Networking in my new Apartment

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drizzt81

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Jan 21, 2004
Messages
12,361
Hello everybody,

I just moved to a new place and the room that my GF and I designated for my office unfortunately does not have a cable connection.
I have two computers that need a wired internet connection and also need to share a local connection. I also have a Laptop that would like to use the Internet at times without wires. Up to now, I had the PCs connected to my DD-WRT'd router, which did the traffic shaping etc.
With the lack of cable connections in the comptuer room, I feel that there are a couple of options:
  1. run a coax cable from the living room, through the hallway into the office (cheapest option, but ugliest)
  2. install modem and my WRT54G in the living room, purchase another WLAN router and wirelessly bridge the connection. Would I want the traffic shaping to happen at the office router, the internet gateway or both? Should I expect ping increases?
 
I'd run coax to the room, that would be the cheapest, fastest, most reliable and secure means of connection. You can find white and beige coax to match the carpet/walls the best you can, grab a few matching coax retainers to nail it to the wall every so often and it wouldn't look too bad. I'm doing the same thing in my apt, the cable jack is on the opposite side of the room so I just custom made a coax wire to run around the walls, even being black I never notice it.
 
I'm a wireless guy all around. My vote is for something wireless. Read up on wireless security and with routine safty percausions you'll be fine. My entire home is wireless becuase I hate having cables showing. But that's just me.
 
Why not just put the modem where you have cable connection then run cat 5 to where you want the router?
 
I vote for wireless. I'm actually doing something similar to you here in the house. The cable modem and router (a Cisco 871) are located in the laundry closet. I'm not sure why the cable jack for the cable modem comes into the laundry room. In any case, that's where it is. I need to get connectivity for my Tivo and the Xbox360. To do so I have a WRT54G connected to the Cisco and another WRT54G behind the TV. The two WRTs are connected using WDS which is basically a wireless crossover cable. Everything is transparent, all devices exist on the same network.

For this I'm using the old school HyperWRT 2.1b1 firmware on the WRT54G routers. I find this version to be the most stable for what I'm doing. I don't need all the fancy stuff in the newest versions. DD-WRT should also do the trick. I'm using just 128bit WEP on the WRT54G routers for the WDS link.

Also, I've disable the wireless AP functionality of each WRT54G as I have a Cisco 1130 AP to handle the real wireless abilities. This allows the WRT54Gs to provide only WDS connectivity that is fairly reliable.
 
maxpower1119 said:
Why not just put the modem where you have cable connection then run cat 5 to where you want the router?
Click to expand...
From what I see I have more coax lying around than cat-5.

Thanks for the input. I will see how the coax would look and if I don't like it -or the GF get's pissy- I will look into a wireless solution
 
maxpower1119 said:
Why not just put the modem where you have cable connection then run cat 5 to where you want the router?
Click to expand...

That would be my vote but if you have coax lying around then use it. With coax you can get it in white pretty easy where with cat5 you can get it in any color. If you plan to live in the place a few years you could also looking into getting a coax drop in that room. All you need to do is get the apt mangment to sign off on it.
 
yeah if I ended up planning to live there for a bit, I'd talk to our landlady, but since I may be moving out within the next 6 months...
 
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