Home network advice

Woogie · 7 Oct 2013 at 15:27

Hey Guys,

I have recently had some Cat5 pulled in around my house, 5 Points in total, 1 in each of the 3 bedrooms, 1 in the hall way down stairs and 1 in the living room (these were done while I was having my house re-wired). My intention is to just share the internet around the house via these points and have a media centre connected to the internet in the living room. The cables for these terminate under the stairs and the Internet comes into the house in the hallway by the front door (Hence the point there).

Now I have someone coming out tonight to give me a price on patching the 5 points and either patching these into a patch panel under the stairs or whacking some RJ45s on the end ready for me to plug them into a switch and here is where the advice comes in.

Do you recommend me Patching all 5 points into a patch panel or should I switch them all? Or is it worth me doing 4 of them into a patch panel and the hallway point as an RJ45 into a switch then the switch into the patch panel?

I'm a tad clueless at this point so any advice would be great.

paradigm · 7 Oct 2013 at 15:43

The tidiest way would be to have your switch, router, wifi access point, and any centrally accessed devices (such as a NAS or similar) placed into the same "under the stairs" cupboard/space as your patch panel, and then an RJ45 socket in each room you currently have the cables run to. Connect each patched in port to the switch, and each of your devices (router, NAS etc) to the switch.

Personally though I'd have run more than 1 cable per room. 2 or 4 minimum.

Woogie · 7 Oct 2013 at 15:50

I didn't have the cable to hand and it is easy enough for me to run more if required (There's about a meter or so of clearance under my house and we have no carpet down currently up stairs)

Your advice above is similar to what I though. I cannot move my Modem to under the stairs due to the location of the phone socket as this requires quite a lot of work to move at the moment.

So I will plug the Modem into the network point into the hall which in turn will go directly into a switch under the stairs, then the other 4 points into a patch panel and then those into the switch?

paradigm · 7 Oct 2013 at 16:21

Yep, that'd be the way I'd do it if you can't relocate (or run an extension for) the phone socket.

Woogie · 7 Oct 2013 at 18:10

Thanks

Any recommendations on a patch panel and Switch?

paradigm · 7 Oct 2013 at 19:26

A patch panel for home, get whatever you can that's cheap enough. I've got a number of Belkin's that have been fine.

As for switching, I'm probably not the best person to spec for home/consumer use, as I use Cisco kit, even at home

bledd · 7 Oct 2013 at 20:15

Buy a patch panel, and a krone punchdown tool. Then practice yourself on some spare cable (one practice and you'll be set)

Then just patch then just patch it all in. Easy