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

I don't read THG,

[$carab]

As is detailed here and here, Toms Hardware recently performed a media blackout at a Public event, the Million Man Lan Party.

They are currently threatening to sue an online journalist (who happens to be a poor college student) for libel regarding his reporting of this story. Fortunately, the friendly folks at Hardocp have stepped in to provide some legal assistance for the guy, to make sure he is not railroaded into pulling down his editorial describing THG's media shenanigans.

Do your part for Internet Free Speech. Boycott Toms Hardware Guide.

Re:Cat 5e vrs. Cat 6

[drinkypoo]

I really don't know what happened to my cat6 faq link. It was at TIA. Oh well, try http://www.convergencecable.com/cat6faq.htm and http://www.kroneindopac.com/tech/cat6faq.asp and maybe also http://www.tiaonline.org/standards/category6/cat6_ for_search_engine.htm, the page I meant to link in the first place. I used preview this time, like a good boy.

Wireless

[rf0]

I thought about starting to put holes in walls etc but taking that my walls are about 2 foot thick I decided to just go wireless. 11Mb all round the house and into the garden and not one hole drilled. OK not as fast as wired but so much neater and easier

Rus

Re:Wireless...

[craenor]

You are right...and as soon as I think one of my neighbors can/will do that, I'll upgrade my wireless network security.

I regularly run net stumbler and the like to see if I can pick up other wireless networks. When I think I actually need better security I'll add it. For the time being though, there is nothing on any of my computers that really needs securing.

As for why I don't use WEP? I've found it somewhat buggy and it sucks up bandwidth.

I was lucky

[@ngel]

When I and my three roommates moved into our house we rent right now, we were lucky: the landlords were just finishing the renovations, and we (being graduates with IT degrees) quickly suggested they let us run CAT5 all over the house while things were still in the "rebuilding" phase. After about 3 minutes of describing the benefits, they agreed, and we quickly got a network map laid out.

We now have CAT5, phone, and coaxial cable running to 7 rooms, all faceplated, across 3+ floors. They all meet in the basement of the house, with the chimney acting as a backbone guide. The Cable modem, router, and switch are all down there, on a custom built shelf. We run a Wireless base station in the attic for all our laptops, and have almost no visible wiring (the only visible wiring being the cat5 to the desk).

The point is if you start off from the beginning and plan for cat5 around the house, it makes it a lot easier. Granted, we had our landlords/carpenters to help us find our way into walls and floors to get it from the basement to the attic. But it works, we've never had a problem, and the house is now cleanly wired for ethernet, which our landlords love, for future tenents.

So yes, a little planning goes a LONG way!

Re:Poor bastards.

[Zarquon]

Because I was upgrading from a true 10 mbit network (10B2.. people kept #@!#ing with the T-connectors) and wasn't about to take a performance hit, as well as a large monetary hit.

Shared files on 10 mbit were fairly slow, and print jobs for the new printer were taking minutes per page to spool on complex pages.

10/100 card, $8/port.
16 port switch, $90. 7 ports used, $13/port.
Wall plate / jack, $8/port.
Cable: Had leftover partial spool of 5e, free.
price per port for switched 100 mbit? $29

7 port wireless:
Price /port of pci wireless card: $50-70. Call it $60.
Access point, varies, $80 for an okay one. $11/port.
Price per port: $71 / port for shared 11 mbit that goes down anything someone turns on the microwave.

G wasn't widely available when I put the 10/100 in, but current prices seem to be:

Did I include time to run the wire and terminate it? No.

Re:Cat 5e vrs. Cat 6

[TrackDaddy]

The replies to your question have all been very lucid and concise. However, none of them has come out and said what they really mean. Please allow me to drive the point home.

Whenever you are doing a large capital project (and yes, when the money is coming out of my bank account, a home network is a large capital project) you sometimes spend more money up-front to save money in the long-run. Cable is cheap compared to labor and the other associated costs of installing it. So you pull a higher grade than you need. In fact, in larger installations, you sometimes pull more than you need as well. Then if you have a cable failure, between a couple of buildings for example, you simply abandon the old cable and energize one of the spares. As another poster pointed out, it's about seeing "the big picture". Hope this helps.

CAT-3 works fine for fast ethernet

[Lost Race]

At least, it does for me. 2 pairs is all it takes. I'm measuring 93 million bits per second right now over a TCP stream from this workstation to the server in the basement, about 25 meters of wiring away. I have 2 spare phone lines inside the house, each a CAT-3 twisted pair; the two together form a single 100TX connection. Have to be very careful to hook up the wires to the jacks in the right order! Also, I have a 100TX switch at every junction (wall plate) acting as a repeater to keep the signal strong -- multiple splices seemed to degrade the signal enough that the wires would only carry 10 Mbps. I used the cheapest low-power switches I could find two years ago, Linksys EZXS55W, and there doesn't seem to be any extra overhead going through 5 of them (0.2 ms ping times).

