling (and some we made) to lay enough cat5 to everywhere the computers are.
The dhcpd is setup such that all the permanant machines get static addresses, and we have a pool of dynamic addresses to be assigned to any other machine that shows up (if we wanted to have a LAN party for instance).
All internet service is provided via NAT on the gateway with a single routable IP provided by Time Warner (roadrunner) cable.
If i had teh opportunity to have a say in wiring from the start of building the house i would make sure to take into account everyone elses concerns for what to lay wire for, but equally important is Power.
In my apt we have a dual 50A breaker for 2 phases of power coming into the apt (50A on each phase) and we have managed to damage that breaker to the point that our apt had maybe 10% power for a couple days while we waited teh maint crews to replace it (and of course that 10% power was used to run as many of the pc's as we could manage. refrigerator?). Make sure you have enough power for what you plan to run, and make sure it is wired in a sane fashion (been in apts where the washer/dryer was on the same circuit as the living room outlets) as none of your wiring means anything without power (and those UPS's only last so long...)
I'm moving away from my apt in the next month or two, so my next project is wiring the new apt and setting up a VPN to the old one
Check out APC for an integrated solution. --Angus
On wiring for new construction...I considered wireless, but the standards are always changing. Wireless can work later if you need it, but wiring can't be so easily upgraded. Wire your home properly to one access point. Remember to leave a wire drop in your attic or basement in case you forget to wire a specific location.
We ended up using the IBM Home Director ( link ) for the central wiring location. This allows me to control and reroute all the phone lines, computer networking, and cable.
For the physical wiring, we ran two independent CAT5 wires to each multimedia jack in our home. We also ran two RJ-45 coaxial cables to each point. The CAT5 can carry telephone or computer networking when using the home director, so you're really flexible. Having a LAN party? Unplug your phone lines at the box and plug it into the built in switch, for example.
The coax is nice because not only can we route standard cable to any room, we have a separate wire in there to rebroadcast throughout the house. For example, if you're running a DVD in the living room it can be fed back through to the Home Director and then sent out to other rooms easily.
On X10. This seems to be the most popular thing out there. I've been mildly successful with them. There are lots of modules available, and you can replace your standard switches and plugs with "in wall" versions of the plug-in modules. I have been replacing things in my house gradually - I wish I would have just had the electrician install them for me.
Also, don't plan on doing everything now. Although I have scads of wiring throughout the house, only 25% of it is hooked up right now. I don't NEED ethernet jacks in the kid's bedroom right now...So the wires are just there (clearly labeled, remember that part hehe) for the future.
I also would not recommend running all your wiring to a basement or garage that isn't going to have environmental control. I put mine in our walk in closet in the master bedroom. There's plenty of room here later if I need to expand outside the in-wall box. I wouldn't want to have a router or something like that sitting in a damp basement or someplace that wasn't going to be comfortable to work on it.
It's really not that expensive to put systems like this in during the building process. It's well worth it to not have to drag wires when you want to add a phone line to x room.
Good luck,
Case
ALL YOUR WIRES... (just kidding, hehe)
I have my home network set up pretty sweet, with a software driven bandwidth limiter on my fiancee's EverCrack addicted 14 year old. Here's my tip: Avoid sharing bandwidth with anyone smoking the EverCrack. Seriously. There's nothing like seeing a fast smooth download go down to ~8kbps/sec when someone logs on to your network with the sole purpose of playing the bane of civilized bandwidth use.
-- Count Spatula: The Culinary Vampire "...because my cooking sucks."
You probably want to consider a firewall solution and your NOSes as well. Despite this being Slashdot, I would assume that all of these environments will have a Windows machine and some will have a Macintosh. Keep this in mind for the design. You will likely want to be able to use a system where you can log in from anywhere, get your e-mail, etc. This means that you want a server centric approach.
If you have the budget, consider a real machine for your central server. (By real machine I mean a server with RAID array, not a HP-UX box) I'd spend the extra for a Compaq Proliant, they'll make your life easier, but you can certainly build your own. If you run Windows machines for gaming, etc., then plop NT on there... I prefer NT4, but Win2K will work as well. Setting up the basic system will be easy. If you are more of a geek, you can of course do this with Linux/BSD/Solaris.
Essentially, you want a unified logon system, at least for the primary machines. Also, consider buying licenses of Virtual CD. It will let you put your games CDs on the central server and therefore available to everyone. Setting up an NT4 Domain is trivial, and if the machines are all Windows and Linux, you're golden, just mount the share points, and go.
Make sure you get the RAID 5 system. This way, you store all your data on the server and back it up to tape. Most people don't really backup their machines because it is a pain. If all you need to do is swap a tape once a week, you can do it easily, and you won't need to worry about data loss.
If you do the LAN party thing, pick a room that is setup for it. If you got a big house in the burbs, you should have an adequate Den. Consider wiring up little stations. If you want to be fancy, pick up a bunch of 17" monitors from someone liquidating them. Then you have the stations setup and wired, and your friends just plug in.
Firewall. Don't mess with a 486 and two NICs, you'll go nuts. But one of the prebuilt boxes that will route for you. Most of those will also handle your DHCP needs. However, you could also run DHCP off your server.
You need a mail server. If you're loaded or "borrow" a copy from the Office, Exchange is nice Overkill. Reasonably, you just want an IMAP system. Although, if price is no object, you could go nuts here. With the Exchange Server, you can log in from any computer and yours tasks, calendar, etc., are there waitting for you. Although, if you already a nice work e-mail and don't want to mess with local, this is unnecessary.
Routing: do you VPN in to the office? Does your Spouse/Roommate?
You could make life easy (if insecure) and setup a machine as a router. Make this machine the default gateway, and have it maintain your VPN sessions. As long as the offices and your internal IP scheme don't match, you can have LOTS of fun here. If you use Linux, I don't know how to help, but NT/W2K has a registry hack to not shut down dial-ups when you log out. You could have this box route for your offices. And if the IT boys will be helpful, you could have your WINS information pulled from the office computer. In this regard, your home network is on all of your office networks.
Now obviously this is a security risk, but a fun idea regardless...
Wireless... Obviously you need wireless. If you have a laptop, you want it. If any friends do, you want it. The 100MB connection is great for moving large files around, but to just get your Internet access and load files, 11MB is fine. Get enough access points if your house is large.
Now, there is a question as to the usefulness of their security. If you are worried, place the Wireless outside the firewall. Then, put a VPN server in. Use the VPN software on the laptop to have another layer of encryption. This is actually important if you are routing for your VPN networks.
Internet access: DSL or Cable, or if you're snazzy, both. You'd create more of a routing headache, but you eliminate the risk of the network being down. You have those SOHO routers for each connection, then your internal router/proxy divide the load.
Ok, back to earning a paycheck.
Alex
Conduit. Lots and lots of big, easy to access conduit. There is no better way to prepare for future cabling needs.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
Yeah, except for that one guy in the mobile home. I don't think we're TOO affluent, though. At least not me.
I am not a lawyer.
If installing conduits is too wimpy for you, you can do what was done in the comp sci building at Princeton: attach all the wall panels with velcro.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
This is the plan I've got. I'm gonna have around 5-8 dumb terms that connect to my UN*X based box via a serial splitter. I'll run the serial cables back to my box (get basic wiring, that book has some nice illustrations on fishing cable and will get you started) And from there I'm gonna have another 8 relay controller on my machine. This will be activated via serial (go look up stuff on this, mine's gonna be homebrew but I've seen em out there) that will turn on and off my sound, and mabye some lights. (this is still in the works, very much so) The dumb terms will be for something like MPG123, and one set of relays will be to turn sound on/off in areas of the house, so I can listen to MP3s anywhere I have the speakers turned on. Another thing to check out is the Linux remote control project, but I forget the URL.
Don't call my crazy, that's what they called me back in the home!
I can't believe that after all of these posts, no one has mentioned to wire their houses with fiber optics! Sure, it might be more expensive than 100BT ethernet, but it has amazing bandwidth and it won't become obselete anytime soon!
Doh!
Regarding the ductwork being improperly handled in a firewall, that's just foolish. With a proper firewall, half the building can burn down without hurting the other half (much).
I think you're underestimating.And you didn't mention my pet peeve: the building codes that require ethernet to be installed in metal conduit. What, to keep people from driving a nail into the Ethernet and being accidentally digitized?! I mean, how many people were killed by Ethernet that they had to make this law?
