Any Network Know-It-Alls Out Tnere?
Cast your minds back to February last year. Remember me asking for help in naming my collection of computers? Well, they're all still with me and it's still a mess under my desk - albeit a different desk in a different house. Not only is it a mess but it's probably a fire hazard as well, with about 14 mains plugs in use. It's also quite noisy!
What I want to do is get rid of what doesn't need to be in here - switch, router/modem and servers. What I don't know is where to put them. I'm thinking of either the cellar or the left. Probably the cellar, hoping it's not too damp down there. But also keeping the option to move to the loft or broom cupboard at a later date.
What I'm not sure about is how to connect everything. I've got the conduit running between both floors but it only has room for about 4 runs of cat5 cable. If I want network sockets in a couple of rooms downstairs and a couple upstairs, as well as a WAP on each level, how do I connect them? Do I need a patch panel on each floor? Do I need a switch on each floor? I'm confused!
If I get the chance I will try and hunt down some software for drawing rudimentary house plans and sketch out what I want where. I've been told already that this is a cat you can skin in many ways. What's the easiest and most flexible way though?
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Hi Jake!
I've been following your 'house' progress with a lot of interest, it reminds me so much of my parents house. Full of interesting discoveries, and never short of something to DIY!
We are currently having a house built, (see the progress on my website {Link} its racing up and this home networking topic I am following closely. It won't be too long before the wiring goes in, and with it I want to network the house to some degree.
I hope you don't think I'm hijacking your thread, but anyone with any advice or resources on the web out there? If not of help to Jake too, please feel free to leave me a msg via my website or on the msg board.
Thanks Jake, and FYI my photos are taken with a Canon EOS300D too!! Yet more in common!
Cheers, Simon in Spain!
I have raised my concerns before about the attic, and would therefore go with the cellar, perhaps raising the kit off the floor, especially given you’re potential to flood. This would also have the advantage that they will also give there heat up to the floors above.
I guess from your previous entries you may have three or four Lundy, Dogger, printer and Cromarty (if you haven’t sold it/him) pieces of kit in your office, so either you utilise your four cables from your server location up to your office (and little else) or you could add a small switch on each floor and provide network points in the adjacent rooms radiating from these.
Assuming you need a switch on two floors this would leave two cables free, which I would connect the WAP’s to rather than daisy chain them of the switches on the floors. There is a rule that says you should limit the number of hops, (cant remember details at the moment, but will try and find and come back to you).
One other thought you could always create a fibre backbone, I believe there are companies that will make up cables for you, but this would add to the expense.
Finally I would suggest putting your servers and data kit on an individual ring main and circuit breaker.
It's not entirely selfish of me to ask this Simon. As with everythuing it's a resource and, hopefully, a future reference point for others.
No need for patch panels at all then David?
Jake
Apologies, you have a couple of options, you create a patch panel by the floor switches, for this you could use patresss or back boxes and face plates (like a double socket with four or six network points) these would then link to the network points in your rooms, or you could just leave flying cables stuck out of the wall or through a blanking plate with a suitable sized hole in it (horrible).
I dont think you need to go frames and cabinets, though I have to say it is a problem making a tidy soloution for a few points and a small hub.
In the long term it would have been a lot tirier if you could have decided where you may need to have run a cable to, and decided the eventual position of your servers and run cables to each and just had one switch at a central location.
You may still have something like this option, if you locate your network gear in the cellar, you could probably run cables to ground floor points along the cellar ceiling/floor space and put the network cables behind the skirting board and sink ntwork points into the wall at low level.
As you say some plans ad an idea of identified requirements may help.As you say there are many ways to skin a cat. There are many ways to skin a cat.
Thanks David. It's all starting to make some sense now.
I'm in the same situation SiScu but I've got a question for both of you (and any other people out there of course): which objections do you have against going wireless? I can understand cost & connection speed (although you'll rarely need the full capacity of your connection at home, unless you want to run web/mail/... servers), but what other arguments would there be against e.g. a network existing out of a few Airport Extremes/Expresses (or any other brand of routers - it's just that I already own the Airports) ?
Wireless is just too temperamental Jef. I find I can have a WAP in one room and have virtually no signal in the room next door. It's great for roaming laptops and garden use but I just prefer cables for everything else. You know where you are with some copper wire!
Then there's the cost and the fact that wireless standards are constantly changing. Maybe one day everything will be wifi. I can wait.
Did you see those plugs from Packard-Bell that use the mains ring as a wired link?
Saves cabling and is non-wireless. Or wired, for short. ;)
{Link}
I'd have to agree. Wireless is a bit tempermental and if you decide to heat up your coffee in the microwave.... well there you go.
I agree with Jeff's assesment too. You should definitatly go with a switch on each level. A patchpanel is a good idea too. You can get brackets for then that will allow you to hang them in a closet somewhere. Make sure you get switches too btw, not hubs.
Yep, switches not hubs - one on each level. Should be fine to hang yer WAPs off the switches if you want to save the "spare" cables for future expansion. Patch panel is overkill - just use a four way wall outlet at each end to terminate your cable runs (well, that is a patch panel, isn't it!).
Cool project - can't wait to do my own one day!
I've found my one wireless hub to be sufficient for my small fleet. We have three PC's (one is a server) and two laptops with wireless cards.
