Home network

[JohnnyF]

Hi and apologies if this is the wrong forumas I know it isn't hardware but I'm after some advice.

We had our house rewired so had cat5 run through the house with a couple of points in each room. The house is over 3 stories and the plan was to have the hub housing on the 3rd floor and the BT master socket would be positioned next to it.

The hub housing (is it called a patch panel - basically a grey box where all the cat5 feeds into) is on the 3rd floor. BT said they could only put the master socket on our ground floor.

So currently I have the master socket wired to my dlink router on the ground floor and am using this wirelessly. I would like to start using the cat5 rather than wireless as the wireless signal is a bit falky to my top floor. How can i go about doing this? Do i just leave the router by the master BT socket and take a cable from my router to the cat5 socket in that room, this should then feed up to the patch panel? Then what equipment would i need in the patch panel so I can ensure the wired signal goes to the other rooms?

Thanks for any advice

 

[Monkeh]

You need a switch to go with the patch panel.

Is the panel mounted in a small 19" rack with several free units?

Also, you can easily make or purchase a lead to connect your phone line to your structured cabling (the cat5e) so you can site the router upstairs.

 

[digdilem]

Hi

This is simplified a lot;

If you've space to put your adsl modem next to your bt master socket, IME it's far better to do so than extending it. You will only lose adsl sync speed otherwise, especially if you're marginal. (All the sites I've done this with are)

So then, BT master socket -> Adsl modem.

Cat5 from that modem up to your patch panel to terminate in a patch socket.

If you want to feed just one other cat5 socket with the LAN, you can simply link between them - provided the total run is less than 100m.

If you want to distribute to more than one, you'll need a hub, switch or router sitting next to the patch panel. The modem's lan feed would come into that and each lan port would go out to a separate socket. The switch starts the max run again, so can go for another 100m. (100m between powered segments, not total)

If you want more feeds, at it's most basic you can add bigger switches or chain some together. (It gets a little technical with the bigger setups, but I'm trying to keep it simple)

I recommend a cheapie cat5 tester if you're doing this work yourself. Test every run and socket immediately after fitting - saves a lot of fuss later down the line.

 

[JohnnyF]

Thanks for the useful advice. I went out and bought myself a netgear switch and some ethernet cables and hey presto my PC now works in the attic wired up. I've left my dlink router coing off my master socket with a cable going into my cat5 socket. This routes to my patch panel where I hooked in the switch and then patched a cable to the relevant socket that then routes to my room updstairs.

Alot easier than I thought it would be!! So cheers for pointing me in the right direction