-- ;-)
Kuro5hin.org: where the good times never end.
I tried that, but the PS/2 connector kept getting snagged on conduit junctions.
-- ;-)
Kuro5hin.org: where the good times never end.
-- ;-)
Kuro5hin.org: where the good times never end.
-- ;-)
Kuro5hin.org: where the good times never end.
Disney runs their audio over ethernet. I suspect you should be able to pump audio, lighting, and normal network traffic all over ethernet. It may take a little hacking, but I hear there is a unix like OS wich will allow you to spit anything you like over the wire. Really the problem is building the embeded computers that are connected to the speakers. X10 is good, and I have used it, but it can cause havoc with many consumer devices that dont expect the volatage to change. I think X10 for lighting, everything else over ethernet.
The top or front of the fridge is a good spot for a computer in the kitchen. If you clear off the top, the computer can survey the room and provide information services. I can reach up and use the mouse or keyboard on the fridge front if needed. The network and power goes behind and is tucked away.
A decent managed switch will let you dump traffic destined to/from one ethernet port to another monitoring port. For example, Cisco switches have a port-monitor command.
Nothing wrong with windows (the glass see-through type). Even the most common faraday cages (microwave ovens) have windows. Just make sure the biggest hole in your cage is smaller than about 1/10th wavelength of the highest frequency you wish to block. To do this and have a nice view, place chicken wire inbetween the two panes of your double-paned windows. That, and make sure your cage is completely connected to itself on all corners. (no loose wires or cage sides) If you need to recieve any RF such as TV or FM, bring it through the cage using optical isolation. And if you can't generate your own power, put it through low-pass filters.
Fiber can be pulled harder than cat 5 and usually is. Cat 5 isn't supposed to have more than 25 lbs of stress. Fiber can have anywhere from 150-600lbs of stress. That is all for now.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
The pull string isn't worth it. Especially if there are corners involved - it will ruin your cables.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
...is the Cybex LongView. Plug it into a CAT5 jack, and you've got access to your machine. Put CAT5 drops in all the rooms, dump the machine(s) in the basement, and use your flatpanel, keybd & mouse to access the machine from anywhere in the house. www.cybex.com
www.smarthome.com
--
Tarkwyn.
If you are building with new construction, try and provide a route from the baskent to the attic that can be used for running new cables. It shouldn't be a straight shot (for fire reasone), but if an electrition can run cales(s) from the basement to the attic, additional wires can be added later with much less difficulty. Whatever planning you do, you will undoubtably want to add something later.
Cutting and polishing the ends of fiber is no big deal. You have to know what you're doing and have good equipment. Every end has to be cut and carefully polished so light can pass cleanly through.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
It might not be pretty, but you should consider including easily rewirable conduits of some kind. You could include a central wiring closet, probably in the basement if the house is going to have one, and have conduits running from there to every room in the house. The conduits would be set flush with the wall but have removable covers of some type. That way when you need to rewire, you can just pop off the cover, pull out the old wiring, and run new wiring without having to rip up the walls. If you really want it to look nice, it might be possible to wallpaper over the conduits, so long as there's a clear marking for where they are.
Another point to consider is to make sure that you have enough electrical outlets. If you're really looking at a wired home, you're going to need a lot of power to run all the wired stuff, which means lots of outlets. Think about all the things you have now and then multiply it by 2-4 to figure how many outlets you're going to need for all the additional toys in the future. And don't skimp on having enough breakers and good quality wiring, either, because you don't know what kind of current draw you're going to have.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
- Installing boxes. Like the kind that normally hold things like outlets, except we used the double-wide kind. They were placed each place that we wanted things; at least one in almost every room (no, there isn't one in either of the bathrooms), with some rooms like the family room having two.
- Running cable. We chose to use a combination of plenum CAT-V and RG-6 coax to each drop, even though we don't have satellite. Just planning for the future, I guess. We used two drops so that the phones in each room could use CAT-V too... That way, data and phone are in the same plate. Nice.
- Assembling wall plates. This part was a PITA... you try getting down on your knees (or laying on the ground, in some places) with a 110 punchdown tool that qualifies as a sharp-pointy object and apply the amount of pressure that it takes to punch crap down into those stupid plastic CAT-V and phone recepticles. Not fun. But in the end, all but the one in my brothers room, behind his bed, are set up now, for the most part. The RG-6 cable isn't connected inside the plates, though, since we aren't using it at the time. Maybe someday. Since we have 3 phone lines, due to our situation in the house, some plates where I care (my room) have two lines set up so that when other people get pesky about the phone, I can just take another line.
- Setting up the goods in the basement. This was another experience, as we opted for a nice hardcore 66-pair punchdown block for the phones. It's nice, but still kinda difficult. But all the phone drops that we wanted set up work now, although there is this one that I think is causing line noise... prolly a crappy punch-down job.
- Networking... the point of all this stuff. We put a LinkSys 5-port hub down there, along with a 3Com Dual Analog router, since we live in the country. No cable or DSL here, though it is available in town. The three (was four, until the poor linux box went to the great bit bucket, or the computers version of it, in the sky) is linked into it's port in the room it's in, and all of drops go to a place in the basement. There are a couple of extra activated drops in the house, for when friends come over with their boxen.
As for the logistics of it all, plan out your cable needs, then but extra. There is no such thing as too much cable. Even if you have just the right amount for your project, you will end up needing more later, for something.I lean away from the wireless stuff because it's still so expensive, and what-not. I don't like the inherent security risks with sending lots of packets into the air, either. But I guess if the neighbor wants to sniff your quake packets with their uber-expensive setup, let em.
I think that everyone agrees that if you are building a new house Cat5 is your friend. It can run anything from voice to gigabit ethernet. FireWire is making a play for the home netowrk but it is not there yet. For wireless you would want 802.11b. HomeRF is on the way out. Note that wireless networks are insecure and prone to noise. X10 is enough for home automation.
You can buy an all-in-one cable from Smarthome
Not cheap...
Interior walls probably don't have insulation.
Exterior ones probably do...
There may be braces between the vertical studs, but probably not.
Not sure I would recommend that you run next to electrical wiring, but they can be useful indicators of where to drill holes. I was able to peer down (very narrow gap) between the drywall and the 2x4s from my attic and "locate" the electrical outlets. Also helped to turn off the lights in the particular room and aim a flashlight at the outlet (with the cover plate removed perhaps)....
Typical top plate for a wooden frame construction is two 2x4's laid on top of each other. So there's a double thickness of wood to drill through.
Another option is to cut the hole in the drywall where you want the jack and buy one of those long drill bits (72 inches) like used by alarm installers. (My nearby Home Depot sells them). Thread the drill bit up through the opening, then drill through the top plate. Use the drill bit to pull a string or the wire back down.
Also found the "old work" electrical boxes to be handy. They fit in from the front and then have two screws that are tightened to clamp it in place.
I'd still consider this a plenum. The National Electrical Code refers to a plenum as, "a compartment or chamber to which one or more air ducts are connected and that forms part of the air distribution system." I would call a ventilation shaft something that distributes air and therefore a plenum. Even if its not technically a plenum its still advisable to use plenum rated cable or metallic conduit because in the event the fire spread out of the shaft, you wouldn't be happy.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
Uhm. Some of us don't want users on our network sniffing other users. With switches, it's easy to control who can sniff and who can't
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
i just made my dad's home and we used this http://www.smarthome.com/8682.html all over the place. simple, fast and not so expensive
to sig or not to sig that is the question
It's a good stereo wire set, it carries telephone with the best of them, it's shielded so everything is nice and clean signaled and it's not that expensive at all.
DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
UNIX - Not just for Vestal Virgins anymore
Here's a good page for starting on that "total solution" misterhouse.net Its a PERL based program that has built in support for lots of different smart housing toys, including X-10 stuff.....it also has links to all the stuff it supports.....check it out! it may be just what you are looking for
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
I've just finished wiring every room in a 106 year old victorian house with RJ45. If you aren't going to use conduit for all your pretty wiring....you must use plenum rated wiring. This stuff prevents fires caused by shorts or whatever from traveling through the floorboards, walls, or cielings because of wires burning. Downside is that its quite a bit more expensive than the regular stuff (for RJ45 its often 4.5 times the cost). Although conduit might cost a little more right now than the plenum rated stuff, one of the benefits is that you can replace the wiring or add new wiring along the same path relitively easily. And the fire inspecter wont make you do it over again. Put in the biggest conduit that you can without violating the structural integrety!