Naturally this wiring will be no good whatsoever for gigabit and higher speeds.... If I ever want to upgrade from 100 megabit I'll have to rewire the house.

(For the skeptics: yes, you really only need four wires (two pairs) for 100 Mbps fast ethernet. Eight-wire cables are a big fat waste of copper!)

I've also set up a similar 100 Mbps LAN over CAT-3 at a friend's house and it works fine for him too.

Re:Are you seriously arguing against plenum in hom

[Zathrus]

If you were going to build a house for yourself with network cable in the walls, why would you use something that burns readily and creates loads of toxic smoke?

If your network cable is burning, you already have far bigger problems on your hands. You realize that most insulation will burn as well, not to mention the drywall and wood that your house is essentially built out of. Yeah, it's all firetreated, but when it does burn it gives off far more noxious smoke than cat5 will.

Your original statement is still wrong - there is no requirement for plenum cable in residences. There's no need either, unless you're running it through HVAC ducts (which is an entirely separate violation of residential building codes in the first place).

Aren't all articles from THG

[hughk]

paid advertorials???

Seriously, I agree, why get a contractor and why write an article about it. I use contractors at work, but every metre of Cat-5 at home is mine.

I have a home network...

[Large Green Mallard]

Installed in mid 2001 in Australia. At that time, the cost of getting 9 x ethernet ports, 10 x telephone outlets between two lines, TV cable to 4 extra locations and changing existing crappy 600-series telephone sockets to RJ-11 was cheaper than buying wireless bridging gear for the three main computers I had at that time.

Plus I got 100mbit ethernet instead of 11mbit wireless, and it meant that in the future I was able to add a networked printer in another room without having to buy yet more wireless gear.

While I'm more than capable of doing the wiring myself (I have done in many north american homes), in Australia many homes, such as mine, are all brick, instead of stud and dry-wall. This makes installing the points a significantly difficult task, so for A$1400 all up (US$700 at the time), I think I got out of it pretty well. This also included a 8 port switch and signal amp for the TV signal.

I don't trust wireless security to the point of wanting my own access point, thanks muchly. I can put it in my insecure DMZ, but someone might use my bandwidth and monthly data allowance, which just costs me more :P And I don't feel like implementing 802.1X/LEAP/VPNs at home either.

Wireless?

[ONU CS Geek]

I've read the comments and I hear people saying, "Use Wireless, it's less hassle," as well as networking horror stories.

Well, I've got about both. My first day on the job as a High-Speed Cable installer, I ran my drill through a power main. Knocked me on my ass, and I had to buy a new drill and pay to have the customers house re-wired. Not a fun experience. What did I learn? Look on both sides of the walls, and always ask the customer if they'd like their jack there.

In my 'house,' Each 'Data box' has 2 Cat5E, a fiber, 2 2-line phone jacks, and 2 Coax. I use this so I can provide a secure/DMZ, have the ability to upgrade, as well as send signals (e.g., videocams) to other devices in my house. The only reason that I use wireless is so I can use the occassional Free Access point that's floating about, and war-driving. My WAP in my house is on, however, it's on a seperate vlan, and no one really uses it.

Stay away from wireless--sure it's easy, but, do you really want your data out there for the world to see? For the effort that you use to run your wire and make sure the job is done right (e.g., use Mini-Com's from Panduit, make sure they're snapped down all the way, and make sure you've punched down everything/terminated your fiber right), you'll have the satisification that you've done a job right, and that your data is safe and secure.

Home Networking

[maroberts]

I did mine (a small 3 bedroomed detached house in England) all by myself.

I was fortunate in the fact my walls are of plasterboard construction so I had no problems running cable down them, except between floors. I put a switch and a wireless router in the attic.

What did I learn?
a) If doing it again I would use some conduit pipe to make rewiring easier. However I did put 4 CAT5 ports in each room, which is enough for any small house!

b) buy a big roll of cable and make your own cables - its much cheaper that way.

c) Plan and check before you knock holes in walls

d) I'm a good network installer but a terrible plasterer, put any holes in walls where they'll be most hidden

My Experience

[don_carnage]

For what it's worth, I documented my experience wiring my home for network and phone here:

http://spookyworld.dnsalias.com/bhjp/d/74

Note: This article is now two years old, so technologies like wireless and gigabit ethernet were out of reach.

Re:Too hard

[blibbleblobble]

"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."

Duct tape is your friend.

Build a student network, which consists of ethernet cable duct-taped down to the carpets/floor, and it even goes under doors.

Re:building a?

[sn0wcrash]

It actually did. She labelled every cable except the power cables. Even got my dual monitor setup and kvm setup right.

I would love an article...

[chrysrobyn]

I would love an article that deserved the title "Building A (Serious) Home Network From Scratch". This isn't it.

