On Fri, Jan 11, 2002 at 08:06:58AM -0600, MJ wrote: > > > Hi Yaron! > > Congrats on the new mortgage! > Here I just have cat 5e that I got a spool of at Menards. 1000ft if I > remember right, about $80. You paid too much =) > I didn't get fancy with patch panels, just some biege > boxes that mount on the wall with 6 jacks. These things can house coax, > rj11 and rj45 jacks, probably more. The jacks themselves are just inserts > that fit in the beige box. These same inserts fit in the wall plates as > well. If you need more than 6, and have a big budget, then you might > indeed want to look at patch panels. I got all this stuff at > Menards. Personally, as far as hubs/switches go, I'd stay away from any > linksys stuff. Both mine and a friends turned out to be total garbage. The inserts work great, and yes, the linksys units are crap. CAT5e should work for 99% of peoples homes, twi or three pulls per room is fine, anything more than that you should be using a small switch, you can buy decently priced cat5e at home depot, along with toners (for figuring out which cable is which) along with IDEAL crimpers (Cat No 30-496). A visit to graybar will cost you less (www.graybar.com), don't judge them on their website, it tends to be rather slow and incomplete. As a side note, I tried buying a cheap set of crimpers while away from my tools from Menards, (you know, the plastic made in china ones) they didn't work. I also purchased 100' of cat5e there, and it had a break in it somewhere that caused me to waste some RJ45 ends thinking it must be my work, and not the cable. Hopefully this is not indicative of products at menards (although their SAVE BIG MONEY AT MENARDS! commercials are driving me mad) > > Again, congrats! > > Mike Jentges > -- Matthew S. Hallacy CACU, PWGCS, and BOFH Certified http://techmonkeys.org/~poptix GPG public key 0x01938203