Building A (Serious) Home Network From Scratch

Casey Lang-Vie writes "THG are running an article that outlines how to build a home network from scratch. I wish I'd read this before I attempted - now I have a few (ok, 8) unsightly holes in my wall." This is the type of network that encourages home ownership rather than rental.

Comments

A drill, (When the wife is out)

[ricosalomar]

Worked for me.

Re:A drill, (When the wife is out)

[Glonoinha]

I think that was the first THG article I have ever read that didn't have a graph comparing the performance of Quake 3 Arena over the different technologies being discussed.

So here you go.

Q3A on FiberOp .x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x
Q3A on 100B--T .x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x
Q3A on 802.11a .x.x.x.x
Q3A on 10BaseT .x.x
Q3A on 802.11b .x.

building a?

[jeffkjo1]

Building A (Serious) Home Network From Scratch

Because lets face it, if you're not building a serious home network, then what are you building?

Re:building a?

[Zork the Almighty]

How can they have an article about "ripping holes in your walls to deploy gigabit ethernet in the home" without a chapter on "convincing the wife" ? What combination of fighting, pleading, and nagging does Tom's Hardware reccomend ? Where are the benchmarks ? I demand to see a bar graph.

Re:building a?

[Snoopy77]

It's all about the Point Management System (PMS). You endure awful movies, perform tasks around the house prior to being nagged to do it and do romantic thingys in order to score points. Points are rewarded depending on the level of commitment/endurance you demonstrated.

For example, sitting through Titanic requires a high level of endurance and will score quite well. But if you are looking to earn enough points for a home network then you are going to have to attempt to sit through a Fried Green Tomatoes, Driving Miss Daisy Double. Even this won't get you close to earning enough points. Dishwashing, vacuuming and taking out the trash are good, but even better if you do it without being told. A romantic date to the movies is good, if dinner is thrown in even better. Dinner at Hooters is not good.

And ofcourse, beware, points can be deducted. You must be on your best behavior. Unfortunately we cannot guarantee that any points will be retained for any period longer than a month.

Good luck

Re:building a?

[Bartmoss]

They assume - probably rightly - that the average geek does not have a wife.

Re:building a?

[Bios_Hakr]

Ok, I'd suggest you ask your woman to give your testicles back. They are probably in here purse next to the tissues and breath mints. Then put the women and children to bed and go looking for conduit.

If my woman doesn't like my computer shrine (currently 2 laptops, three desktops, 500ft of BRIGHT RED cat-v, and a WAP) then she knows where the door is. I just hope it doesn't hit her in the ass on her way out.

Seriously, the only thing keeping me from being ubergeek is my wife spending money on German Smoking Men, Italian dishes, and flannel sheets. Don't get me wrong, I love all those things, but when I say $Computer_Thing is needed in my house, money is allocated.

Re:building a?

[Bios_Hakr]

There's no way that shit worked afterwords...

Re:building a?

[dpilot]

I guess now I know that I'm in the process of putting in a *comical* home network.

Re:building a?

[Glonoinha]

Check your wife for a pulse.

Re:building a?

[Cpt_Kirks]

Shit, *I* couldn't put the rats nest (3 PCs, Stereo, TV, VCR, DVD player, router, cable modem, power strips, lamps, kvm, etc.) behind my desk back together in less than a week.

My wife won't even go in my office...

Too hard

[Waffle Iron]

Wall plates, contractors, planning -- feh. Do it the easy way: buy a $2.99 package of ethernet cable wall staples at Home Depot. Grab a hammer, and you can have cables routed all over your house within minutes.

Re:Too hard

[poopdik]

Wall plates, contractors, planning -- feh. Do it the easy way: buy a $2.99 package of ethernet cable wall staples at Home Depot. Grab a hammer, and you can have cables routed all over your house within minutes.

Staples? Then you'd need a staple gun. I'm perfectly happy just having spools of cables running free around the house, behind furniture.. over tables. I think they are happier that way too.

Re:Too hard

[warpSpeed]

Yuk. Thanks, but I'd rather have a tidy, kid-proof through the walls installation.

