I recently decided to wire up strategic locations in my house for Cat 5e 1GB Ethernet. I've been streaming a lot of videos to my Vista Media Center box and my DSM-520 Media player. Wireless worked for a while but the DSM-520 would have issues because of the 802.11g limitations. Running Structure Wiring provides up to a 1GB network and is probably the best thing you can do if you want to stream media.
Project Steps
- Planning: The first step is deciding wall box placement and central wiring panel placement. In my case, I had an existing smart box or central wiring panel that I used. Also, I wanted multiple lines to each wall box and I decided that I wanted wall jacks in the living room, office, and master bedroom. I have additional ports on my router for future expansion as well.
- Running Cables: This is the difficult part. I chose to only run cable on interior walls. I did this so that I wouldn't have to deal with insulation when fishing cabling through the walls. Also, if you can reuse existing boxes and just add additional insert the process in much simpler as well. In my case, I reused boxes for cable and phone connections. You'll need to get a fish tape from Lowe's or Home Depot that you can attach cabling to and feed it down from the attic into the wiring boxes. Run multiple cables at the same time by looping the Cat 5e cable at the end of your fish tape. This way you can get two cables run at once. Run the other end into your central wiring panel for termination. I found that the punch down wall inserts were the way to go for termination at each wall jack.
- Setup and Configure Network Appliances: At a minimum you will probably need at least three network appliances: Cable modem, router, and switch. In my case I used a Cable Modem, Firewall Appliance, Unmanaged Switch, and Wireless Access Point. This gives me a lot of flexibility in my configuration. Comment below if you have any questions why I went with this configuration. I also added a UPS in my wiring closet that all appliances use for power. This gave me the extra outlets that I needed as well as providing temporary battery backups for short power interruptions. Splice into a cable in the central wiring panel and add a splitter to provide a source for the cable modem. Next, run a cable from the cable modem to the WAN port on your Firewall Appliance or Router. This appliance will act as the DHCP server for the internal LAN as well as control access between the WAN/LAN. Next go from a port on the Router/Firewall to the Unmanaged Switch. Attach each cable for the wall plates to the Network Switch. Finally you can add a Wireless access point by attaching a cable from the main Firewall Router to a LAN port on the Wireless Access Point/Wireless Router. Turn off DHCP on this unit as the Firewall/Router will act as the DHCP server for the network.
Supplies and Tools
In order to complete your project you will need a number of tools as well as networking supplies such as wall covers, RJ45 Inserts, RJ45 plugs, Cat 5e Cable, etc. I've included a full list of tools and possible supplies below:
Tools
- Wall Fish Tape
- Scissors or Cable Cutter
- Cable Stripper
- Screwdriver with Bits
- Punch Down Tool (110/88)
- Ratchet Crimper
- Cable Tester
The tools are all available as kits by various manufacturers. A basic Network Toolkit
can be found by clicking this link.
Supplies and Networking Appliances
Final Product
Depending on your networking appliances you will end up with a 10/100/1000 Mbps network. I was able to successfully get 1GB connections working through the house. Your final product will look professionally installed and no one will know the difference. Here are a few pictures of my wall jacks and central wiring closet:
Useful Links
http://www.swhowto.com/
http://www.lanshack.com/make-cat5e.aspx
Feel free to contact me in our Networking forum with any questions that you may have. It can be found at http://xmilk.com/forums/10.aspx.