Opinions on wiring the house - need some

[Milenko]

Alright guys, we finally decided to wire out house with Cat5 cabling.

Need some opinions:

Cable modem, WRT54G, and Vonage router are in our room over the garage, along with 2 computers both hard wired. One computer on the complete opposite side of the house is hard wired as well. One laptop used wirelessly.

Need to run 2 more drops to the middle of the house, basically between the room over the garage, and the one drop on the opposite side.

I want to have everything centralized into one switch, but it seems SO much easier to just cut the drop that goes across the house, throw a switch in between, wire it up correctly (with a crossover to the WRT54G down here - and call it a day...basically having the WRT54G connected to the other switch via 100mpbs, and the 3 computers feeding off of that one 100mbps drop.

I don't need fiber or anything like that right now...2 of the 3 computers upstairs will just be e-mailing, word processing, and the occasional download and upload - while the 3rd one will be doing much of the downloading/uploading, etc.

So what I am asking is:

Should I move everything into one central location?
or
Should I have two separate "network closets" - connected with a 100mbps link?

Remember, I'm not running a corporate network, just a decent sized house.

Oh, and wireless isn't an option. I prefer security for those computers, banking etc will be done from them.

 

[Milenko]

Well I just did my second option -

Put a second switch in the attic, connected to the other switch with a 100mbps link. Had a fun time wiring that

Now I just need to put drops from that switch to the other rooms. Easy as pie.