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
I've been reading a lot about wiring my house (and Asking Slashdot). One tip that I've picked up from comp.home.automation is to run multiple CAT5 cables to each room. That way, you can use 6 wires for network, two for phone and have plenty left over for intercom, stereo, etc.
--
Wooden armaments to battle your imaginary foes!
This way, the several machines in the room with the switch have direct 10/100 ethernet, and our iMac downstairs just plugs into the phone jack for its connection. No rewiring necessary!
-dave
You know what that means, of course: no more $&*@(%^ wall warts! And it eliminates the power waste associated with all those little tiny inefficient transformers (ever notice how hot those damn things get?)
Of course, it was an easy and obvious thing for him to do, since his home was also off grid, and most solar/wind/etc generators produce DC.
"Research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing." -- Wernher von Braun
On a related note, do you know of any UPS's with integral RJ-11 connectors that can pass through a DSL signal without screwing it up. My system is currently vulnerable to surges through the DSL line, and I want to fix that.
Thanks
"Research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing." -- Wernher von Braun
There is more than one 802.11 standard.
The more common standard is 802.11b. This operates by transieving 100mW at 2.4 GHz. This can ferry about 11 Mbps of data. You know this one more intimately; virtually every wireless networking card utilizes 802.11b.
There's another standard, 802.11a, which pipes through 55 Mbps at around 5 GHz. For those of you who want less people trying to pirate connections, this will work, because 802.11a is MUCH less utilized. (There is also a somewhat more limited range, as transmissions at this level are increasingly more LOS and can't work with walls too well..
As far as internal wiring, many new and remodeled structures in my general area (north side of Chicago) are, in fact, pre-wired for 10baseT (or 100baseTX) networks, and pitch this in their listings! (Talk about a timesaver!)
Only downside I could see to this is if the construction is drekky and the wires get fragged, you're stuck running cat5 along the floorboards...
pak chooie unf
Windows.. Good for targeting rocks.
I used to be someone else. Now I'm someone better.
Real life is underrated.
I started out with a BAN (Basement Area Network)
This worked for all the 1st floor rooms, but I scratched my head for a long time about how to extend my network to the kids' bedrooms upstairs. I discovered a TV antenna mounted in the attic, with the coax going down to the basement through a conduit.
I tied a string, pulled the cable through, then pulled a length of cat5. I bought another hub and wired the length going to the attic as a cross-over to connect the two hubs. Then I ran cat5 to each room, dropping through small holes drilled in the closets. Again I used surface-mount boxes, installed this time on the inside of each closet near the door. Both the kids' computers are sitting along the walls near the closets, so the patch cable is slipped under the door.
For my server room, I bought some of that wire shelving from Office depot and put it in the small study off in the back of the house to prop up my web server and file server. I got one of those cheapo data transfer switches so I could hook up the monitor and kbd.
I got a cheap rolling cart and set up a print server in the kitchen closet. My company waits about 5 years before they throw out old computers, I happened to be there when they were throwing an old compaq laptop and its docking station out. The display was fried, but the docking station has 2 ISA slots, it was pretty easy to get a $10 ne2000 card to work in there and to get samba running so kids could print from their win boxes.
Problem is, I keep coming up with ideas for stuff I want to do and it usually involves getting an old PC from someone, installing Linux or BSD and running some wires somewhere. A few weeks ago I got really pissed because my ISP's DNS servers were down for the 3rd time that week. A woman I work with had given me an old Packard Bell 486 sh*tbox with a <100 Mb drive, I decided to set it up as a name server.
I have a real problem. Looking around the room here, I have 7 boxes (actually, only 4 of them are on and doing anything right now). Well, guy's gotta have a hobby, right?
---
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
That's what you want.. I've seen it on things like This Old House, but I've never been able actually find a source for this.
Run this from each room to a central location, and then get a patch panel (yet something else I haven't really found yet).
And the comments about running a conduit pipe first is probably a good one.. Hopefully someone can post a source for that bundle of wires..
Ok. First, X10 is fairly nifty, but you have a few issues to deal with. X10 basically works by encoding little data pulses over the zero crossing of the AC sine wave. There are a few problems here. First, is that a lot of houses are wired with multiple phases wherein the actual phase angle of the power is different (usually in increments of 120degrees). This munts the signals somewhat. Power conditioner wreak havok on those little pulses as well, as will certain forms of lighting ballast equipment. X-10 does have a phase-coupler that should help somewhat , but at that point you enter electrician-world.X-10 isn't really my strongpoint, but I do know that well thought out systems can be pretty fun. Clipsal stuff probably is a better option too. Oh, and watch out for your 50hz vs 60hz issues.
However, one of the nifty things you can do, if you are electrically minded, is get one of those Basic-stamp PIC thingers and build a nice clean RS-232 interface to X-10 and use some standard serial IO cmds on your *ix or windoze boxen to programatically control your stuff
Also for the harware hacker, IR stuff is pretty easy to manage too. There are plenty of net schematics/sourcecode combo's for IR learner/sender stuff. Controls VCR,TV's,DVD's,STEREO's,PROJECTORS,VIDCONF CODECS and even some light dimmers.
If you are cashed up however, the only way to go is to put in a Panja Netlinx system. This little sucker is a Coldfire processor based computer thinger that has 6xRS232 ports, perhaps around 10 IR sender ports, 6 Relay outs, 100mbit netport, AXlink, and basically interfaces to just about anythink. All programmed in some nutty little C type language. Panja just also sponsered some sortsa opensource thing. Hoping it worked for em. Panja basically rock and as yeah, specialising in there stuff keeps me well employed for a living. Nifty that. Chuck in a coupla touchscreens, and invite geek lasses over for the ultimate "Gosh I'm kitted up" schmooze.
There is also crestron, which do a simmilar thing. I prefer Panja, but that's probably more familiarity more than anything
Anyway;- Hyperlinks
Big page of nifty home automation links.
Panja
Crestron
Your own pc(sorry)
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
Be the only geek on your block to be able to read /. after WW3!
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Dyolf Knip
I've looked into non-ethernet setups, and determined that it's just not "here" yet pricewise (for me anyway). Phone line networking wasn't an option for me because 1) linux drivers aren't available for the internal cards (which all use the same chipset at this point), and 2) the ethernet-phone line routers are really expensive. Wireless has price issues as well.
I'd like to know how possible it will be to wire the house and keep the wires hidden, how its done, etc. (This is an 80 year old house...).
I had one company quote me $60 (Canadian) per hour to wire the place. Unless it takes them more then 7 or 8 hours, that will be cheaper then going with a HomePNA 2.0 (phone line networking) or 802.11b setup - and at 10x the speed with future upgradability (gigabit/whatever ethernet).
SSL Certificate
I was wondering if anyone has come up with a way of doing some cheep testing/certifying of cabling in your home? It's not easy to borrow a $5,000+ certifier from a cabling firm, and I don't have the money to buy one either. I though of using a pair of old laptops with 100BT NIC's but I know of no software to do this. Anyone have any sudgestions? After all, if it was certified, you might get a bit more when you sell your house.
Who wants Pork Chops?
Actually, the Plenum jackets for airspace was originaly created because of one particular fire back in I believe in 1984 or so. There was a fire on an upper floor in a sky scrapper (something like the 18th floor,) and not everyone in the building evacuated. The duct work from the 18th floor was connected to the duct work on the 2nd floor through the HVAC recirculation path, and the fumes from the burning PVC jackets were toxic. People on the 2nd floor started getting severily sick and dying.
Once they found out why people died on the 2nd floor they changed the building codes to requior non-toxic, when burned, Plenum jackets in air spaces, such as false celings and raised floors. Now days, most of the new offices use the false celings for air returns to the HVAC so they need Plenum for everyting. Also you now need what is know as "fire stop" at all core drillings through firewalls to prevent the burnign jackes to carry the flames through to the other side where the fire will spread.
Hope this helps keep you following code.
