On Thu, 10 Jan 2002 Yaron wrote: > Well I'm finally going to have a house, and I'm thinking that wiring the > place up would be a better idea than running cable over the place, and > bulk cable/crimpers/jacks are cheaper than TWO wireless NICs and can > serve a whole buttload of machines. > So, anyone have any advice, such as good places to get bulk cable, whether > I should spend more on cat6 rather than 5e or 5, whether I should get > patch panels or just some switches, if I should consider running anything > except ethernet, etc? I just recently finished installing a bunch of data outlets and network wiring in my house. My setup was fairly expensive, with a wall mounted rack and patch panel in the basement. The job also turned out to be more labor intensive than I had expected, taking about 1-2 solid days worth of work per data outlet. However, now that it's done, pretty much anywhere I sit down inside the house (except for the bathrooms) is within 10 feet of a data outlet. Although I used cat5e wires, the system is only cat5 rated because I had bought a cat5 patch panel and jacks last year and didn't bother replacing them (can always do that later if needed ...). Not a big deal right now because the network is only running at 10 Mbps anyway, using cheap rack-mounted hubs from the MPC surplus store: http://www.materialsprocessing.com/. The niftiest trick I figured out while doing this was to use PVC pipe as a cable raceway. PVC is easy to cut, so I cut the pipe in half lengthwise and used the half-pipes, mounted to the basement ceiling joists with PVC J-hooks, instead of expensive "cat5e compliant" wire raceway. Home Depot carries most of the stuff needed to do this type of project. The Home Depot in Bloomington, near 494 and Lyndale, is open 24 hours. Otherwise, check out MilesTek: http://www.milestek.com/. In addition to cat5 network wire, I'd recommend also installing satellite grade (RG6) coaxial cable. People who don't understand the value of network wiring might still be able to appreciate easy access to the TV antenna or whatever -- most of my data outlets supply four cat5 and two RG6 connections. On Thu, 10 Jan 2002 Scott Dier wrote: > Otherwise, I'll just tear the walls apart when we move :) In some rooms it is possible to avoid totally tearing walls apart by running the cable in the wall behind the baseboard, near the floor. I did this in several rooms by pulling off the baseboard and then removing the bottom couple inches of drywall (about 1" less than the height of the baseboard). However, in order to drill holes near the bottoms of the studs, I found it necessary to use a drill capable of cutting through nails (circle saw). Also got a shaft extension for the drill, to improve the angle at which the holes were drilled. I hope this helps ... Joel