Just add meatballs.
I am currently in the process of putting together the pieces for the in-home network in our new house. Now, for some, that would mean installing a wireless router and calling it done. Hell, I’ve been there many times myself, where I didn’t have the energy or motivation to try and run networking cables around a house that wasn’t mine… or even around one that was. But this time, since we’re starting from scratch, we have the chance to do it right, and do it we shall! So every room receives proper networking ports, with multiple ports in the main entertainment rooms and office. And now, of course, I have to connect them all together, and that’s where I’m starting to get a headache. Everyone I talk to has different advice for how to proceed.
I’m sure it will be worthwhile once it’s all assembled, but for the moment, it’s giving me a headache. Or, it had damn well better be worth it, or I’m going to have a good cry.
How well-networked is your house — a single laptop connected to a modem, or one step shy of the Starship Enterprise?
You… you have multiple rooms in your house? Oh. That must be nice.
Right? And yet I have to go outside to talk on my phone because my nine by eight particle board drug dealer mansion somehow manages to block cell signals.
And that's why they still have land lines….
Your chicken coop counts as a room, doesn't it?
I'm using it as a garage, but I suppose if you're looking to sublet….
Ooooo, don't tempt me. I could use a new testing grounds where I'm unknown.
That sounds like it may not be worth the extra rent money. I treasure the unexpected fact that the neighbors are more entertained than alarmed by my own activities as it is.
I have dreams of wiring up the whole house. 2+ Data ports in all the rooms, replace all the phone lines with Cat6, patch panel and professional switch in a closet, the whole 9 yards. It's just not a real financial priority, as I can run one patch cord from the office to the hub in the family room, and that covers all my current wired needs.
The compound's network is something of a mis-mash at the moment. Two DSL cable modem/routers on two different lines connected to two desktops, WiFi for everything else except by oldest's gamer PC, which has a network cable running to a downstairs router because he can't get a wireless connection in the compound. It all pretty much works, but it's a big kludge.
"The compound's network"
Are you currently in confinement??
Only when I'm dodging work. No, I refer to the collection of buildings where I reside as 'the compound'. It's as good a description as any.
I have a friend who has called every single place he lived at, "Poverty Acres". We both lived and worked out at my brothers place, and when my brother got wind that it was being talked about as that he got all uppity.
"Hey! You can't call it that….. I pay you guys lots of money!!!…"
"It's just a term, words to explain where we live in a geographical sense, not an economic one…"
"I don't care, call it something else, anything else, like maybe "The Compound"
Poverty Acres, it was then decreed, and like a nick-name you didn't get to pick, it stuck like glue. Twenty years from now there will probably be some gated community/ golf course there, but they'll still call it that….
I installed Cat5e and RG6 going to every room as needed (no extras since it's easy to add cables in this house). The part that I think is pretty cool is that there are two RG6 lines in each room–one upstream and one downstream. On the upstream feeds I have CATV head-end RF modulators in three rooms so that various devices can feed their video signal out to the rest of the house. Behind the TV in the living room, all of the upstream feeds get combined with an amplified antenna feed, and that gets sent out to all the downstream feeds.
Back before I was a scientist, I did this stuff for a school district.
I had once envisioned that by this point I would have over 12 miles of gleaming Cat6 running from hell to breakfast (and nicely dressed in), computers in every room, a purpose built server with its own fusion reactor, and some kind of tunnel back from the outside world set up.
The reality is that, like The Professor and MrHowser, there's just a few long patch cords running where they're needed. Wifi takes care of a great many things. SmartPhones, tablets, and set-top boxes (OK, iPhone, iPad, and AppleTV) negated the need for computers everywhere, my last "main" machine becomes a file server in a closet, and cloud services eliminated most of the need to ever tunnel in from the outside.
No, we're not.
<img src="http://i.ytimg.com/vi/k9EBcNEKkcY/0.jpg"width="500"/>
I never pictured you having a beard.
Whahaha! I hope you get that Allstate commercial on TV up there. Otherwise, you'll think I'm nuts.
I'm still in an apartment, so I've got the "a couple cables along the floor, a wifi AP, a few machines hardwired, the rest on the wireless" setup going. I'd love gleaming Cat6 to every room in a compound with a real machine running as a custom firewall. Someday… Have to buy the house to install this stuff in first.
I got tired of the dodgey wi-fi connection a while ago. Almost 2 years ago I switched to getting all my TV/entertainment either with an over the air antenna or online/streaming. I'm sure I doing it the hard way, but it is the way I know how. I have the main router it what was the office upstairs, but is now the den/man cave/guest bedroom. From there a Cat 5 cable goes through a hole in the closet to a hole in the top of the (former) master bedroom closet downstairs and then through a hole in the floor down to the basement. It comes up a vent and into the laptop/main computer in the former master bedroom now office/library. There is another cable from the router following the same path to the basement, but back up to the entertainment center in the living room to a switch/router out to a Blu-Ray player and Wii (when I finally get it hooked back up). Another cable goes to a switch in the man cave and out to the XBOX 360 and PS3 (when I get them all hooked back up). There is a Wi-fi only Roku box in the master bedroom (former bonus room/den).
I had everything done up a little better before the major interior move earlier this year. Mrs. P161911 insisted that we sleep on the same floor as Baby P161911. So the bonus room became the master bedroom, the office/library became the den/man cave/guest bedroom, the guest bedroom became the baby room, and the master bedroom became the office/library. As part of all this we also had hardwood flooring installed on the main level.
So yeah, it would be nice to hardwire it right the first time.
the owner of the house I live in (rent-to-own-please take it off our hands we can't sell it if you make our mortgage payments we'll be thrilled) had wired (by crude doings) the whole house for sound/central music back in the early nineties.
I skipped a months rent by installing outlet panels in place of his "wires sticking out of the wall" also added Cat5 connections through the whole house, since all the other wires had been run…. seemed like the logical thing to do..
makes me want to stay here (in this house… in the f*ckin' sh*tty parts of town) that much more… I like the work and enjoy putting the network together, however, every time I finish a job, I realize how much I hate doing the install work.
Wifi and router all in one from my provider. They manage to get me a 9meg connection out in the country so I won't complain. The wifi covers about have the property so it is nice to sit outdoors and do nothing.
Three PC's on a LAN connection now so the kids and I can play games. PS3, Wii and the wifes laptop feed off the wifi. The Wii is a absolute hog, if it is using it everything else in the house just slows to a crawl. Shut off I can smoothly play with everything. Hehe, play with.
Of course the two Andriod phones sucking off the wifi connection.