Who wants Pork Chops?
yeah..i guess you are right...however, it isn't a heating duct...it is actually just a ventilation shaft between the basement and upstairs (to my computer) So, there wouldn't be a problem. I do know that it is fairly cheap and easy to get fire retardent coatings for wires that need to run through heat ducts and such...they are not all that expensive..you can get them at hardware stores, and most building codes accept them (i think) I have seen aerosols and other stuff to coat wires with.
The anti-salmon
We have a small in house network in my house, which all goes through a small hub. It is all using cat 5..and it works really well. A tip to anyone interested...a set of metal shelves makes a GREAT cheap computer rack. :) Also...sending cable through ductwork saves a lot of time and drilling.
The anti-salmon
When their Linux driver wouldn't compile with the newest pcmcia-cs package and kernel 2.4.2 (the driver was meant for 2.2.x), I emailed the generic email address listed on their web page. I was SHOCKED when I received a reply 12 hours later from an actual programmer (!) with a beta 2.4.x based driver attached.
It's an expensive solution, but it works great. Probably spent around $600 for the RG and the two cards. BUT: Nothing's better than surfing the web from a hammock in my backyard!
All the signals from your handy wireless devices don't just stop when they reach your exterior walls, they're out there asking to be picked up by anyone interested in what you're viewing/hearing/broadcasting. If you're even a little bit concerned about privacy and security, go with a wired home network. And for that matter, throw out the coreless phone and that old analog cellphone.
My best advice is, if you can afford it and the situation permits, put in some good-size conduit (and run nylon cord thru it for pulling purposes) for future needs. Then you can put in whatever the latest and greatest is without tearing up the walls. I'd also 'home run' (run everything to a central location) all the wires in the place for easy hookup and interconnect. I did that with my phones and cable TV (alas, in the pre-Ethernet days) and thank myself every time I have to mess with them. If only I had taken my own advice about the conduit ...
Be sure to include cooling though, monitors get hot. JUST SEAL IT FROM THE KITCHEN SIDE to avoid moisture
I have a shotgun, a shovel and 30 acres behind the barn.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
Actually, I just wired a house with 3x Cat 5, bnc (hey, he asked), TV cable, 2x phone, some rooms with heavy guage audio cable and get this - 3x FIBER.
Since you can run gigabit ethenet over cat 5, stick with that for basics, its also cheap. Fiber is a bit more expensive, but is fairly easy to work with.
Plan ahead, because after the gyproc is up and the walls are painted, it a pain in the ass to wire.
PS. To all broke college student - you can make really good money doing this - i.e. $1000 - $2500 for a weekend of work. Not bad for something that requires less than $400 in materials.
I have a shotgun, a shovel and 30 acres behind the barn.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
I'm a Cat5 kind of guy. I use Cat5 for almost everything except running current fresh from the walloutlet. If you are cabling your house I suggest you use Cat5 or 6, forinstance this high performance TP Multimedia cable.
I suggest cabling from every room to one central point, where you connect them to a patchpanel. By using a specially made split or cable in each end you can run virtually anything over it. oBTW, use a shielded cable with shielded patchpanel and shielded RJ-45. And remember that it's not shielded unless grounded in one end!
What I have used Cat5 for so far:
Audio
Video
VGA
Controlsignals for a PLC (Programmable Logical Controller)
Doorbell
Analog phones
ISDN
Antenna
RF (Didn't work too well...)
Mouse&Keyboard
All of these I've run via standard wallsockets to a patchpanel, and sometimes out to another patchpanel. By making your own split you can run a combo of signals via one 4 pair cable, forinstance EtherNet, Analog phone & ISDN.
Some unconventional uses for Cat5 (Done'em all):
Cat of 5 tails... =)
Faradaycage
Holding a carengine in place(!)
Used generic as a rope
Running 230V, 10A (Not exactly recommended...)
Belt
IR from a room to another (needs extra HW)
Geir L K
A 60Hz hum is usually caused by a ground loop, i.e. there are multiple paths to ground. While balanced cables will help with RF interferance, they won't do anything for a ground loop.
You need to isolate all your AC and make sure it's on the same circuit. Alternatively, you can buy some of those cheap "3 prong to 2 prong adapters" (we call them "ground lifters" in the audio world) and try them on a few outlets to see if you can lift it that way.
wishus
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practicallynetworked.com offers tons of help, reviews, and suggestions.
Here's what I did. Initially, it was a matter of wiring up two PCs and the cable modem, so I got an old 486 (an IBM PC330 compact model no less) with two NICs and ran NAT routing. One NIC went to the hub, another to the modem. From the hub I plugged in my PC and my sister's. Since our PCs were in two different rooms, we had to pull some cable. Your first trip is to the local surplus store to buy Cat5 in bulk. If you're only doing two stations, then you might want to buy premade cable, but it's a hell of a lot easier to pull Cat5 without the connectors or having to guess distances. If you don't want to buy a roll (wire your friends and family up!) you can buy a segment, but buy 15% more than you think you need. You can use the rest for smaller cables. In fact, you might even consider looking in dumpsters for cable ends of professional installers doing Cat5 installs. Sometimes they leave long lengths that are perfectly fine. Going through drywall was relatively easy: I took an old Amiga 2000 chassis tensioning rod and duct taped the end of Cat5 onto it, brought out the drill with a 1/4" bit and drilled holes on each side of the wall. Stuck in the bar as a guide, and pulled the cable through. The next thing you need is RJ45 connectors and a crimper. Buy at least two more than you need, because you'll screw them up. Borrow a crimper if you can, or buy one, they come in handy for other projects. Two hints: You want to minimize the untwisting of copper pairs. The pairs are in to combat RFI noise and you don't want NEXT, Near End Crosstalk, so really try hard to unwind and pin with the least amount of wire. Another hint is to make sure the plastic sheath (the blue or grey part) is grabbed by the plastic tooth when you punch down. This builds good cables that don't unravel! Crimp appropriately for station to hub, and plug in your PCs. You can get a pinout guide online. If you have one, run a wiring check with a continuity tester or even a DMM. Or run a TDR on it. :)
It gets a little more complicated if you want something MORE than blue cable dangling out of a hole, which is the mode of operation for most dorm rooms. While this was acceptable in some rooms, we wanted to put in jack plates for laptops in other rooms. So I bought a set of screw terminal jack plates with RJ45 (8 pin) connectors. This is a lot easier than modular wiring systems which would require custom tools. Instead of a crimp on RJ45, I wired up to the screw terminals. Again, you'll want to minimize the amount of loose pairs on the end.
Pulling cable up and down from floor to floor is also tricky. The big purchase in this case, is a fishtape. Home Depot has them for around $30CAD. It is a VERY VERY VERY useful tool. If you can't fishtape or see your way through a wall or floor, you often will need to cut out little windows in your drywall, and tape and paint over later. This, unfortunately is the price of wiring your own cable.
Speaking of doing it yourself, while an electrician put in new wiring for an airconditioner, I got the crazy idea to ask him to run Cat5 while he was pulling the AC line. This is a BAD IDEA, due to RFI/EMI considerations.
With DHCP on the NAT box, I can plug in without really worrying about settings and all, so people bringing over machines can easily get configured and out on the LAN. You can even use PDAs this way (like a Newton!).
What more can you do with this? If you were really creative, you could use a BIX block (66 block) and punch down each jack. However, that would mean you want a hub with a Telco connector input. Otherwise, the flexibility afforded by a modular wiring system is really unjustified.
Wiring up your home is a fun weekend project, and is highly recommended to learn a little more about physical wiring. It opens up a lot more options for where you can work (like on a sofa with your laptop) and is very cheap-about $50-100 for the materials and tools. While wireless is elegant and trendy, you can't beat $5 ethernet cards and loads of bulk cable. Or the fun of sawing drywall open :)
Calum
I used to hate computers, but then a server went down on me.
I got a TrueMobile (Lucent) as a gift to myself with my new laptop and I couldn't be happier. I could go from the kitchen to the bedroom to even the bathroom, always getting a crisp cable modem connection. I have since sold the TrueMobile for the 3Com, but the outcome is the same: once you go wireless you never go back. (Plus, upgrading will be a hell of a lot easier down the road.)
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
I've been running 802 wireless (Lucent Orinoco) for about a year now. Our desktops (in the same room) are Cat5 connected, but all our laptops (3 currently) are wireless (adhoc mode).