Moreover, it does a lot more for the resale value.

Thats the difference between the "mature" geeks and the young whipper snappers. :-) It is all about the resale value baby!

Real men

[pair-a-noyd]

have 6 or 7 holes in every wall with in the house with blue wires hanging out of them.
Wall plates? "We don need no steenkin wallplates!"

Really now, why would anyone plan out a home network? That takes all the fun out ot it!
I mean what's more fun than pulling wires at the last minute when you really have to have that wire.
And then trying to untangle the whole thing when you have to trouble shoot it!

Real men have huge tangled and matted nests of wires and they KNOW what every wire is!

Re:Real men

[l810c]

I've been retro-fitting our new(to us) house for the past year. A whole spool of RG6 and on my 3rd spool of Cat5e.

Sad thing is I have over $200 worth of Quikport wall plates & cat5e, co-ax, phone, banana inserts sitting is a box. And yet I have holes in every wall with 2-6 cables sticking out.

I keep thinking I'm going to get to the finish work, but when I have free time I keep thinking of new places to run cable. The Kitchen Desk, the kitchen counter, the porch, the garage. I'll have LCD's hangin over the toilets before I get those damn wallplates installed :)

Re:Real men

[pair-a-noyd]

Not any more....

Re:Real men

[xThinkx]

Real men have huge tangled and matted nests of wires...

Horseshit, REAL MEN mod the crap out of anything they can get a computer and/or accessory into, including the house, and they know how to run cable. Real men run the cable in an organized fashion with EL wire for cable management and UV reactive paint or insulation for added decoration.

Some plexi and a 4' x 6' hole in the wall to reveal amazingly cool wiring job is a must. Top off with cold-cathodes (since you're in the wall you can run them directly from AC) and you're sure to have the coolest freakin wall decoration ever. Talk about increasing resale value! Any uber-geek or pothead would kill for the borg or trippy look respectively. If you really wanna go cool, mount your router in the window too, but only after you've replaced all the ugly yellow LEDs with blue ones and added UV-reactive fans instead of any factory ones.

Mod the World!... Am I the only one who believes that any thing with a case can/should be modded?

Re:Real men

[DNS-and-BIND]

That's really gay, man. I mean, fantabulously gay. Have you considered doing all the wiring for Trading Spaces?

True Story...

[term0r]

In my first flat me and my flatmates (roommates) networked our house. All we had on hand was a knife sharpener and a Mallet. So, knife sharpener was placed against the wall, and given a nice thumb with the mallet. The entry wounds (my name for them) were quite nice and neat, only about 3 cm diameter of disturbed wall. However, the exit wounds on some walls had cracks up to about 1 metre long and actual openings of about 10 cm in diameter.

However, a few well placed posters and a lenient landlord helped :)

All in all, it was a nice reliable, albeit co-ax, network.

Nowadays I have a nice neat network, using lots of cable ties, packing tape and lots of Cat5. I am currently doing free computer work for a sparky friend in the hope that I can get some Cat5 installed for free when I buy my own home.

I built a computer from scratch, too!

[dokebi]

I just called up Dell and told them what to put in my box. I told them to put in P4 3Ghz, instead of 2.8GHz because it's better, and only slightly more expensive. I also told them what color cables to use. Moderators: It's funny, because it's True

Don't make it too complicated

[appleLaserWriter]

Your home has phone lines, right?

Go onto EBay and get some nice US Robotics Courrier HST modems, one for each room. Next, find some speedy 486DX-50 (not DX2-50) boxen, also one per room.

As you add more and more 486 and HST modems, both your compute speed and comm throughput tends towards infinte.

This is the beauty of the Home Beowulf Network!

Ethernet is for wussies. Real Men (tm) do it at 16.8k.

Re:He hired a Contractor!

[Anonymous Coward]

if that's what contractors do i could be a contractor too!

Let me tell you...

[The Panther!]

(next)


This is my
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story about how
(next)


I thought I was a
(next)


Real Man for hiring
(next)


a contractor to do my
(next)


manly work. Call me 404.

