Home Network

[Ridgefire]

One of my coworkers has one of these http://www.amazon.com/NETGEAR-JGS524NA-Unmag-Giga-Switch/dp/B0002CWPW2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1327096805&sr=8-1 He said he would make me a great deal on it $20. He got it from a factory demo he did. States as far as he knows it works. I figure for 20 bucks I'm willing to take a chance. 

Now my questions. Please be patient with me. I'm learning new stuff everyday. Once I run all my cat5e cables to the central location where this switch will be. Do I have to use one of these http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-12-Port-Cat5e-Wall-Mount-Surface-Mount-Patch-Panel-/270493091744?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3efaa507a0 or could I just put the rj45 plug on the end of the runs and just plug them direct to the switch.

I plan on putting wall plates in each bedroom and the office and moving the internet router to basement where I plan on putting the switch. I hope I don't sound like too much of an idiot.

[ark_ader]

Why bother?

Is the house a new build?  Has the electrics been installed recently and you can do cable runs at the same time?

My house went through renovation when we bought it, as it had Victorian electrics (and everything else) so the option to buy cable and do the very same thing was an option but it was too costly.

Wifi in the house is terrible.  I tried bridges where to Access Points connect to distribute wireless signals, and that was a disappointment. 

I tried Powerline 85mb adapters and it solved the problem.

A certain person I know likes to change their minds when it comes to locating the TV, and if I had an permanent outlet for the network, it would be my luck that it would end up at the opposite side of the outlet.  The Powerline solves that, and I have recently seen improvements in speed and security, but EVERYTHING works perfectly at 85mb. I would ditch the switch to be honest.

But if you are still up for cabling, then the switch, the patch panel, the router/Modem in the loft and cable down.  Patch cable run from the switch to the patch panel. Cables run from the patch panel to the outlets.  Make sure you number them.  Get someone to Quality test them for you, especially if they are to be covered under your home insurance.  Get CAT6 cable.  It is worth it.  Patch panels are great and you reduce the risk of damaging the cable, and you can diagnose faults easier. Be careful with the cable and take your time.  Practice crimping before you start the installation.

I had the a similar switch I got from a mate and I could not get rid of it.   

It should look like this for a house:



Have fun crimping!

[knave]

You don't have to use a patch panel but it's the most professional way to do it. Keeps it clean looking especially if you pay attention to your cable routing. get some Panduit it'll look perdy...

...but functionally you'd probably be fine just terminating each cable with a RJ45.

[eds1275]

Running cables is pretty easy provided you have plenty of access above or below. For example my place had a completely unfinished basement so it was no trouble running speaker cable, internet, video etc to a central location. If you have drop ceilings that also makes it easy. But I would hate to do that in a finished house.

[Ridgefire]

I have an unfinished basement so the 1st floor runs are simple and I just updated all the electric upstairs. I have easy access to chases that run to the basement. Yes old home balloon construction, one of the only times balloon construction comes in handy. I just have to remove the fire blocking I put in the basement run the cables then replace the fire blocking.

[Ridgefire]

It should look like this for a house:



Have fun crimping!

Ok this is probably a newb question. But is there a reason the patch cables are so long? Between the patch panel and the switch. Our IT department has a huge mess in the server room using 5 foot cables to span 4 inches. Other than saving yourself the hassle of making the cables is there a reason for the length?

[ark_ader]

Well the patch cables come at specific lengths some long and some short.  In the early days it was far easier and cheaper to buy in bulk, so you got your patch panel setup and then you had to do some cable management to fit them all into the cabinet.  Governments bought massive boxes of the stuff and you had to use the length or crimp a shorter one instead.  Guess which is the easier option?

Another reason for buying a certain length gives you more options to place a panel, too short and you have cable strain and all sorts of problems.  I always find that if I label the cables with some white tape and a marker, it can go a long way to find the right port. So if the cable is bad I can tell right away.  These patch panel cables are a PINTA.  Once we had a bad batch and didn't know it until was too late.    Good old British Telecom.

The picture below is a good example of what your setup will look like. 

The picture represents an apartment community, and the installer had a nice spot to fit it all in. 

Kinda like when we have a cool place to put an arcade cabinet. 

[Ridgefire]

Glad I have you all on here to help me. This is what I have to use for reference. And yes these are real photos taken from our server area.

[Ed_McCarron]

Video distribution?  Or wireless?  I've never seen surge protectors like a PolyPhaser used on video...

And OP -- no crimp.  Crimp bad.  Go with the patch panel.  And patch cords.  (And yes, I say this every time I see someone mention crimping...  )

With crimped cables, that crimp WILL be the failure point.  If you value your time, terminate the ends and use patch cords.