I had originally planned on eventually running Cat5 to each room, but will now stick with wireless. Except for streaming video type applications (which hasn't been an item for us), 11Mbps seems just fine. And the standard is being massaged for 50Mbps down the road.
Besides saving on the cost and time of laying cable, wireless is just too damn convenient.
When you're setting up a home network, nothing beats laying it across the carpet and covering it with duct tape until the wife grows to like it and stops glaring at you six months later. =)
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
OK, so it's not much. We did however wire proper CAT-5 throughout the house so that should we ever feel the urge (ie if someone gives us a better free computer) we can easily upgrade to 100MBps. To be honest though the current system is surprisingly stable. The server runs 24/7 and has only crashed twice ever (not a bad effort for M$).
I'd say other cables that could/should be run everywhere are: phone, TV RF (from your antenna), Audio and Video (make sure for the video cable that you use 75 ohm coax so that there isn't too much signal loss), and possibly speaker if you have some sort of switch. If you really wanted to be phreaky you could put all your boxen in one air conditioned room, and run monitor, keyboard and mouse cables to other rooms (this could be very effective if you were a mac user (yuck!) because then you'd only have to run USB for keyboard, mouse and floppy, except that every room you wanted a computer would have to be adjacent to the one with the boxen in it), but then the impracticality of this would be astounding.
F4+80y +1++135
F4+80y +1++135
FatBoy Titties - (aren't I l33+
1) Pick a Central location. (Basement's work great for this). 2) When running your wire use conduits. It's much easier to deal with if you need to change something. 3) Run 2 runs of Quad Shielded RG6 (Perfect for Digital Cable, Sat, and Cable Modems) and 2 runs of CAT5/5e (I prefer Solid CAT5e if your going near kitchens and the like) to each jack, and 2 runs for RJ11 (telephone). 6 Port Keystone plates are cheap :O)
4) If you want to fiber you can add a run or two of fiber, but using Conduits future changes are fairly easy. Leave strings in there so you can easily pull new ones and pull back.
5) I like to put a set of "data jacks" next to every electrical outlet. This might be over kill, but hey while your at it!
6) X10 works great for home automation if it is done correctly.
a) Correctly means a controller unit is placed at your electrical service and a filter (which is built into most controllers) is used to block out any outside the house interference.
b) Appliances such as Dish Washer, Refrigerator, ect ect have a filter placed at their electrical interface to prevent noise on your electrical lines.
Remember X10 works across your power lines and without the filters in place travel out to the transformers in the street. Some things like Garage Door openers can activate/deactivate X10 devices and many household alarm systems use X10 compatible signals.
I own an older home, 1954 vintage. When I moved in, I signed up for DSL and plugged four computers into a little hub. That worked okay, except that one of my computers had two network cards and ran SyGate to give my other computers access. It meant that one computer had to be on 24/7, and it had all sorts of funny problems hosting videogames. So I switched: I bought a LinkSys BEFSR-model router, which has two plugs: one goes into your DSL modem, one goes into your hub. Basically, it just works. We can all get on the Internet and we can all play local LAN games, but ... some games don't work well when played behind a firewall.
Recently, I hired an electrician to wire my house for 100Mb Ethernet. That cost $800, because my walls were not properly designed for cables (there were only two phone outlets in the entire house). I recommend calling electricians and asking them if they have installed CAT5 cable (most of the time, they don't know what Ethernet means).
I also purchased a Linksys Wireless Ethernet hub for my laptop. Some advice: Wireless Ethernet works, but it's spotty. My laptop bounces in and out of connection when I'm two rooms away from the transmitter. Don't play games on Wireless; use Wireless for browsing the net. Wired connections are best for games.
Also: Be careful not to let the home network interfere with your girlfriend. Those are costly to route around.
That being said, it does present some interesting questions. I was thinking about it, and here's what I've come up with. First, there are a number of ruggedized laptops out there. They tend to be okay with the sort of stuff you're doing. Check eBay. You can usually find a 486 class machine for a song. Tiger Toys had a product called the Game.com. It was a competitor to the Game Boy. The internet cartridge comes with a serial cable and terminal software. It's slow, but it's driven through the tiny touch screen and the whole thing should cost you less than $75. You could use it with lynx. Put some clear vinyl over the unit and it should be cool in the shower. Ditto for a pen based PDA.
Good Luck
It seems to me that if a person used plenem cable to meet the firecode, the metal ducting would act as a shield from RF noise as long as it was grounded. This might also help get rid of the 60Hz hum on long audio cables. Another way to run cables is to go up in the ceiling and drop the cables down from the top through the stud walls. The procedure is the same as for running wiring to new electrical outlets.
science is a religion
ok, i like streaming mp3z over my LAN, but the real benefit is quake. nothing beats shouting, "ha ha fucker!" while u frag someone, especially a guest in your humble abode. on that note, go with a regular LAN and just plug it in 2 the hub and have the computers nearby. it's also the cheapest way. as far as wiring a home that u want 2 b future compatible, i'd just put big pvc ducts in the walls, cause eventually you're going 2 want fiber, and it's pricey now. just run your ethernet cable through it 4 now, and have a regular wall plate jack. nothing could be easier. and do run audio, nothing beats having an mp3 server in one room running audio 4 the house. except of course quake. quake beats everything. that in mind, u don't need pricey machines 2 run quake, cheap ones'll do (pentium mmx's and amd equiv's are real good) and then u got quake (with vid cards quake 2) up and running, set up the config file for constant mouse look, and the gameplay BARELY differs from quake 3, especially with some of the newer mods. also, set up skins. i like the naked skin, the nun skin, the geek skin, and the incredible hulk skin. happy fragging. RhY
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Simply read up on how do set things up first off, and consider the requirements. RJ 45 is the most secure to setup, and good for fairly permanent machines. Wireless I hear is easy to setup, though I am wary of the security implications of such a setup.
Ironically the best guide I found is at lanparty.com
This covers ip addressing, and network design, even making your own cables, all in a layout easy enough for stoned gamers =]
A "decent managed switch" isn't usually a cheap switch anymore, thus nullifying the original point, "use cheap switches". I'd rather have a cheap switch than a hub, anyday.
for those without time or desire or self confidence to set up a linux router/firewall, I can strongly recomend the linksys firewall/gateway. It is easy to use, and supports a reasonable variety of stuff. What are other people doing with these? I have a set of scripts that maintains a DNS entry (external) resolving back to the DHCP addr of the linksys box. Checks on occasion to update entry if needed. Any other cool things people have done with these, or related such?
I haven't seen anyone post concerning the network to the kitchen or bathroom :)
:)
:)
:)
:)
My first thought would be to use wireless; that's one less interface to have to deal with. Create a wireless network for the ethernet, and you're set. Add wireless keyboards and mice, and that improves the situation, though due to the hazardous nature of the two environments, an optical mouse like Apple's (one button, no openings for stuff to fall in, you can actually wrap it up in saran wrap as well), and one of those freaky waterproof membrane keyboards. But keyboards are cheap, you cah probably use a standard USB keyboard and just be careful to clean it out once in a while
For the monitor you almost definitely want some form of LCD; they don't have some of the size/water problems that a CRT does
Even better, get an LCD and encase it in a plexiglass/aluminum container to protect it
Essentially a laptop will work best; get an old one, place it inside a secure and protected container, and give it some wireless optical accessories. When it's not in use, fold it up into it's protected container, and it won't ever get in trouble. The optical mouse will have no tracking issues, no gunk issues, and the keyboard, well, make sure it's cheap
Geek dating!
GPL Deconstructed
Um, Actualy the no kink rule is valid. It's to prevent the twisted wires from seprating causing impedance (not resistance) problems which will increase the crosstalk in the cable. (it is a signal in the radio frequency range, not a DC power connection) Crosstalk is a measurable installation fault in network cabling. Ask anybody that has to certify a commercial install what is Near End Cross Talk and what causes it in a cable.
The truth shall set you free!
