noob gigabit network question

Harrigan

Harrigan

Harrigan

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23 Aug 2005
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87
Right there are 7 of us moving into a student house and between us were going to pay for an electrician to run ethernet cables from the 7 bedroom and the living room into the attic, so we can have a gigabit network between ourselves. Now because of the lack of an 8-port gigabit router (as far as I can see) I was wondering if this layout would work/be the best idea...
{gigabit switch}
[][][][][][][][]
| | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | |
[][][][][][][][]
|{7 bedrooms}
|
[][][][]{wireless router} (some of us have laptops)
|
[]{cable modem}

Excuse my terrible diagram, hopefully it gets the concept across. Any suggestions/corrections?
 
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Should work fine. My current setup has pretty much the same thing as my router is downstairs but my computers are upstairs. So i run a single cable from my router to a 8 port gigabit switch which then runs my computers.


EDIT: Just make sure you get a 12 port switch because if I can add up correctly at this time of the day your up to 11 needed already.
 
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hmm i was thinking 1 port for each pc (7) plus one port for the router. router's WAN port is then connected to the modem. I assume an 8 port switch would work
 
Not entirely sure why you want a gigabit network for in a student house?!?!

Also, i cant make out head nor tail of that diagram.

Modem > Wireless Router > Switch > PC's

or

Modem/Router/Switch > Workstations

I'd actually be quite interested to know how much you are gonna be ripped off for those network points to be installed. It would probably be cheaper to buy in wireless cards for everyone.
 
Sorry yeah you can connect the WAP to the router. You also said 7 bedrooms + living room and attic so thats 10 ports.
 
Should be:
7pcs and router connected to switch, modem connected to router.
And we want the wired network cos the house is pretty big, and has old well-built walls, wireless would be a nightmare. We might aswell make it gigabit as a switch only costs like £40.
 
Yup, good plan. If you're prepared to go wired then it's well worth doing instead of wireless. That setup will be fine and obviously an 8 port switch is all you'd need - 7 PCs into switch, remaining port from switch into router. If you ever need any further ports you'll likely have 3 remaining on the router - they'd only be 100mbit, but better than nothing.
 
i work as a data infrastructure engineer, most of the jobs we get are from electricians trying to do our job, they just screw it up and end up ripping out what they do! is this cabling cat6? this is the best cabling solution we charge £50 a point, one box of cat6 cable is like £70 - £80 depending on brand.

Hardware, get a decent switch! nothing cheap go netgear as its in your price range we would use cisco or hp but they are expensive, get a 16 port switch as you may want to expand at one point.

As for cabling you say 7 points, if we cabled this for you we would say to put an extra point in with each of the 7, now say this electrician gets one box of cable as well you wont really want more than one box as one box is enough for one house i should know i done my house and i do it for a living. He will bill you for the box not for meters and when hes done the job he will take the remaining length of cable on the box, the stuff you paid for! so might as well make use of it and ask for the extra points.
 
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Dont mean to sound like a tw*t but why are you wiring in? Especially if it's a student house where you will be moving in 1 or 2 years is it worth all this effort and money?
Personally I would just run the cables myself (probably not the most aestheticly pleasing) and not bother putting points in or getting an electrician in.
How much is the electrician going to charge for thier time? Im guessing at the moment 802.11n is probably going to be more expensive but even so, will you really be using that huge cat6 bandwidth?
 
G.O.A.T said:
ISO's consume a large amount of bandwidth :eek:
Click to expand...

but they can only downloaded at the maximum speed of the broandband connection

which is say what 10 megabits per second ?

gigabit ether is 1000 megabits per second, and to make an entirely gigabit network worthwhile, you'd need to be pushing more than 100mbs, each !

kinda pointless if all your doing is sharing files round your house.
 
MrLOL said:
..

kinda pointless if all your doing is sharing files round your house.
Click to expand...

Confused I would have thought gigabit would only make sense IF large files where being shared between the house PC's or if the cost difference was trivial (increasinlgy answer is yes)?

PS might save a decent amount of cable & mess if the switch was on the top floor rather than in the attic.

In the past ordinary ethernet cables have been run out of windows and up outside walls this works well enough for a temp time if your careful about water running down the cables and add suitable drip loops etc.
 
errata said:
In the past ordinary ethernet cables have been run out of windows and up outside walls this works well enough for a temp time if your careful about water running down the cables and add suitable drip loops etc.
Click to expand...

Again, thats what I'd do!

I dont know for sure but in my head the cost of an electrician would be a lot.
 
Thats exactly what we did at uni too. Had 6 computers networked out of the windows. Looked a mess from the outside, landlord complained, but told him it was a health and safety issue if they were inside - wires everywhere, so just left it.

This was a 100mbit network, used for network gaming and sharing the broadband connection.
 
why a electrician diy !!! its easy as !!!! plus it doesn't take much no really need for gigabit but if you've got the money go for it 12 port again would be better for any upgrade or more people in general or more ps3's 360s the lot
 
ye save yourself a tonne and just run 100mb ethernet cables instead DIY stylee...

really isnt worth the hassle and cost of gettin gigabit professionally installed.
 
cat 5 /6 run at gigabit all am asumin is that your just wantin some cables clips that are gonna be large enough for the ethernet cables and some cable ties maybe a cuboard and cut a hole in the bottom or side etc and stick the router on top and the switch inside and walla sorted .......
 
Yeah don't pay a sparkie to install some network points for you - order some cat6 from Screwfix.com (I assume I can refer you to that site as it's nothing to do with what ocuk sells ;)) and get some 2port network outlets and some patress boxes and it's a days work max to run the wires and connect everything up - even the colour codes are printed on the back of the outlets so just match the coloured cable for the connection on each end and you're sorted.

As for gigabit I totally recommend it, students have got a lot of better things to do than waiting for files to transfer ;) and most pcs can read at way over 10MB/s these days so gigabit just makes sense :)

Netgear GS108's - get a couple of them, and as for routing, if you've got a spare PC I strongly suggest SmoothWall - its the only router method (well cheap method) I know of that never crashes even under the heaviest of internet loads (i.e. p2p etc, especially for 7 people).
 
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