wiring the house with eithernet cables

[remanz]

Moved into a bigger place with a few more rooms. wanted to make eithernet internet connection available for each room. The house is wired everywhere with the telephone lines and copper cable lines (TV). But once I picked a room to connect the cable modem. I am stuck in that room. Now my PS3/XBOX and other PCs in other rooms can't get "wired" Internet.

wondering how you guys approach wiring the home.

[Zzc2]

Long wires or go wireless N.
I use 1 long wire to go from upstairs to downstairs, then have a hub on each end of those to branch out from there

[Jar]

You could snake/pull the cable from the attic down to each room if you have 1, or from the basement up to each room. It took me about 4 hrs pulling wires in the home im currently at, built in 1954 has a attic. it wasnt that bad.

[thefunk]

Long wires or go wireless N.
I use 1 long wire to go from upstairs to downstairs, then have a hub on each end of those to branch out from there

I understand wireless N only works if all connections are N. If even one is only G then all connections are downgraded to G speeds.

Is that right ?

[Kicksome]

You could use powerline adapters. I have those in a few rooms. Faster than wireless - especially over long distance.

http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Livewire-Powerline-Network/dp/B003VWY0VY/ref=sr_1_5?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1312840032&sr=1-5

[MiRai]

You could use powerline adapters. I have those in a few rooms. Faster than wireless - especially over long distance.

http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Livewire-Powerline-Network/dp/B003VWY0VY/ref=sr_1_5?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1312840032&sr=1-5
I used this in the last place I lived in and it worked well. I was skeptical at first but I never experienced any
problems related directly to using that.

[remanz]

thanks guys.

I am gonna give the powerline network a try. Kinda too trouble some to fish cables in the wall and I don't have a basement to go across.
I hope the latency will be good. Bandwidths these days are all high.

[Sam DeathWalker]

Power wires are for sure way thicker (less resistence) then Cat 5 cable, and thus better .... and already in the wall .... might have some ground loop problems but I am sure they have worked that out. I guess they low pass filer out the 60/120 Hz or whatever it is power signal given that their signals are in the MHz range. Hummm nice idea.

[Cptan]

Powerline adapter method is neat and tidy. I am using it, and find it satisfactory.

Do note

1) home/electronic appliances may affect the signal integrity. e.g. during on/off, and result in lower bandwidth. Watching a live movie on SmartTV with my notebook powered on next to the adapter affects the downloading speed...

2) make sure you are running the pair of adapters on the same single phase AC line. This is normally not an issue as most of us live in a 'small' house that is not powered by 3 phase system

3) try to plug them directly onto the wall outlet, rather than on the power extension cord

Good luck

[mikekim]

Powerline adapter method is neat and tidy. I am using it, and find it satisfactory.

Do note

1) home/electronic appliances may affect the signal integrity. e.g. during on/off, and result in lower bandwidth. Watching a live movie on SmartTV with my notebook powered on next to the adapter affects the downloading speed...

2) make sure you are running the pair of adapters on the same single phase AC line. This is normally not an issue as most of us live in a 'small' house that is not powered by 3 phase system

3) try to plug them directly onto the wall outlet, rather than on the power extension cord

Good luck

I use them at home for connecting my Apple TV and Xbox to the internet using a wireless powerline (they are the older models that run at 85mbps) . it can be a bit slow on movie transfers back to my pc (i just tend to relocate the Apple TV upstairs when doing the copying)

cople of responses to the above:

#2) powerline adaptors won't run over different phases. i have prior experience with this, as in the past i have had to use them on larger houses that have different phases for different areas.

#3) you can use extension cords, but only if they don't have surge protections on them, as this conflicts with the operation of the units.

[Cptan]

Come to think of it, maybe it is possible to extend the LAN from phase 1 AC line to phase 2 AC line via ethernet cable between adapters. Just my thought...

[mikekim]

Come to think of it, maybe it is possible to extend the LAN from phase 1 AC line to phase 2 AC line via ethernet cable between adapters. Just my thought...

by the time you have run cable from room to room to bridge the phases, you might as well have just run a cable to where you need it in the first place.. :p

[eisenhorn]

I also use the 200mbps Powerline adaptors as I used to find streaming movies from pc to ps3 got jittery if I was still using the network for anything else as well. They work really well and I just have a hub in my office for all my machines there (plugged into an extension cable), and then one just for the PS3. I did find though that 2 of my adapters dies within days of each other roughly a year after first installing them (they were on constantly 24x7).