Um, I wasn't referring to outside interferance getting into the cable. But it is a factor when interferance is present in the environment. I was referring to an impedance change on the cable from bent and kinked wire. The signal will cause interference with itself because the change in impedance causes an echo on the cable. Instead of just going from one end to the other, part of the signal gets reflected and radiated into the return pair. At the 100 meg bit rate, the distance on the wire from one bit to the next is about 100 inches. Create a few echos from impedance problems in the wire and the bits get mixed with the echos at the other end causing errors at the receiving end. The kinked wire kinks both pairs at the same point so the echo also couples onto the other pair in the other direction so the sender will receive it's signal also. The signal crosstalks with itself. The travel speed of a signal in a wire is slower than the speed of light. This is called propogation factor. Any good ham radio book on transmission line theory will cover this topic in more detail. I don't know the exact propogation factor for twisted pair, but i think it's about 80-90% the speed of light. Simple math from the bits per second gives the distance between bits on a wire. More than one bit is on the wire at a time because they haven't completed the commute to the other end of the wire before more bits are sent out on the wire. Many people are unaware of this fact and assume only one bit is on the wire at a time. It's not true. Packets are sent full at full bit speed even tho the first bit may have not reached the other end yet. It's these many bits when echoed cause transmission problems. Unrecognisable packets have to be re-sent slowing down the network.
The truth shall set you free!
If I could do my townhome over again, I would have placed cat5 into the walls before they were finished. I did not and ended up fishing it through walls after the fact.
No reason to do wireless unless you want to spend more money or cannot fish line through your walls.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~ the real world is much simpler ~~
--- -- - -
Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
The obvious solution: The LG Internet Microwave.
Get your electrician to lay the cable if you want it neat and haven't got the time (or skill).
Choose decent cable UTP Cat 5 or higher is fine.
Best avoid laying cables in parallel to power.
Use switches not hubs whenever possible - they are cheap these days
Set aside some space to serve as a central place for your server(s)
You can mix media, so Wireless extensions to a wired network might make sense in your building (especially if you'd like to share with the neighbours)
Find your local nerd to help secure your computer if you plan to share an internet connection (especially if it's broadband!)
Keep at least one network game (remember the locations of valuable items on the maps) and a few bottles of coke handy just in case friends drop by
there is probably countless other tips =) ..
--
Jon - TheSpork
If you are looking for a Router/Firewall/Dhcp/http/FTP/*.*
www.freesco.org
It fits on one floppy disk, and is just amazing.
Although right now my server is down because it decided to be a turd (I think I fried a ethernet card, I need to start wearing one of those Static Wrist straps).
By all means, if you initiate a cable plant in a new home, wire the thing in a star configuration. I've done two houses now, and I made many improvements the second time. But the best by far was not daisy-chaining anything. The cable (coax), telephone, 10baseT, audio, and alarm systems are ALL routed from each room to a single hub location in the garage. Included is a patch panel with discrete jacks for each wire (except the alarm system which terminates into the alarm control unit). The patch panel allows rapid reconfiguration, and the star topology almost eliminates running around the house troubleshooting a wiring fault.
* Split Infinity Music
One lesson learned from the most recent install: Run a couple of everything to every room, even if you don't need it now. My main regret was not having a couple coax and ethernet cables to the room that became the home office. One was not enough to send BACK the audio and video signals from my PC to the living room entertainment system.
Another thing - consider buying a spool of 10baseT wire double the length you need for the network, and using it to run the telephone as well. It's actually as cheap, and you then have four-line phone capability for later, as well as better-shielded phone lines for better modem speeds.
If possible, convince the local telco and cable company to each run TWO wires from the street. It costs them almost nothing if it gets done all at once, and even if you don't convince the home office, you can usually persuade the installer. I can't remember how many times my lines have been cut or damaged, and that second phone line really helps if you later need to upgrade.
For audio, I highly recommend 12-4 cable - four 12-gauge conductors, bundled (and twisted) in a single wire smaller than a RG6 coax. It's infinitely easier to pull a single round cable than to pull two squarish lamp cord style wires, and the twisting helps reject noise.
For video, spend a few more bucks and get quad-shield RG6. The extra shielding will make for a much clearer picture.
For the install boxes, you can get six-outlet faceplates with interchangable modules. You can fit the entire cable plant for a single room in one wall box. But it does make for some tight fit during installation.
One consideration I noted (after the fact, unfortunately) was not being able to power on/off a secondary amplifier. Your old amp probably will wimp out trying to drive eight or ten speakers spread around the house, so remote amps are useful. But I hate to leave them on all the time. There's probably a good way to power all the amps on when you power up the master system, but I didn't think about that ahead of time. The best solution is probably X10 equipment; the X10-enthusiasts love boasting about those master controllers that can be scripted to turn on the system, set the channels, open the DVD tray, and dim the lights. Might work well.
Another audio thought. With the advent of MP3 and other PC-based audio, having 10baseT terminals in each room is becoming more and more essential. There are many "appliances" that stream MP3s from a central server, or provide a appliance-style server capability, etc. Think ahead.
As a price point, about two years ago I spent well under a thousand dollars to wire about 10 room locations with all the services I mentioned above, including some built-in speakers and volume controls, the reconfigurable wall plates, the patch panel, the cables, etc. I believe the total bill came to around $600. I ran close to 2000 ft of cable. And except for some niggling details, I'm extremely pleased with the results.
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--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
I originally wired my house with a Netgear 10/100 switch, 4 ports plus an uplink (never used). We installed Novell's old/free MacIPX on the Macs and added a similar service to the Windows computers (built-in, part of the Network control panel), and then played Diablo 1 for hours and hours.
Just this past month, we re-wired with a SMC Barriade 10/100 with 7 ports plus an uplink (and other goodies). Before doing this, we evaluated wireless. Here are my observations from both the first and second wiring:
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
How about 1 ethernet jack, and two phone lines off the same 4pair cable? Does the changing voltage on phone ring mess up the ethernet?
011001110110110001100101011011100110001001101111
My goal is to make my home the perfect place for a LAN party.
A LAN party with only 13 ethernet jacks! Sheesh! Personally, I use 3 where ever I plug in. One for my notebook, one to sync up my Handheld, and one to sync up my watch
Wireless seems to be having a lot of problems with security at present (the so-called "war driving"). Before making the fundamental decision of "wire vs wireless" have a think about what is going to go across the LAN un-encrypted, not just passwords, but SMB shares, personal details, your documents, that kind of thing.
Now consider the possibility of a war-driver going past your abode and getting hold of all that data... It's your call, but like I said - how paranoid are you?
I must confess, I prefer cable anyway; it's slightly more expensive, but it's very easy to get everything upto 100Mb/s which is nice if your pr0n^H^H^H^H media files are on a central server. And for a quick frag of course. (I said *frag*!)
Here's a quick tip for cabling a home with cavity walls as well: get some cheap plastic tubing to run your cable down. Punch a hole through the wall where your socket is going to be then drop the tube with inserted cable down the cavity from above. Jiggle the tube about until a friend below spots it through the hole, then slowly retract the tube and cable until (s)he can catch hold of the end. If the tubing is flexible enough you may be able to pull it back through the hole from below and reuse it on the next socket, or just trim of the slack and leave the stuff in the wall.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
We bought our house sans network. Also, there were only three telephone jacks in the entire place. The first week had it we pulled 4 4pr of cable to EVERY bedroom, plus 4 4pr to the livingroom, dining room and kitchen. Each room also got a coax ( Can you say SciFi? ) added to one drop too. In the basement is a relay rack that has a patch panel, switch and new drop from the phone company for the phone lines and internet access. Now ANY jack in the house can be data or telephone and no worries about wireless problems. The down side was the cost, over $200 in cat 5e cable, plus $100 for the rack, $100 for the patchpanel and another $250 in patch cables, shelves, UPS etc. We decided that if we build a house we'll wire before the drywall and insullation goes in... pulling drops through a wall is a big pain in the @ss.
I'd suggest that your best option for future expandability over a 40-100 year house lifespan is not any particular type of cabling, it's probably conduits with strings inside. That way, you can change the cabling later on.
My parents used some X10 wiring in the house. You don't need the little boxes; we replaced the switches in the switchboxes with X10 switches. I think that X10 sucks, but it's pretty much the only game in town.
My personal idea is to replace the switchboxes in a house with either a custom motorolla dragonball or a PC/104 board and an LCD panel with a relay controller attached. You could then have your computer read off the news, the buzzers, etc.
Also consider the benefits of motion sensors and a security system for household control. You can turn on lights if somebody's stumbling down the hall at night to get a glass of water.
Homes need LAN closets now.
Also consider getting a household surge supressor. They are a few hundered dollars, but it might save your ass in a thunderstorm.
