New House, New Hardware

D

Daishiknyte

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 24, 2004
Messages
333
Hey,

My family is just about done building our new house. I manged to somehow talk my parents into getting the entire house wired with cat5 (they went one step further and did dual coax and dual cat5...) One ethernet for phone and security sytems and one for the network.

All the wireing leads to a main closet and I am looking for a good 16 port switch to use. Would a switch that supports gigabit on all ports be worth the extra cost? What about jumbo frames? Would one with the only gigabit port being the server uplink be a better choice?

I need the ability to stream audio and video files and every now and then host games for friends (nothing long term).


Thanks

Daishi
 
What do you plan on plugging into this? Like, AP's, your laptop, an Xbox, etc.

100mb is fine for streaming audio and video BTW.
 
t-base 10 is fine for streaming video and mp3s and stuff actually.. i would personally get whatever is the best bang for the buck at the time.. if it is a nice t-base 100 switch.. then get that.. and stick a gigabit in there later if it is needed..

also.. don't you need cat-6 for gigabit? that's what i thought.. cat-5 will get close, and work most of the time.. but isn't spec'ed for it.. tell me if i am wrong though...
 
4 desktops ( are mine :)) 4 laptops (one mine), an xbox, 2 PDAs will be connected.

Thanks for the help.



Daishi


Any way for me to set it up for my computers to take priority?
 
Dell makes a nice 16 port rackmount gigabit swich for $200. It has jumbo frame support as well as a basic web management interface.

You could even mount it on the wall in your wiring closet.

Setting up priority for your computers to have better internet access would be something you'd do at the router level, not the switch level. I think this gigabit Dlink router has support for priority based on IP address.
 
scottatwittenberg said:
...t-base 10 is fine for streaming video and mp3s and stuff actually...
Click to expand...


well, it actually depends on what type of video you're talking about. if you have a large RAID-5 array with all your DVD movie files copied onto it to use for serving to PC's/HTPC's, the lowest i would go is 100mbit for the clients, with a gigabit connection from the server to the switch....plus the price is pretty much the same for 100 anyway, so....
 
you should've just ran the wire when your house was still at the beginning stages like when they have the roof up and the outside on. that way you could've ran like 2 ports to every room and had it done, and it looks like you might want a wireless router to me since you have 4 laptops and 2 pda's.

Brandon
 
yeah, it should have definitely been done before any sheetrock was put up.

but make damn sure that whoever does the wiring, keeps the cat-5 cables as far away from power wires/light ballasts/etc. as possible, and if they have to intersect, make sure it's perpendicular to each other, rather than parallel.

the last thing you want is your electrical wiring introducing interference into your ethernet cables.
 
Thats what we did, Just look in the closet where all the wires go to and you will see 4 huge bundles of wire. There is something around 2 miles+ of coaz and ethernet running throughout the house. The company that did all the wiring knew what the were doing. All of the wires run directly up into the atic which covers most of the second floor (only 3 livable rooms up there + a whole lot of storage. and then hangs from ties on the roof. Everything is neatly bundled, clearly vissable, and way out of the way.
 
Daishiknyte said:
Thats what we did, Just look in the closet where all the wires go to and you will see 4 huge bundles of wire. There is something around 2 miles+ of coaz and ethernet running throughout the house. The company that did all the wiring knew what the were doing. All of the wires run directly up into the atic which covers most of the second floor (only 3 livable rooms up there + a whole lot of storage. and then hangs from ties on the roof. Everything is neatly bundled, clearly vissable, and way out of the way.
Click to expand...

Sounds like you've got a pretty nice house :p

As for the switch, I've always had good luck with NetGear if you want a budget Gb switch.

I'm getting ready to wire the house we just bought. It's 2300+ sq ft and was built in 1979. I've got a couple of friends coming in who want to learn home networking, so I get free grunt labor. :D We're doing six to eight CAT5e drops (CAT5e isn't rated for Gb but does it quite well) and I'm converting a storage closet into a workroom/small office, and the top shelf will be my wiring closet. I'm also going to run a phone line there for DSL. I might eventually make it a central wire closet for phones as well as ethernet, but I don't want to spend my time rewiring something that works right now.
 
PopeKevinI said:
We're doing six to eight CAT5e drops (CAT5e isn't rated for Gb but does it quite well)
Click to expand...

Yes it is. By spec GigE over copper only requires 4 pairs of Cat 5 minimum.
 
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