[mikekim]

I've had issues with older models dying.. I.e. The original corinex 14mbps units, and early zyxel models, but not the newer zyxel units or devolo 85, or 200 models

[remanz]

just reporting back on this powerline thingy. It works flawlessly.

Installation includes plug the first adapter power. Plug the eithernet from router to the first adapter. Plug the 2nd adapter into another room's power. Connect the eithernet from the 2nd adapter to the desired device (PS3, PC, Laptop).

Without me doing anything else, it just works. Speed is great.

"It just works"

can't say that about some other products that I got lately.


This is the best product since Razer naga.

[HomoDoctus]

Reviving this thread with a couple of questions:

I picked up this netgear kit (http://ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=59290&vpn=XAVB5001-100NAS&manufacture=Netgear&promoid=1287)
I have tried speed tests on my laptop and was getting speeds in the 35 Mbit range. Which is only slightly faster than the wireless. The two rooms are directly below/above, with new wiring in the bottom room, where all the cables come in to the house. the rest of the house is about 50 years old and has a mess of wires. I have tried every socket in the upstairs room with the same results; this is far less than the advertised 500 Mbit.

1) I'd just like to know if I can 5 box wow over this with no hiccups. My roommates will be playing wow and other games as well at the same time.
2) is it worth trying the sockets in other rooms and then potentially running a cable between? this would be certainly less than ideal.

One wow runs fine on my laptop, can't attempt 5 and my beast is well, a beast so hard to move.

any thoughts are appreciated :)

[Cptan]

Quote:
by the time you have run cable from room to room to bridge the phases, you might as well have just run a cable to where you need it in the first place..

lol. Of course it defeats the purpose if you need to wire from room to room. I will connect them near the AC distribution panel where you have access to all the phases.

[remanz]

Reviving this thread with a couple of questions:

I picked up this netgear kit (http://ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=59290&vpn=XAVB5001-100NAS&manufacture=Netgear&promoid=1287)
I have tried speed tests on my laptop and was getting speeds in the 35 Mbit range. Which is only slightly faster than the wireless. The two rooms are directly below/above, with new wiring in the bottom room, where all the cables come in to the house. the rest of the house is about 50 years old and has a mess of wires. I have tried every socket in the upstairs room with the same results; this is far less than the advertised 500 Mbit.

1) I'd just like to know if I can 5 box wow over this with no hiccups. My roommates will be playing wow and other games as well at the same time.
2) is it worth trying the sockets in other rooms and then potentially running a cable between? this would be certainly less than ideal.

One wow runs fine on my laptop, can't attempt 5 and my beast is well, a beast so hard to move.

any thoughts are appreciated :)

35MBit is the bandwidth. Need to know the latency. LAtency is what affects your game play. Bandwidth kinda doesn't matter these days where everyone has high bandwidth. Wireless should have higher latency than the powerline solution. If you get 150ms+ with wireless, you can definitely feel it when you 5 box.

The powerline does have dependency on your house's wiring for stablity. Based on my experience, it is more stable than wireless.

[HomoDoctus]

35MBit is the bandwidth. Need to know the latency. LAtency is what affects your game play. Bandwidth kinda doesn't matter these days where everyone has high bandwidth. Wireless should have higher latency than the powerline solution. If you get 150ms+ with wireless, you can definitely feel it when you 5 box.

ahh yes, I didn't think of the latency. We recently switched to telus from shaw (not my choice) and noticed higher latency at all times of the day. I typically run around 250-350 being located in the same room as the router. i'll give my laptop a try and see what I get there.

cheers

[pinotnoir]

I was curious about the new powerline adapters that are rated at 500. Right now I am using wireless N for my htpc. If I need more bandwidth I would either run a cat6 wire or use the powerline adapters. My wired connection via my 1gig router copies files to my nas server at HD speeds. I was lucky to buy 4 3Tbit drives for $109 last month. Now the same drives are $259 due to the flooding in Taiwan.