Gentoo Sucks
There is a great installation guide/diary complete with photographic documentation by Ben Rota at ArsTechnica.
http://arstechnica.com/guide/networking/installat
"Perfect numbers like perfect men are rare." -Descartes
When I wired my house, the biggest screw-up I made was running much of the wiring stabled on the outside walls. At the time this seemed like a good idea. It actually worked for a couple of days, and then started to slow down and eventually fail. I also had problems in the winter with snow sliding off the roof and ripping the cable off. I have just redone most of the network indoors. Needless to say, I'd hate to see someone else go through the pain and suffering I've experianced. No high speed pr0n downloads. No video confrencing. No network gaming. I still have nightmares about it to this day. *wimper*
Maskirovka
I've done 2 100bTX in a cable in a pinch..)or easily work around broken pairs without re-crimping. If you only
lay Cat5(or better, even for phones), you can also easily convert any one of then to 100bTX in a pinch.
If you have more then two phone lines (ie, your phone, fax, roomy, kids, cat, etc.) you can also easily repatch
any jack to be any line...
This is probably a pretty basic question, but it's along this topic. What sorts of things can/should be done to shield wires in the house?
My top 3 concerns are telephone cable, output-level-carrying speaker wire, and RJ-45 network cable. I have some speaker wire going through my house, and I don't notice any noise or hum on it, although it's just open, and running near 110V power lines. I do suspect I'm losing ADSL bandwidth from phone cables that are running near power lines, but I have no way of knowing.
Along the lines of one of the questions, is there some good shielding conduit into which wires can be run? Something like that, of a decent sized diameter, that just went vertically into the basement would be an ideal way of preparing your house for any future wiring concerns.
Just my $0.02. Don't spend it all in one place!
SIG: 11
1. When using copper cabling always make sure that the cable does not cross over any of the following Flourescent bulbes, different electrical grounding, electritical conduits, electrified metal conduits, and heating conduits.
2. When using copper cabling do not put twists or kinks into it. This decreases the electricial conductivity and performance of the link.
3. When using fiber cabling do not put twists or kinks into it. This decreases bandwidth and could cause the fiber to snap.
4. Document everything you know about the implementation of the network, from connectors to protocols running on the network. Nothing is not important enough to have in some notebook documenting your network!It is always the one bit of vital data that causes you to spend hours analyzing the network looking for a simple answer that could have taken you 30 seconds to write down in a book.
The point of having a LAN in your home is to facilitate the transfer of data from one machine to another, if anything else is previnting this then your network is in need of a tune up.
Worry is like intrest paid on a loan that never comes due.
Hey all you techno geeks out there like me are forgetting an integral part of owning a house. Home Depot / Lowes. Go there and buy PVC pipe, shove some in the walls before it is complete, walla, always upgradeable easy to run cable conduit!
:-( --- argh. Despair, I owe again.
I don't have a home yet -- I live in an apartment in East Patterson, NJ -- but I'm planning on buying a nice little Cape in the next couple of years, so I've got a plan laid out for wiring it (of course). Here it is:
1. I'd choose one closet, probably in the main hallway near the center of the house, and make that my server closet. In the server closet goes a Linux or BSD box set up as a firewall.
2. From the closet, I'd run some poly water pipe up to the attic, where a wider pipe would run the length of the house along the beam. I'd run one ethernet cable up to the attic from the firewall, and it'd come out at a waterproof plastic trunk or storage box in which I'd have a hub or router. Lines from the hub or router would run into the wide pipe, and smaller pipes would extend down behind the drywall in each bedroom, a study, the living room, the dining room, and the basement.
3. In each room, I'd find the best place to put a desk, and I'd mount an ethernet jack in the wall about two feet from the baseboard there. The small pipe would run to the jack, and the cable would attach to it, providing service to that room.
4. The pipe going down to the basement would lead to a six by nine room I'd frame in one of the corners, which would be another server closet, basically -- but this server wouldn't be set up as a firewall. Rather, it would be set up with control cards I'd buy from an electrical supply house, and linked up to the air conditioner, heat, etc, so I wouldn't have to walk down to the basement to turn stuff on. Also, it'd be on a UPS, and when detecting that the UPS is its primary power, it'd automatically turn on a generator for the house.
Finally, I'd put some small security cameras in the corners of most of my rooms, and some low-light ones outside to watch the outside of the house. These would be hooked up to a video capture card in the server in the basement, which would intermittently save files to a networked drive, so that I could surf in while I work and see what's been going on in my house. I'd use perl scripts to manage these, archiving them automatically, etc, and when certain events occurred, like a window opening (contact switches, etc) I'd have the machine call my cell phone and play a recorded message, something like "DUDE! Someone's messing with your goods, man..."
You have to admit, building it would be a hell of a lot of fun...
Phil.
crazyphilman@programmer.net
crazyphilman@programmer.net
Sort of fat, good looking in a disheveled sort of way.
What I got, in 2000 s.f.:
2 cable-TV outlets (in the wrong place)
2 phone lines (in the wrong place)
1 Sprint BBD line (in the wrong place)
1 Symphony Wireless LAN (always in the right place)
Lots of long, fat, crumpled, ugly wires running along my baseboards.
If I had a new house to build, I would install multiple multi-port wallplates per room, each one including:
TV RF or S-video outlet (depending on room);
RJ-11 phone (DirecTV and TiVo, e.g., need this);
RJ-45 Cat5e data line (for control);
shielded AC lines run from a UPS/surge-protector/filter (which separates the entertainment/data power from appliance/lighting power).
There would be extra RJ-45 Cat5e outlets in certain locations for Gigabit Ethernet, digital audio transport, etc. FDDI or an optical audio medium are a possibility.
Every room, plus several locations outside, would be laced with audio cable, to allow renovations that involve moving speakers (16ga. is fine; Monster Cable is for suckers).
Floors would have fat conduit channels between the panels, to allow the occasional mid-room run.
Each wall would have an unused horizontal and vertical riser.
I figure the utility closet should have a full-height rack with nothing but patchboards.
And I'd keep the wireless ethernet, for a hundred good reasons. But only if there's something to be done about the broken security and worsening interference.
--Blair
I'm having a house built and was offered the option of having a system called OnQ put in. It has a centralized panel (like an electrical breaker box) that all your wiring runs back to. It covers network (cat 5), cable or dss (coax), and telephone wiring. One of the cool things they do is run the telephone wiring over cat 5 also, so you get better quality and up to four lines per cable. You can re-configure at the patch panel so I can turn a phone jack into a network jack in about 10 seconds, and vice-versa.
They offer modules that fit in the panel, but the hub they offered seemed a little behind the times so I'm putting in my own 10/100 switch. They also offer a wide range of video modules, and the one I'm putting in will allow me to put a camera in the baby's room and broadcast the video to the downstairs TV, then with a quick adjustment at the panel I can send cable to that room instead in just a few seconds. I'm not in the house yet so I don't know if it works as advertised, but their site is worth checking out at OnQ home wiring system .
One other thing I've learned is that X-10 is good but it's not great. There's a definite delay between pushing a button and something coming on. Also, the wall switches suck. Their failure rate is way high (failure mode is the unit responds to X-10 controllers but pushing the button on the switch does nothing). At approx. $15 each they're expensive and I can understand their desire to keep costs down, but I'd rather pay $25 once than $15 each year or so. Still, nothing beats X-10 for turning all the Christmas lights on and off with one switch.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
A sizeable segment of the world's population isn't even wired for electricity yet. Maybe humankind should solve that little problem first.
(Please note: this is for wired networks only, since most home-grade wireless stuff isn't scalable past 11Mbps)
1: If you're going to run cables through walls, in an attic, under the floor boards, etc., use shielded twisted pair ethernet wiring. Not only will it reduce interference, but it usually is plenum rated to comply with building codes.
2: Consider using metal conduit if STP/Plenum cable is not available. Conduit is available at whatever necessary length from home building suppliers, and can be grounded independently to a grounding rod to reduce noise, and avoid ground loops.
3: Plan for expansion! Run at least 4 lines to each room of the house, and pool them all together with a fast ethernet switch, stored in a cool, dry place. :) If your switch has a higher bandwidth port for routing to external networks, point that to your proxy/firewall/nat/etc. boxen.
4: This is redundant, but be professional. Use wall boxes, etc for all the ports.
5: Plan your network security. Lots of people get so involved with the coolness of a wired home, that they forget all their network skills.
