home network

[turner brown]

ok i am in the middle of loft convertion and all thats left to do is the plastering and a little flooring
i was thinking of laying cat 6 to each of the rooms before i plaster and finish floor but whats the best way to go about this
i am not an expect on networks and was thinking a 8 port switch would be the way to go
i need to 4 cables to feed each room and 1 from my router
whats the best solution to do this

 

[dibbers]

hello man,

If I was you I'd be looking at Gigabit switches, they are cheap from fleabay if your prepared to wait a little.

you want to be looking at 10/100/1000 ones and not the 10/100, this way you'll get much better data trasnfer rates around your place.

As long as your router is a Gigabit switch (i.e so it's 10/100/1000) then defo the way to go.

You can pick up Gigabit switches 8 x port ones for about £20.00 - £25.00 quid.

if your existing WAN is 10/100/1000 then you might as well upgrade your switches (LAN) as well mate.

you can get pretty neat flat cat 5/6 cable these days so not to hard to install...

Doesn't have to be any thing flash like the cable that is.

This allows the Gigabit switch to guarantee a constant throughput speed of up to 1000 Mbps on every port-connector. Suitable for 10/100/1000Mbps networks.

Increase the speed of your network server and backbone connections, or make Gigabit to the desktop a reality.

Power users in the home, office, workgroup, or creative production environment can now move large, bandwidth-intensive files faster.

Transfer graphics, CGI, CAD, or Multimedia, gaming, Internet access, and other speed-intensive applications across your network instantly, and because they are standards-based, they painlessly integrate existing 10, 100, and 1000 Mbps devices on your network.

For a high-speed network on a small scale, nothing delivers like these stylish powerhouses. These fast, easy, and affordable Gigabit switches give your home network the maximum capacity to handle huge bandwidth.

 

[turner brown]

ye gb switch was what i was looking for but do i need a managed or unmanaged one
as for cable then thats easy to install at this time and will all be hidden away
any recommended switches ?

 

[MH]

I would not use flat cable, always use twisted.

 

[dibbers]

I'd just get "unmanaged" ones, simple plug and play...

@ MH, any reason why not to get the flat stuff? never used it my self like, but was about to, how ever the existing cable that I had laid sufficed for what I wanted.

 

[turner brown]

na wouldnt be using flat cable that costs more

 

[MH]

@dibbers, noise immunity as it cancels out EMI better.


Sent from the "Curious Rover"

 

[Exos]

ok i am in the middle of loft convertion and all thats left to do is the plastering and a little flooring
i was thinking of laying cat 6 to each of the rooms before i plaster and finish floor but whats the best way to go about this
i am not an expect on networks and was thinking a 8 port switch would be the way to go
i need to 4 cables to feed each room and 1 from my router
whats the best solution to do this

Slight confusion in your request, are you asking about cabling or the switch or both?

You say you've boarded out already? I would be running the cable from a central location (where your switch is or will be) to data points in each of the rooms. Depends on the layout of your room really and how easy it is. Personally I would have run the cabling behind the boards in the void beforehand.

This is what I did:



The reason why i left the two powerline adapters in was two fold. a) The Wireless one is a combined adapter and is on the outside of the external wall so wireless doesn't reach and I needed to provide an AP and b) the one in the office prevents me running cable around the room to the other desk.

EDIT: Yes, I'm sad I actually designed and drew my home network before i put it in

 

[turner brown]

no i havent got the plasterboard up yet and only the cental area is floored so running cables is not a problem
i will be using cat 6 cable as its got a longer life span for any future upgrades
the main thing i was not 100 % on was the switch as to make/ models to go for
the gb one will be what i am looking for as again i want it future proof

want something thats easy to install and will just plug into router to forward internet to each room
this is where i get a little confused router/switch ?

 

[Exos]

I put in a D-Link DGS-1216T Switch (cost me £50 from e-Bay) which is a smart switch (it bridges the gap between un-managed and managed). Personally I'm not a fan of "hubs" as they are not intelligent at managing traffic.

Your router is likely to have a switch built in (generally about four ports and not always gigabit), if your going to use that location as the central/termination point but you can daisy chain them or use a single port simply for your internet traffic, making sure anything on your local LAN is terminated/patched into your gigabit switch.

