Apartment wiring?

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Strykar

Limp Gawd
Joined
Apr 21, 2005
Messages
299
I'm moving in to an apartment this afternoon and need to think about wiring.. it's on the second floor so I doubt I can go under the floors with Cat5, so a runway or wireless are the only options. I game a lot, would wireless interfere with the connection much? I'm really not looking forward to setting a runway along the wall, but if necessary.. I'll do what I have to. If you need a diagram, I'd be glad to mspaint one up! :p

Thanks in advance again!
 
I'd run the wire along the wall. That's what I have done. Wifi is usually very choppy in an apartment with all the RF interference around.
 
Think a runway is necessary? This is semi-shortterm with the lease expiring in a few months and us getting a larger apartment. Seems like a lot of work for making it look nice, doubt most of them care.
 
I tried playing cs over wifi and it was tolerable for periods. After about an hour of gaming I would drop my connection, if I tried to torrent and then play a game my pings would be sky high. I figured out that a lot of it has to do with the crappy nature of my router but connecting to the router via cable fixed all my problems. If you have a good router you should be able to get away with it. If you have a crappy netgear forget it.
 
Strykar said:
Think a runway is necessary? This is semi-shortterm with the lease expiring in a few months and us getting a larger apartment. Seems like a lot of work for making it look nice, doubt most of them care.
Click to expand...


shorterm? Just run the wired against the wall and be done with it for now then.
 
blendingnoise said:
shorterm? Just run the wired against the wall and be done with it for now then.
Click to expand...

Indeed. Thats what I did in the last apartment I had. Lived there for 18 months and just got a 100 foot Cat 5e cable and ran along the wall halfway around the apartment for my living room.

Worked fine and you won't screw up the walls.
 
I had to go the other way. I have cable and didn't feel like buying longer cat 5 cable (I was short by literally 6 feet only once I did a trial run) so I used the coax cable which was longer and just moved the modem next to my computer. Bending cable wire sucks.

Don't tape it to the wall. The tape will rip paint/wallpaper off when you try to take it off later. You can hit up hardware supply store and pick up these things that you can nail into your floorboard and then clip the wire into. Just lay it on the floor if it is really for 3 months or so and start nailing stuff when you actually find a place. If you live with someone who would care about a wire just on the floor then use these hooks I mentioned with small nails. Mount it along the baseboard. No one ever looks down there when checking for damage to an apt and you can fill them easily when you move out or just paint over them.

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I bought a 1000' spool of cat5e long ago, I made my own custom length cables, rather than buying overpriced premade ones. To keep my cables against the wall, I used some small plastic cable holders that nail into the wall. If you set it up right, you can barely see the cable. You can fill in the hole later with spackle if you're really worried about it.
 
Or you can use the poor mans method and just use tacks along the bottom of the wall. I used a hammer to gently tap them in at my last apartment. No one notices the tiny holes when you take them back out. As far as gaming wirelessly it all depends on the your surroundings and equipment. I've never had any problems with bad ping times over wireless but I just use my wireless router as an accesspoint so that might help.
 
For only a few months? Hell, run it along the walls and drop a mat down over it if you have to cross any halls.
 
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