Come on

[Fizzlewhiff]

Any serious geek has a raised floor and a communications rack in the linen closet to tie it all together. This article is for people who prefer ceramic tile and carptet to the clunck of a raised floor.

Paid ad?

[Animats]

That article was a paid commercial, right?

Here's Mr Green, he's so serene, he's got a TV in every room

Re:an article not worth reading

[Snoopy77]

I made the mistake of reading this entire article. I recommend to all those who entertain the idea skip it.

Damn it! The one time I decided to RTFA and it's a dud. I swear I'll never read an article again!

Holes in wall

[BinBoy]

I wish I'd read this before I attempted - now I have a few (ok, 8) unsightly holes in my wall.

Worst of all, it was a wireless network. *rimshot* Thank you. You've been a great crowd.

Airport Base Station - Top 10 why to say 'yes'

[djupedal]

...means never having to say you're sorry.

Top 10 statements, if you use a wireless Airport network, you will not prefacing with "I'm sorry for...":

1. Another hole in the wall/floor/ceiling
2. Another unused/unneeded hole in the wall/floor/ceiling
3. Another spool of cable you may or not use...ever.
4. Another 6 hours of the network being offline each time 1 & 2 come around.
5. Another 2 hours of testing to find out if the problem is with the new cable or the router config (each time 1 & 2 come around)
6. Failing to understand the difference between CAT5 and CAT 6 while standing in the aisle at Home Networks Depot.
7. Failing to remember to buy 10/100 ethernet hubs (instead of just those cheap 10mbs hubs that still lurk on the shelf).
8. Failing to properly count and total all existing computers in the home (did you tell me you wanted one in the laundry room too?)
9. Damn it! When did we buy another PlayStation???
10. Damn it all to hell! When did they start putting ethernet ports on (insert favorite consumer product here...TV; MP3 player; xyz set-top box; baby monitor; door bell; burgler alarm)

Airport Base Station - Top 10 why to say 'no'

[rugger]

Top 10 statements, if you were not to use a wireless Airport network, you will not be prefacing with "I'm sorry for.."

1. the network not working in your favourite place due to interference.
2. paying multiple times the cost of a wired network.
3. the network being as slow as mollass.
4. having to buy yet another ethernet to wireless converter.
5. for the neighbours and passersby hacking into the network.
6. buying a wireless transeiver that was not powerful enough.
7. using the microwave and making the network crawl.
8. the network being hub based, making it even slower.
9. supporting apple's overpriced products.
10. attempting to justify my poor networking decisions on slashdot.org!!

Re:Cat5 + Coax + RJ-12

[kinnell]

Another idea is to pull a strand of string through the wall too

Also, by attachin a used yoghurt pot to each end of the string, it can double as an inexpensive room to room intercom system.

What REAL Real Men Do

[nzyank]

Don't fuck around. Need a hole? Use a sledgehammer. Fast, makes a nice, neat hole that's big enough for about 115 Cat5 cables. None of this sissy shit like wireless and threading little bitty cables through little bitty holes and fastening the ends on only AFTER threading the cables.

Worried about the landlord? Screw that! If you can afford more than one computer then you can afford to lose the security deposit.

Oh... and then do what I did. Move to New Zealand. Mwahhahahahaha

Not funny, INSIGHTFUL!

[mekkab]

Yep- I have CAT5 snaking from the basement up three floors. Oh sure, I've got a WAP, but thats for the laptop (so I can /. while I watch tv, or do, er, something, in the bathroom, while dumping core, uhm) my other machines need WIRES.

Sunny, Bankrupt California

[HarveyBirdman]

We don't have a lot of basements here, but we do have crawl spaces. Better than a slab, I guess.

I spent hours shuffling around and lying in that tiny space, hooking up cable and tacking it to the structure. The payoff was that the only holes inside the house were for the wall jack. I came up inside the walls from underneath.

I got to know the wildlife down there very well (there's less than you might imagine). I still trade emails with some Black Widows I met.