 

[Exos]

You would essentially end up with something like this:

 

[turner brown]

ye thats my problem there not smart enuf to make up for my shortfall .was looking at this one
TP-Link TL-SG3210 8-Port Gigabit L2 Lite Managed Switch with 2 SFP Slots 6935364020972 | eBay

 

[Exos]

ye thats my problem there not smart enuf to make up for my shortfall .was looking at this one
TP-Link TL-SG3210 8-Port Gigabit L2 Lite Managed Switch with 2 SFP Slots 6935364020972 | eBay

TP-Link are OK, bit expensive that though especially considering my £50 for 16 ports or that you can buy a Cisco switch for near enough the same price. NetGear are OK too

8 Port Netgear GS108T-200UKS ProSafe Gigabit Smart Switch 606449070002 | eBay

Just need to ensure with some smart switches that they can take the latest FW as they sometimes have different revisions and updates fix certain issues (i.e. mine was on rev D, FW 4.0 but there was an issue with it passing DHCP issued addresses from my server, if I was on B or C I couldn't apply the update.)

 

[Him Her]

Wow, how quaint...

...I just whacked in a few Cisco intelligent WAPs with roaming - job done...

 

[turner brown]

na still confuesd

at the moment i have 2 routers in the house that will stay
i have 2 pc's and a printer on the bt home hub and the last cable going to me tv router setup
where i have a dlink feeding satbox ps3 and tv and nas
so i was going to take the printer off the hub and run that cable to loft
now i need to feed the printer again and then 2 rooms and the loft and want room to expand if needed

 

[Him Her]

Can we simplify?

Will this network just be for Internet? If so, it all sounds horribly complicated?

Managed or unmanaged switches? WTF?

It will be years before your Internet connection will get fast enough to worry about a super-speed home network.

I would run a few cables up to strategic points in the house and just go with a few WAPs and Ethernet over mains for now.

After a few years it will be all change anyway M8

 

[Exos]

Can we simplify?

Will this network just be for Internet? If so, it all sounds horribly complicated?

Managed or unmanaged switches? WTF?

It will be years before your Internet connection will get fast enough to worry about a super-speed home network.

I would run a few cables up to strategic points in the house and just go with a few WAPs and Ethernet over mains for now.

After a few years it will be all change anyway M8

Little bit flippant that remark matey on the Shiraz tonight HH

I understand where you're coming from, but if it was me and I had the opportunity to run cables in when my floors, ceiling etc are exposed I would have.

The only other point to mention is wireless (or at least generally home wireless) isn't always the best and not everyone can install CISCO WAPS (the corporate/enterprise grade ones), I also had issues myself with powerline and streaming data so again here there is no guarantee.

Yep they are options, but not necessarily what he wants.

He probably doesn't need a managed switch and I offered my view, but not necessarily meaning he had to (in fact I'm sure that was his thought already), but also here he has a NAS a hub is simply going to end up with tonnes of collisions (been there done that)

 

[turner brown]

so would i be better taking 1 cable from my bt infinty modem to the loft and then dishing it out from there
i have a dell server in my shed if this would be useful but again never done much networking

Dell PowerEdge SC1435 Twin Dual Core 16GB RAM SATA RAID 1U Server Virtualization | eBay

 

[turner brown]

ah freck it HH when am i coming to pick you up for that install your doing

 

[Him Her]

Little bit flippant that remark matey on the Shiraz tonight HH

I understand where you're coming from, but if it was me and I had the opportunity to run cables in when my floors, ceiling etc are exposed I would have.

The only other point to mention is wireless (or at least generally home wireless) isn't always the best and not everyone can install CISCO WAPS (the corporate/enterprise grade ones), I also had issues myself with powerline and streaming data so again here there is no guarantee.

Yep they are options, but not necessarily what he wants.

He probably doesn't need a managed switch and I offered my view, but not necessarily meaning he had to (in fact I'm sure that was his thought already), but also here he has a NAS a hub is simply going to end up with tonnes of collisions (been there done that)

Yes, perhaps it was, just seemed to be getting a bit complicated for a home network...

Agreed on the cable front - it's accessible so may as well take advantage. A single feed from the router to a switch in the loft space would allow distribution. A managed switch is a waste unless you really want to look at MAC table stats and other such interesting stuff. Cat 5e will be sufficient IMHO given it's good for Gigabit but if you go Cat 6 remember that installation requirements are more stringent. For example, Cat 5e you can pretty much tie knots in, do that with Cat 6 and it degrades to Cat 5 performance. With either remember to terminate at wall points (or patch panel) don't take solid-core direct to devices - use flexible patches for that.

If you got an 8-port switch then there will be spare ports for an upstairs WAP if required - if the house is older (or solid internal construction) you may find signal strength degraded.

The reason I mentioned Cisco is because they support roaming - one wireless SSID on multiple WAPs and recon units are available at about £60.

Forget the Dell M8 unless you have a use for it on the network, but you don't need it to run the network