[Ridgefire]

Ok not sure why my droid decided to put a blank post. So please insert something smart pertaining to this conversation Sent from my DROID3 using Tapatalk

[Ridgefire]

I work for 911. So that would be wireless on the other side of that wall is a 75 foot radio tower, so steel tower, radio antennas, and lightning. = bad things

Sent from my DROID3 using Tapatalk

[ark_ader]

Glad I have you all on here to help me. This is what I have to use for reference. And yes these are real photos taken from our server area.

The tech has job security going for him, or the sack if I was his manager. 911 eh?  So a serious fault goes down and the tech is on holiday and your friendly contractor tech has to find the fault?  Ka-ching!

I have seen installations like this before.  I just look at it and go ".....uh huh! Well that is one of your problems."  Please do not get this tech to do the cabling in your house. 

If you are the tech in question, then I suggest at least some cable ties and proper trunking, a marker pen and a multimeter.    I hope you got clearance to publish these photos if you work in a secure environment. 

I work for 911. So that would be wireless on the other side of that wall is a 75 foot radio tower, so steel tower, radio antennas, and lightning. = bad things

Me too I have a lot of devices that provide the wrong environment, thus the Powerline solution.  You could go wireless in your house and use 802.11A that uses a higher frequency, less people hack it and most devices support it.

[J_K_M_A_N]

I just installed some wiring at work and I used 2 of these. It looks very nice. Then I also bought a bunch of 2' patch cables from them to hook from those to our switch. They are probably too long but you will not want to make a bunch of those. Especially with the stiff cat5e cable that you run in wall. The patch cables from them are much more flexible.

J_K_M_A_N

[Ridgefire]

The tech has job security going for him, or the sack if I was his manager. 911 eh?  So a serious fault goes down and the tech is on holiday and your friendly contractor tech has to find the fault?  Ka-ching!

I have seen installations like this before.  I just look at it and go ".....uh huh! Well that is one of your problems."  Please do not get this tech to do the cabling in your house. 

If you are the tech in question, then I suggest at least some cable ties and proper trunking, a marker pen and a multimeter.    I hope you got clearance to publish these photos if you work in a secure environment. 

I'm fine with posting those photos. There is nothing in them that falls under secure environment protocols. Now if I show you the combination to get into that vault. I would be in trouble. The scary part of those pictures....we just went through a computer upgrade and the IT department "CLEANED" up the vault.

[Ed_McCarron]

I work for 911. So that would be wireless on the other side of that wall is a 75 foot radio tower, so steel tower, radio antennas, and lightning. = bad things

Yup.  I install antennas for SCADA systems -- on top of water tanks.  That's why I recognized the surge protectors.  We try to keep the radio and computer stuff in different rooms.  The IT guys don't like it when you blow their stuff up.

[Ridgefire]

Its a weird set up, that vault houses the computer stuff and phones. The antenna cables come in and ground in that room then cables go over head across the hallway to the radio room where all the racks of various radios are. Like you said you would think they would want it all separate but the cables run right over top the racks

[MonMotha]

FYI, if you want a really nice switch for a power user home network and don't need a ton of ports, I've been quite happy with my Netgear GS108Tv2 (the "Tv2" is important).  It's a "smart switch" which apparently means essentially fully managed except no CLI (it does have a text config file with a Cisco-ish format that you can TFTP to/from it, though).  The only feature I've found that it is lacking that I'd like is the ability to act as an 802.1x supplicant (it does support an authenticator role, though), but I don't see that being particularly necessary in a home environment.  8 ports at gigabit, full duplex, with flow control (optional), jumbo frames (optional), etc.  It'll do VLANs, trunking (including LACP), authentication (you supply a RADIUS server) including guest VLAN, supports DHCP filtering, multicast, etc.

It's about $105 generally.  It's no substitute for an enterprise or carrier grade device in an application that needs such things, but, for that price, this is one heck of a switch.

Just make sure you upgrade the firmware to the latest one.  The old firmware is a bit buggy.  It works, but the web interface eventually stops responding until you do a factory reset.  That seems fixed on the latest firmware.

I often specify these in school and mid-size office environments for desktop/classroom level expansion.  At the price, it's rather robust and has the ability to handle a VLAN trunk so I can plug various doohickies into it.  The POE PD support is nice since I can feed power to it over the uplink cable and not have to worry about people kicking the wall wart out of the outlet under the table.  This application is why I want the 802.1x supplicant support, btw: it would let me keep miscreants off the VLAN trunk port.  Again, you probably don't care in your home, though.