I want to see how to open my wall with the least destruction. How to snake it up to the attic. How to snake it up to the plywood under the carpet in the second floor. Then, how to patch drywall.

I want to see how to effectively route wires from all over the house to a punchdown block in a closet. I don't need to see ethernet cable connectors every step of the way, we're talking about a serious network. PUNCH DOWN BLOCKS! There is, of course, a discussion of conduit. People who have done it and found a need, along with a few sentences about people who have spent (how long does it take?) a few hours to do it and found it to be a waste of time. Eventually, because it's only a Home Network, we probably just go with wires and no conduit, but we've at least thought about conduit and feel better for it.

This Serious Home Network probably also has jacks to tie in the neighbors for bandwidth sharing or LAN gaming, or possibly some other fancy stuff, but we're not wasting our page views on how to cut down a rack. We can figure that stuff out.

Re:I would love an article...

[ediron2]

My background happens to hit all of these 'physical' issues just right: I've done construction, construction management (a great excuse to watch EVERY trade for a few hours at a time to learn from their decades of hands-on experience), and more computer/network programming and infosec work than the others combined. I've done commercial retrofits of a building for electrical code, including bending a few thousand feet of conduit.

So, at home I've done a hybrid of everything mentioned in this thread. While I'm sure there are better ways on a lot of these pointers, my ways worked and didn't even leave me in trouble with the wife or heckled by appearance-attentive friends. Incidentally, all this is geared toward appearance/resale asthetics.

Graceful holes in sheetrock:

1 - Never use a hammer for drywall unless you're doing demolition. There's a skinny tapered saw made for small cuts in drywall. That's the best $5-15 you'll ever spend.
2 - Save the square you cut out of the wall. The alternative (cutting a new piece of drywall) takes forever. If the square is more than a few inches on a side, use short lengths of 2" x 1/4" wood (what I've always called lath) and screws to reattach this piece (the lath hides under the sheetrock, inside the wall... attach lath across the gap, then lay the piece in and attach it to the lath) before going to work with joint compound (sheetrocker's mud) for your patch.
3 - Too little mud is better than too much. Plan on 3 or so layers to get done. After the mud is firm (an hour, less for quickdry (a special mud)) use a broad blade (5" to 8") to knock down the high spots, a cheese-grater or coarse sandpaper to further feather it down, and then let it dry. Fill/sand/fill/sand until the surface feels flat and looks good. Find a pro and watch 'em work, if your technique sucks. It isn't rocket science, it isn't art, but it isn't trivial. But the raw materials are cheap enough you could create a test-wall and practice until you understood how to hide seams, etc. Oh, and most contractors thin the mud a titch with water and never use mud with lumps. Again, it's cheap... toss and start over with new mud.

Pick your battles:

Where I thought I wanted the soho switch for my network to be just wasn't as practical as where I put it, when I realized how many nasty wire-pulls I faced. It bugs me that I can't glance at net status LED's from my office, but the six times per year it matters I figure were worth not running all the wires back to that. Besides, I need the exercise.

I carefully placed my network connections. Wire's cheap (so go the long way if easier), and some rooms tolerate exposed wire (a garage, the laundry room, along the baseboard in closets). Further, a single 12" x 12" hole in one closet wall allowed me room to do a vertical drill-hole downward into the garage, then drag wire up and put a lead out into that closet and onto an ideal spot in the adjacent room. That way if I didn't like my sheetrock repairs, they were in a seldom-seen place.

There were a few spots that I felt would be cool locations to have a spigot to just surf... dining table, the patio, and a living room. All three were never going to allow an easy connection, so I've got a wireless AP. But where broadband matters (for my ReplayTV, my work PC's and a file sharing/media PC), switched cat-5 was worth the effort.

As for Wireless vulnerabilities: To secure 11b to an acceptable level, I have WEP turned on, defaults changed, and I change the WEP key every few weeks. Since my reading of the WEP vulnerabilities seems to point toward a need for nearly a gig of passive data capture, I figure I've got things adequately secured for my personal data. I would not recommend this for a corporate setting, but for home office use, I'm more secure than 90% of users. Just because I do infosec, I also configured firewalls to put the wireless PC's into a very narrow DMZ of their own. They can surf, and they can print. Frankly, most people's knowledge of in

I know what u mean

[XSforMe]

1 Gb Ethernet, Cat 6 cabling, 19 inch rack? I know big corporations whose network is put to shame by this setup.

Still, I would be looking for something more in the "ideal" home network, such as a POTS to IP-telephony gateway, and a cable/air TV - video server gateway. Why waste effort cabling an ugly coax and telephone cable when everything could run on top of the ether? This would also simplify the plate setup as his contracter suggested. I know that IP telephones are still expensive, but as I see it, money is not an issue in this setup.

Another point, I hope he OWNS this house. Can you imagine his landlord saying "well, I don't think I'll renew your contract next year."... GGHHHAAAAAA!!!!