Moving soon, looking to setup a home network with room to grow.

C

Cleric_PGHL

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 4, 2004
Messages
144
Within the next 6 months or so I plan to be moving to a new house. Since we'll be spending a few weeks fixing the place up before we move in, I figured I may as well wire the house for Ethernet. My question is, how much would it cost (for cables, face plates, and stuff) to wire a three story house. I was going to put 2 jacks in the living room, 2 jacks in one of the bed rooms, 8 jacks in a bedroom that will become the "Home Office", and about 10 jacks in the basement. (I plan to have small LAN Parties there) All this will be hooked up to a 24 port switch that I picked up awhile back. I am also going to build a home server that will be the main router/fire wall as well as a file server. I have Windows 2003 Standard (yes, it is legal) or I could use Smoothwall. Any suggestions here? I was also going to have all the wire gigabit capable, and place a Wireless Access Point (or a Wapidy Wap, as my friend calls it) somewhere for when I feel like watching TV while surfing the net on my laptop.

My question is does this sound reasonable, and how much will it all cost? I have the switch, and the WAP already, I just need costs for the cables, face plates, and the cheapest firewall/router/fileserver with atleast 80 gigs of storage.
 
First of all, can you wire a CAT5? If you can it could be extremely cheap. I just did this, in the house I just bought, although I only did one room to the data closet.

My suggestions:
-Get a roll of Cat5, prolly 250' ought to do it, depending on where your rooms are located in relation to each other.
-Make sure you note where the power lines are in the walls/floors/ceilings, you don't want to run your CAT5 parrallel and next to those.
-I would maybe go with your Win server, becuase I don't think Smoothwall can do file sharing? Either that or pick a different Linux distro, and use iptables.
-Those wall jacks can get expensive. Try to buy them in bulk.
-If you don't know how to make your own cat5, learn. You don't want to be buying prefab cables and running those. Especially because those wall jacks are higher.

Have fun. It is totally worth it once it is done.

 
if it were me, I'd run all my cabling to a shelf in one of the closets or something. Then get your DSL or cable pulled up there and throw a Linksys WRT54G up there to route and give you wireless access. I'd prob terminate all my runs to a patch panel, they are pretty cheap on ebay.

The 4-ports on the WRT54G are definately not going to be enough. I'd probably get a 12/24 port switch and just uplink it to the router. As for your basement, I dont know if I'd run an individual connection for each person expected to be at the LAN party. I'd probably put in a few runs, but not like 10. For that many runs, I'd pretty much have a Lan Part Switch down in the basement there that I'd uplink through one of the basement jacks. I just dont see any benefit to running all that extra cabling and punching down all those extra jacks for something like that.

Also, as far as jacks and plates..... Leviton. The cheapest place I've seen them, believe it or not, is Home Depot. They have bulk-packs which are a pretty good buy.
 
Yes I know how to wire CAT5, and I actually have a WRT54G so I might use that. Thanks guys, keep the suggestions coming.

As for the server, I think I am going to use Windows 2003.
 
Based on your first post I can guarantee 250' will not be enough. Not even close. Cable is cheap and btw, Cat5E if your going to pull Cat5. I'd suggest Cat6 if you can afford the difference. I'd just pickup a 1000' roll from something like Home Depot. You can get your faceplates etc.. from there as well though with as much as you'll be buying you might be better off getting your gear from a specialty shop. Do you have a Graybar in your area. Check your phone book. Or you could do it online as well and likely save a few bucks.

If your house is pretty good size, and it sounds like it is, you might not be able to get away with a single AP, and even more likely not if you put it in an actual closet. You'll just have to test to see if that is going to be enough wireless coverage for you. This assuming you want entire house/patio etc.. coverage
 
Well, I'm mostly worried about the first floor and basement getting wireless. So maybe I'll just hide a WAP behind my TV or something. :D

The only computers on the seconds floor are in one bedroom and the home office.
 
Is the whole house finished? If it's not, it's pretty easy to run all the cables you need. Just figure out where the walls are upstairs, say a prayer, and drill a 1" hole from the basement up. :) I just did 18 runs of CAT6 and 14 runs of RG6 in my new house. It took me about a day to run all the cables.

Here's a few pics of the setup I've got right now (not finished yet). It's not a huge rackmount setup, but a nice small and out of the way setup. I've still got to put the 2 8port gigabit routers and the cable modem in there. The router is wireless so it will probably sit on top of the SMC itself.
Cable Runs (3 total)
Leviton SMC and cables
Partially wired SMC
Partially wired SMC (Closeup)
Jacks and wallplates
Drywall around SMC (and 2nd coat of mud, god I hate mudding)

All together, I think this is what I spent:
$80 - 1000' Cat6
$50? - 1000' RG6 QS
$75 - Leviton 28" SMC (I was stupid and got this at HD)
$60 - 3 six-port Cat5e Quickport modules
$40 - 1x8 Enhanced Bi-Di Amp
$40 - Wallplates, 50 F connector jacks, 25 Cat5e jacks
$50 - Various tools

So it really isn't that expensive, especially if you get the stuff on ebay. I would have spent at least 3 times that if I got all the stuff at HD. I got almost everything from a seller called frwoodworking (or something like that).

My WRT54G easily covers my whole house, you shouldn't have much of a problem. If you do, you can always try a different antenna or boosting the power slightly with a different firmware.
 
Over plan it. Wire everything.

I had a house built in 2000, and put in 11 network jacks. One in each bedroom (3), two in the living room, one in the dinning room, and breakfast nook, and 4 in my home office. In 2002 I added wireless. I can have people over and connect them to the Internet in seconds this way. With the wireless it is easier, but for Lan Parties it is not bad. I wish I would have put one or two out in the garage though. I wired every room except the bathrooms. I have not had a regret with having every room wired. It has made my life so much easier.
 
If the walls are exposed I'd run at least one drop to each room. You don't even have to terminate the one's you don't use at the moment, just as long as the cable's there. Adding the jacks and faceplates later is a cakewalk.

Also, agreed on the single drop and edge switch for the LAN party stuff.
 
The house will be remodeled before I move in, so running cable should be easier. Thanks for the help guys.
 
Cleric_PGHL said:
The house will be remodeled before I move in, so running cable should be easier. Thanks for the help guys.
Click to expand...
Always Easier before, than doing it to finished walls
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top