6: If you live in CA, I highly suggest a UPS. :)
-- Vector --
In addition to all the talk about running cat5 here and fiber there, the first thing you want to do is determine a suitable cetral location to be your servercloset/power closet/everything closet. Really you want this to be right next to where the main power line comes in.
This should ideally be a small, well ventilated room. All of your cat5, fiber, s-video, etc. cables should go directly to this room. This way everything is centralized and can be easily controlled. This would also allow for easy instalation of say a phone system.
For those with the big bucks who want to truly make the "home of the future" one of the best things is to make all the electrical home runs. This means that every light switch and every outlet should be run directly to the central board, no daisy chaining. Although this will be more expensive during the construction (much more wire required) it provides greater flexabillity. Right now the only really high grade systems (outside of X10, which is not that high grade) for controlling the home require home run. They usually involve these switching boxes which can controll say 10 circuits, then you just add more boxes as you go along. Note that for this to work properly, you should also run low voltage wire to all the electrical switches you will be using as these systems usually rely on low voltage controll switches.
Another major advantage is to have conduit run all over the home and allow for pulling new cable easily. No matter how well you prepair and how much cable you run, there WILL be something new and better that you didn't think of. This way you can install new cables and new controlls as they come out.
I wouldn't bother with the PCI cards (too much work). There is no driver for their USB adapter (PA101).
802.11 wireless, however, will give us 11Mbps networking without any limitation within our house and even our yard. The cost is very reasonable and the main use of the LAN is to share a printer and our cable modem -- since 11Mbps is faster than either our printer or modem it should be more than sufficient.
-Coach-
Perhaps the world's greatest tragedy is that ignorance is not impotence.
1) Don't let the electrician (or whatever specialist for each type of wire) leave until you've tested each room! It took us a week to get the guy to come back after we found out that one room (mine! grrr) had a dead link.
2) Keep it neat
3) (Quite possibly the most important, although obvious for MOST people) Color-code everything! Nothing more irritating than being forced to test every cable to figure out where it goes (all of our ethernet lines weren't marked..had to plug the computers in one by one and see which lights on the hub lit up.. don't laugh!)
4) If you have the skill, set up an old computer as a router rather than using a storebought one, unless you plan on paying for a cisco one. We bought a linksys, and it dropped the connection every 3 days and had to be reset, from the shipping version of the firmware to the present one. So i converted a 100mhz p1, and everything became happy again :)
To smash a single atom, all mankind was intent / Now any day the atom may return the compliment
If wiring is going in the walls, I think it needs to be plenum rated, not the cheaper kind of non-insulated cable.
I'd hate to see someone void their homeowners insurance policy by learning that *after* their house burned down because they left the Pentium III on again....
I have just started construction on a huge addition onto my 100 year old house and I am planning to have a whole bunch of RJ-45 outlets every 10 feet in the walls in the new part of my house and they are all gonne run upstairs to my 24port switch that I will probably have mounted in the wall or something.. (because it is a rackmount) anyways anyone know where the HELL I can get RJ45 wallplates from?
Daddy would you like some sausage?
Sharky's Home LAN Guide /. reader)
Gamecenter's "Build a Home LAN"
"Configuring an Internet Firewall and Home LAN With Linux"
The CNET home LAN guide (if you're not a
The Home LAN Project
The do-it-yourself under 50 bucks home LAN guide
whew. um... anyone got something that ain't covered already?
It's nothing really special, and I assume it's been done before. All my home network really consists of is four computers all tied into a hub connected to the cable modem.
The first computer on the hub, the one I'm posting off of, is essentially right next to the hub. Actually, it's more like the hub is on top of my machine. The hub is a Linksys 4-port Cable/xDSL router. The second computer, my Mandrake box, sits to the right of my chair (so I can switch between using my Windoze gaming box (this one) and my Mandrake server box (to my right)).
The third computer, my sister's Windoze box, is in her room. I had a bit of trouble wiring this one, because my calculations were a bit off, and I bought a 25' Ethernet cable instead of a 50' one. I was off by about a few feet when I ran the cable through the ceiling, so one end was connected to the hub and the other was hanging a few feet away from her NIC. I had to do a bit more drilling, but since my Windoze box (and the hub) reside in my closet, I drilled a hole at the bottom of my closet and ran the cable along the ground instead of the ceiling. The 25' cable now works.
The fourth computer, my mom's Windoze P166 (mainly used for word processing and web browsing) box, is out on the far end of the living room, about 50' walking distance from my current position (equidistant from both Windoze and Mandrake boxes). Again, a miscalculation forced me into a situation I didn't really want, only with this one, I overshot the distance and bought a 100' Ethernet cable. I now have about thirty feet of Ethernet slack sitting on the carpet behind my desk. Heh. The P166 is wired through the ceiling.
I don't have the Mandrake box doing anything important other than eating up CPU cycles for SETI@Home (it's a P2-350). I would be running a HTTPd except I've been getting nasty letters from @Home's abuse centers whenever I run one. Seems those fascists don't like giving a 5-year customer a bit of slack. All it really does is house four hard drives which I use for backup whenever any of the Windoze machines decide to take a crap.
One possible use for Cat 5 is for speaker wiring for low wattage speakers. 8 wires == 4 speakers. Not too bad and the sound quality, while not audiophile, is good for piping ambient music.
Next on the agenda - home theater PC. Just got the guts, rackmount chassis on it's way. Details to follow.
There is one company that sells sealed keyboards for industrial and kitchen type applications. I think I saw something on Slashdot about it a while back, but that is a start for hostile stuff. So you could do something like put the computer in a cabinet in the kitchen, run extension cables to outlets flush on the countertop for the sealed keyboard and mouse. Then perhaps mount an lcd panel from an old laptop as a monitor beneath a piece of plastic embedded into the countertop. Should protect from most problems that way.
When I moved into my new (OK, old, but new to me) domicile, I had the home entertainment system in one room, computer room, a few cams here and there, coax spread everywhere... Apart from the coax, I knew I wanted connectivity of varying sorts running here and there, so I ran multiple lengths of CAT5e between two 66-blocks placed in strategic locations. Those are the telco-style punch-down style blocks you see in the phone closets at work... anyhow, it leaves an easy way to add/reassign cable lengths and also to run additional lengths of cable for audio and signal I/O. In terms of where, try to give clearance around florescent lights and anything else that uses strong waveforms and hot ramped-up current (vent motors, etc.) Shielding is obviously something to shoot for.
The wife and I had a new house built a couple of years ago, and I knew at the time that I wanted to have the place running a high speed network. I had the home builder run cat5 throughout the house that all terminates in the basement at a central location. The home builder had no clue about what I wanted to do, and couldn't let me do it myseld (supposedly because of regulations, but let me buy the boxes of cable, and I spec'd the whole thing out, making sure that the cat5 would not run parallel to any electrical cables. It's all 100BT switched networking equipment, (Cisco and Sun) and it really does well. I have the ability to snake full fiber as well at a later date if needed. I currently host a few web sites for friends through a local DSL (640K) connection, and have an older machine that hosts about 100GB of MP3's that are accessible throught the house. The kids all have network drops in their bedrooms, and we have the other drops in the family room, the master bedroom, the living room, and I do have one in the kitchen (away from any cooking devices) that is ready, but we don't use at the moment. I really like the way it works....It's simple, easy to maintain, and very reliable. I am in the process of hooking the main stereo and HDTV, DVD, Satellite receiver, blah, blah.... into the network as well, so I can stream all of the MP3's through the XMMS machine running on a little laptop in the family room.
My simple setup consists of four rooms that are wired with CAT5. Each rooms CAT5 runs through the attic into a room with a hub and server box. This all works fine except for the fact that the cables enter the attic through the ceiling. In other words, they are visible in the corner of each room. I would like to put the CAT5 in the wall and connect them to those nice little ethernet wall plates, but how do I get the cable down there? If I drill through the top of the stud framing in the attic, I assume I can get the cable in to the wall, but isn't there insulation and fire-braces? I was thinking I could possibly run it through the same holes that the electrical wires go down, but I think that would cause interference with the CAT5, no? After reading numerous posts so far, I've yet to read anything regarding this issue... Any input would be helpfull...
[reposted as Non-AC to make more viewable...]
[hopefully I will get some replies now......]