Large wiring project

Fluff_eei · 22 Aug 2006 at 16:22

Hello everyone,

I've not really used the networking forum much during my time as a member here, so first of all, hi.

Basically, I am thoroughly fed up of my wireless network. I have the fortune (via a well paid dad) to live in a big old victorian house which has accumulated a couple of extensions over the years. This means thick brick walls and rooms sticking out, and so the wireless signal is having to go at a shallow angle, and therefor longer, through said walls. This leads to dropout between my study and my room, and complete lack of connection to my sisters room. In an attempt to remedy this, I am moving back to wired, and have been given the go ahead by my dad to drill holes in walls and wire the house up.

Most of the wiring will be done outside, running wires inside along corners and edges of rooms, all terminating in female panels.

The actual networking side is something I've never been very confident with, I'm more of a flashy graphics cards and overclocking man myself. I will lay out my plan below. Note there are two hubs because my house is sort of split in two, it has two loft spaces and two seperate upstairs'. Also, the greyed out writing is future connections that wont be made this summer but may be done in the future.

Clear as mud I hear you say!

I'd be very grateful before embarking on such a mission as this to here any advice people who may have tackled such projects before have. Also, can you chain router-hub-hub like that without any IP conflicts? And do you drill from the outside in, or the inside out?

If anyone wants me to take photos and such to form some sort of project log, I'm sure I could be persuaded.

Thanks for reading this mahoosive post, look forward to any help.

Fluff_eei

Mercutio · 22 Aug 2006 at 16:39

Ok... everything you have there is actually fairly straightforward and completly ok.

You need to bare a couple of things in mind however...

1) Do you NEED a seperate ADSL modem and router? These are usually in a single unit. Seperating has its advantages but complicates things. Personally id recommend a single unit for ease of setup.

2) Linking hubs/routers to other hubs/routers needs a crossover cable. Plugging equipment into hub/routers is straight through cable.
To make things easier to visualise consider hub1 as your "central hub" with everything else "below" it. The ADSL router needs to "uplink" to hub1 - this can be achieved with a crossover cable. Link hub2 to hub1 with the same type of cable. This cable looks EXACTLY the same as the normal straight through but has 2 pins reversed. The alternative is that the router and hub2 have an uplink port - in this case use straight-through cable as the router is crossing the wires for you.

Id highly recommend for how you running things to get yourself an RJ45 crimp tool (around £10) a smallish (say 50m) drum of CAT5x/6 network cable and some cable ends/plugs. Wiring diagrams for straight through/crossover cables are easy to find on the net.

3) Linking the various other bits to the hubs/router is simply CAT5x/6 straight through network cable.

Dont worry about "ip address problems" the TCP/IP protocol is completely independant of the wiring used. So long as each machine is in the same range (usually 192.168.0.x) and the cabling is sound they will all talk to the router no problem.
Also ensure each machine you want to have net access have 192.168.0.routerip(/1) for their DNS and gateway addresses.
If you wish you CAN just use DHCP if the router supports it (you'd struggle to find one that didnt) but manual means you know the cabling works (i.e if its DHCP and the cabling from hub1 to router is down anything from hub1 onwards wont work at all, if its manual the other machines will be able to see each other, even if they cant see the router so its easier to work out where the fault lays).
Good luck and post back with anymore questions. This kind of stuff a lot here love as its "bread and butter" network setup/fault finding

As far as the actual drilling goes it go inside out - keep it to corners and keep it low. Holes on the outside are generally less of an issue than random holes in walls in rooms.

An alternative to all the above (though not one i've used and your milage may vary) is homeplug which uses funky electrical plugs to piggyback a network signal around the house ring mains.

derfderfley · 22 Aug 2006 at 17:34

OK, you basic plan looks good, but, there's always a but....

<teaching grandma to suck eggs mode on>

Don't use hubs, use switches cost difference is marginal, performance difference between a switch and a hub is massive (in favour of the switch).

Make sure your switches are big enough, if you think you will need 8 ports per switch buy 16 port ones

Don't worry too much about needing crossover cables, 99% of modern switches are auto sensing.

If you can afford it, buy gigabit switches, transfers between PC's will be a lot quicker.

Don't bend cables at 90 degrees, it isn't good for them, try and radius the bends round corners.

Wire every room, even the ones you don't intend on using yet, it makes life easier in the long run. If you can get away with it, 2 ports per room is always worth doing, but doing this and staying tidy usually means putting cables under the floor boards.

<teaching grandma to suck eggs mode off>

Fluff_eei · 22 Aug 2006 at 23:20

Wow, thanks for the hugely detailed responses. Couple of things. Firstly, my router has an integrated modem, sorry if that was confusing. Secondly, looking at competitors (OcUK don't sell switches) switches look quite a bit more expensive [edit: not hugely more expensive] than hubs, especially gigabit ones. For internet connection sharing would hubs be any worse? Also, are the crimping tools easy enough to use, and does anyone know about which outdoor wire staples to use?

Fluff_eei

Phemo · 22 Aug 2006 at 23:30

Fluff_eei said:
(OcUK don't sell switches) switches look quite a bit more expensive [edit: not hugely more expensive] than hubs, especially gigabit ones. For internet connection sharing would hubs be any worse? Also, are the crimping tools easy enough to use, and does anyone know about which outdoor wire staples to use?

Yes they do - see here. £15 for a 5 port switch is worth doing. Hubs are only half-duplex so they cannot send and receive at the same time whereas switches are full-duplex so they can. In addition to the fact a switch provides more overall bandwidth, the full-duplex factor will help matters, even just for simple Internet use.

Gigabit is overkill if you literally only want it for sharing the Internet connection so don't worry about that.

Crimping tools are straightforward to use. You'll find some info/instructions if you google it but it's pretty simple.

Finally, with regards to outdoor cable cleats, any that you get from DIY stores will do.