The wireless router is also a DSL capable switch with 4 more ports for cat5. We don't have DSL yet (bought it in anticipation Sprint would keep to their published schedule... not to rant though) so it's not fully utilized at this point.
The server is currently with the other computers but the heat and power usage in that room is worrysome. When I move it, all I'll need to do is run one cat5 to the basement/celler, through the cold air return (central air is an asset when routing cables) where it will then reside. If I ever want to expand the array of servers downstairs, adding a switch there will do just fine. The wireless hub on the second floor seems to cover the whole house pretty well, though there's no brick or oak to be found as is common with historic homes in Europe. All fur and plywood construction... which is an important qualification for successful wireless I think. If the materials are too dense, as Jake is seeing, the signal doesn't get far.
A couple of other thoughts:
1. You might want to put some cable sockets in the middle of a room (rather than on a wall), so that you aren't restricted to keeping your technology in one corner, in perpetuity.
2. I always worry about access if there is a problem, inadequacy or insufficience with the cables -- what are you going to do: have enough redundancy so that you can use a different wire if/when one dies? I would prefer to have some sort of -- gee, I dunno, a long metal box-like compartment -- an access panel on a solid cable-housing structure, with space and room to put other cables in and take cables out.
Sort of like the tubes you've got, but totally different: wider (icluding room to use tools / get fingers in and out), straighter and stronger.
By not restricting the upgradeability of the cabling, you don't have to be so precise now. (And, let's face it, I doubt whether it is ever possible to know, to a satisfactory level of surity, exactly what you plan to send via cables through the house.
I would also be inclined to think about shielded cables, especially if you are putting them somewhere that you can't change: !! I hope you are going to connect some equipment up to ensure that the cables work BEFORE you close up all your holes !!
Cheers
)
PS regarding Point 1, above: what I mean is to use the floor space to bring a network point / power cable / etc in a more convenient place away from the wall. Heck, I want to design a desk that has cat5 and power wiring in it, so I don't have to crawl around UNDER the table to mess around with cables.
You want to use switches instead of hubs since they are capable of inspecting the data packets as they are received, determining the source and destination device of that packet, and forwarding that packet appropriately. They also conserve network bandwidth and offer generally better performance than hubs. Also, you are better protected from hackers with a switch. You can get these on eBay for real cheap. They easy to install.
Your notes stuff is at Prominic right? So, you do not have an internal server that you open up to the outside. If you do, then you will need to isolate that puppy form the rest of you network.
I was doing that for a while, but I found it easier to just rent a server at Prominic.
Good Luck
What a coincidence!
I'm currently just starting a project to move ALL my computers (4 of them) from my study into the LOFT.
Although the straight line distance is quite small (perhaps 3 meters) the actual cable route is more like 7 meters (given that I might want to move them about a bit in the loft).
My first R&D was to find a 10m VGA cable that did not smear, ghost or otherwise reduce the quality to the monitor - both CRT and LCD, all running at 1280x1024. I just received it on Friday 17th September and I've tested it.
It worked faultlessly on my 17" CRT, but I had to increase the refresh rate on my daughter's TFT from 60Hz to 70Hz to stop jitter (??). I'll talk to Lindy about this effect on Monday because they also do a "Super Long Digital" cable set, starting at 10m (my perfect length).
So, I've just started the project but within a month I expect to have on my desk: my monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers, and an external DVD-RW (or I might put my current one into an external housing). Printer & scanner stay where they are on the cupboard and will connect to a USB 2 hub.
In the loft will be all the base units, the router, switch, KVM, modem (backup for my ADSL).
I'm just so looking forward to getting rid of the noise, the HEAT!! and the dust. My wife can't wait for the spaghetti to disappear either!
I haven't read all of the responses, but here's what I have. My house is a two story house with a basement. There are 4 bedrooms upstairs, plus a bonus room. There is a network drop in each bedroom, plus two in the bonus room.
There is 6 drops in the main floor - the master bedroom, the office (2), the living room (2), and the kitchen.
The basement isn't finished, but it is studded in. There is a patch panel in the basement. The drops form the first floor are routed directly to the patch panel.
The second floor has a hub in a little walk-in attic, and all the drops from the second floor go to that hub. There is a cat-5 cable that runs from that little attic (and hub) all the way down to the patch panel in the basement. So, one plug in the patch panel represents the whole second floor as a separate segment, so to speak. There is a switch in the basement that connects all the first floor drops, and the second floor drop is plugged into the switchover plug.
I have a wireless hub (B/G) on the first floor that covers the whole first floor. I was going to put an access point on the second floor as well, when it is necessary (it isn't yet).
If you're interested in the rest of the switch/router/hub configs (like a topology map), let me know. I have two external IP addresses and two routers (wireless and wired) internally, as well as a Vonage (VoIP) router. I use one cable modem for both IP addresses. All of this works like a champ.
If you have any questions, Jake, drop me a line.
--Rock
Guys, unless your loft roof is well insulated (and I am talking about the actual tiles/slates, not the 'floor level') the amount of heat in a loft can easily exceed 40-50 degrees celsius ambient on a hot day and this is way too hot for PCs without some serious measures to cool them...! Even on an average sunny day (like now) you will get 30 plus ambient. And finally, on cold day or winters day, the temp can drop very low indeed due to wind-chill. Bottom line is horrendous temp-swings day-in, day-out and not many hard discs can survive that sort of treatment!
+Tim+