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I am building a new home. I have a data port in about every room of the house - running Cat 5e cable to about 18 locations. My question is - How do I setup internet and a home network in my home?
I am going to have cable and I am going to run all these cables to the basement to a closet. Soo.. I have cable coming into the basemen closet, going to a cable modem, then I buy a 24 port gigabit switch which plugs into my cable modem, then all of the data wires plug into that. Is that the correct way to do? If so, where do I put my wireless router? anywhere in the house? or does that go between he modem and the switch?
Sorry for the dumb questions but I want to put this infrastructure, order what I need equipment wise so I can have internet when I movie in. Thanks in advance for the help!
I am building a new home. I have a data port in about every room of the house - running Cat 5e cable to about 18 locations. My question is - How do I setup internet and a home network in my home?
I am going to have cable and I am going to run all these cables to the basement to a closet. Soo.. I have cable coming into the basemen closet, going to a cable modem, then I buy a 24 port gigabit switch which plugs into my cable modem, then all of the data wires plug into that. Is that the correct way to do? If so, where do I put my wireless router? anywhere in the house? or does that go between he modem and the switch?
Sorry for the dumb questions but I want to put this infrastructure, order what I need equipment wise so I can have internet when I movie in. Thanks in advance for the help!
Just a random question... but why so many data ports? Also, why so many when you are going to have wireless as well?
I would assume the router could go anywhere in the house since all the data ports will be hooked up to the cable modem via the 24 port switch.
Just a random question... but why so many data ports? Also, why so many when you are going to have wireless as well?
I would assume the router could go anywhere in the house since all the data ports will be hooked up to the cable modem via the 24 port switch.
So all i have to do is hook up the cable modem to the switch and then I am done? Then from one of the ports throughout the house I can plug in the wireless router?
Not an expert, but I think I'd go from the cable modem to your wireless router and then connect it to your 24 port switch. At least that way you get some protection that the router provides to the whole network .
I have a wired/wireless router in an upstairs bedroom, where the cable modem is as well (for historical reasons, one of our cable outlets is in that room). I wired cat5 between my downstairs den and that room for two computers (two cables). These two are the only hardwired connections to the router. The OTHER connections are all wireless - two direct-to-internet TVs, game console, multiple DSes - and any other devices I get in the future such as tabets/laptops (had a laptop wirelessly connected for awhile, but that was a junker that is now defunct).
Anyway, these all work "fine" but there WAS a problem with wireless connectivity between the router and a ground-floor (living room) TV - because the router is upstairs near the front of our house and the house is somewhat "L"-shaped with the "angle" of the 'L' holding the garage, the signal had to pass through TWO "outside" walls to get to/from the TV to the router...and the outside walls of this house have aluminum-foil clad fiberboard coverings inside the garage walls. This very effectively blocked the signal. I placed a repeater in another upstairs bedroom which totally solved this problem - the repeater and router "talk" to each other through regular inside walls and the repeater talks to the living room devices through the floor - no signal loss from shielding (though repeaters, of course, halve the comm speed since two data paths are involved).
Anyway, wired connections can be fast but wireless connections are just so convenient it's what we use everywhere except our den - and if I want, both computers in the den can "go wireless" just by turning their wireless connectivity on.
All our devices use hard IP addressing and all wireless ones use WPA-style encryption. One of my kid's DSes no longer can connect to the internet due to this - it uses old-style WEP so is rejected by our router.
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All of the above to give you an idea of what's possible, what quirks there may be, etc.
Not an expert, but I think I'd go from the cable modem to your wireless router and then connect it to your 24 port switch.
That how my system is set up - modem to router to switch. If your router is in the basement, you may just want a basic (non-wireless) router.
You can plug a wireless router in anywhere on the network, but you'll want to set it up as an access point rather than a router (so as not to conflict with the router hooked to the cable modem). Basically, this means turning off the DHCP server on the router so that only one of them is passing out IP addresses.
BTW, why not Cat6 rather than 5e for a new install?
Last edited by CHTransplant; 11-16-2012 at 02:39 PM..
We did this (ran CAT5 all over the house). We only use it in two locations. Otherwise we use wireless. Here are some things we encountered:
You carefully select locations for CAT 5 data ports in each room planning where you will put each piece of furniture and device. Then after living in the house a few years, you realize your furniture placement is less than ideal for various reasons (for example in our bedroom we realized we wanted our bed where we could see out into the upstairs hallway as well as look out a window and see the driveway without getting up). Then you move your furniture all around and the data ports are no longer in good locations. Rather than running more exposed CAT 5 all over the room, you just go with wireless.
The wireless router will work better in some locations than others. Somewhere in your house will be an ideal location where the wireless signal strongly penetrates all the rooms of the house and garage and areas of the yard you want to have wireless access. Unforutantely, that will probably not be in the location you intended to put the wireless router.
If you run the cable wiring too far from the pole, you may have to get a cable signal booster. Some boosters can disrupt internet signals. You have to get the right kind or one with a filter or something. That can cause you to change locations for various devices.
I built a home office in the carriage house. It was my primary office for business in our home state. Then I changed jobs and started working in an office building 30 miles from home. Now the office is a weight room and all the computers are in the library or in our bedroom. We had to move all kinds of things around. The kids now all use laptops with wireless.
We ended up with almost everything on wireless. We bought the best, most powerful wirelss thingy we could find. It runs netflix on two TVs at once with little problem and still allows people to surf the net or play games. We have one super high speed gaming computer (high speed and powerful by our standards) hardwired into the router in case there is something extrmely data insensive where a fraction of a second or two will make a difference, but we really have not found any use for which wireless speeds are unsatisfactory. THat computers alsmost sole purpose is ot run Civilation VIIIII or whatever number they are on now. Een the Xbox online multiplay stuff runs onthe wireless and it is plenty fast, no complaints form the kids about getting shot in the back in Call of Duty becuase the wireless is slow.
if I had it to do over again, I would skip the CAT 5 cable and put the money into a better wireless router. I do not know if they make a better wireless router, but i am sure there are commercial ones that are more powerful.
I like the speed and stability offered by wired network connections for some devices. Wireless is great, but for gaming, video, etc. I prefer the wire.
You don't need all of those CAT 5 Wires (unless you are running an HTPC with media extenders, which is a bit of a PIA anyway).
If you run a lot of streaming services (e.g. Netflix), then you want to have a CAT wire right next to your coax cable to hook up to your TV or box (Roku, AppleTV...)
In terms of wiring, you need a central point where your wifi router will be. Have all of the lines meet at this central point and then have the ISP wire the incoming line to this point. Then just connect everything to your wifi router. Make sure your wifi router has enough ports for all of your incoming wires.
The other thing to consider, if you have a big house or areas you think cannot be reached by a router is to hardwire a wifi access point. It's basically a wifi extender, that is hardwired to your router.
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