Already have TV co-axial wired up to every room in the house... adapter for ethernet?

Soldato
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Is there such a thing that exists?

Every room in my house has a TV coaxial socket, and the junction box is in the cloakroom on our ground floor. I was hoping to ask anyone with any expertise:
  1. Is there a product that can utilise my coaxial connections in conjunction with modern ethernet NICs? I.e. some kind of serial data adaptor?
  2. Would it be capable of high throughput (ideally 1 Gbit)
  3. Is it expensive/practical?
Any advice welcome :)
 
didnt some the networking of old use coax...or was that just for adhoc connections, wasnt anything spectacular but it worked

homeplug would be quicker but ultimately if you want gigabit, best get laying some cat
 
didnt some the networking of old use coax...or was that just for adhoc connections, wasnt anything spectacular but it worked

homeplug would be quicker but ultimately if you want gigabit, best get laying some cat

Yeah.. it was far from spectacular compared to modern networks though. Think of the worst possible kind of ethernet you can and then reduce the speeds massively. Go team coax!
 
Coax was 10Mbps, with all the machines on the one broadcast segment (think cable, at peak time, in a student area)
 
Yeah I use Powerline at the moment, but our powerline network is spread across 3 separate ringmains and its kinda sucky in certain places, and by sucky I mean that we have 24mbit DL (Be*), and one of our powerline nodes can download at maximum 400KB/sec :(, despite the powerline adaptors being rated at up to 200mbps

Wireless isn't really an option either as my house is mostly solid concrete rather than thin plasterboard walls.

So yeah, if 10mbit is all I can get then that isn't really worth it I guess. Cat5e cabling it is then!

Can anyone recommend any good cabling contractors in the London/Surrey area, which are good at hiding cables cosmetically whilst still maintaining a reasonable price? :)
 
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For laying cat in your own home you'll be hard pushed to find anyone who'll do the job to a professional standard for anything like a reasonable price, let alone in london, that's why the majority of people do it themselves. Then again it all depends on how much you consider reasonable.
 
Then again it all depends on how much you consider reasonable.
I think anything below £400-£500 would be reasonable so long as they make the wiring impossible to see and do neat clean jobs with the RJ45 wall sockets. Because of the way our house is built it will be no easy task drilling through solid concrete etc. And I don't want the wiring to run externally attached to the brickwork either. :)

I honestly haven't a clue how they're gonna do it; to me it seems nearly impossible, hence my high "acceptable price" threshold.
 
In London cabling contractors will barely get out of bed for that. I've got charged that much for relatively simple datacenter work and they didn't make any effort at hiding cables, so basically expect to pay more or do it yourself...
 
For £400-£500 you could always buy a load of wireless routers, put one in each room of the house, and even if they dont get the best coverage, there will be so many of them that areas will overlap and they can connect to eachother, passing on any data transferred.
 
God knows why you would hire someone to do it, for a quick job to do yourself, get yourself a reel of Cat5e or Cat6 cable, cut your own lengths, then get some trunking from B&Q or something, or run the cable under your carpets. Easy.
 
God knows why you would hire someone to do it, for a quick job to do yourself, get yourself a reel of Cat5e or Cat6 cable, cut your own lengths, then get some trunking from B&Q or something, or run the cable under your carpets. Easy.
I already have a reel of Cat5e, but trunking looks cheap & nasty, and our ground floor has no carpets, just solid oak flooring or tiles. There's no way in hell I'm installing crappy white plastic stuff to all our skirting everywhere. Just ain't gonna happen :p
 
Then you've got three options that I can see.

1) Hire an eastern european handy man to do the job within budget to a reasonable standard.
2) DIY in some form (powerline + wifi perhaps your best option)
3) Increase your budget and get it done by a contractor who as your a non commercial outfit will more than likley want to have your eyes out and be less inclined to do the job as you want it and more inclined to do it to whatever standard they convince you it needs doing to.

Personally if it's not DIY cabling then for that budget i'd go with powerline but you're only going to get 100mbit each way not gigabit. I'd give up on the idea of using the old coax in place, the woes of termination make coax an utter pita. One break in the chain and you're screwed not to mention limited to 10mbit.
 
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Hire an eastern european handy man to do the job
No thanks. I've seen them at work before. They work hard but aren't that *handy*, bless em :D

Personally if it's not DIY cabling then for that budget i'd go with powerline but you're only going to get 100mbit each way not gigabit.
:p Not even that:
Yeah I use Powerline at the moment, but our powerline network is spread across 3 separate ringmains and its kinda sucky... bla bla

Increase your budget
Damn. Well, I've found about 8 different cablers on yell.com and all of them want to a survey before making an official quote which makes sense. One company gave me a quote estimate for £860 that included about £400's worth of cabinets, 1U patch panels, etc which I dont need. So might see what I can get using them, especially as I can supply them with my own Cat5e cable.

Will report back :)
 
I mention powerline and wifi specifically because you have multiple ring mains :) I'd be surprised if (m)any contractors worth using will allow you to supply the cable and warrant the work, even though they will test it once installed. In the case of any cabling fault they will point the fingure at you more than likley.
 
You could consider briding the worst leg of the powerline network by plugging in 2 adpaters into different ring mains and linking them with ethernet cable. Works well to extend such links.
 
remove the wall sockets, tape cat5e to one of the ends, and pull the other through (and pray)

might be able to re-wire it by pulling it all through :D
 
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