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Organizing Home Network Cables? 85

Posted by Cliff from the untangling-the-rat's-nest dept.
not-so Anonymous Anonymous Coward asks: "A few years ago, while finishing our basement, we wired each room of our house with two CAT-5 and two RG-6 cables. All of the cables were run to a central place in the basement, with the intent of building a "cabinet" to house and better organize the cables. Well, it is time. As you can see from the pictures, it is a jumbled morass of spaghetti. So I'd like to get ideas from the Slashdot crowd as to how to finally organize this mess, build the cabinet, etc., etc. No doubt there are many other readers in a similar situation, wanting ideas for organizing all the communications/network cables in their home."
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Organizing Home Network Cables? More

Organizing Home Network Cables?

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  • rack (Score:3, Informative)

    by mstich ( 222924 ) <mike AT hops DOT ca> on Friday June 18, 2004 @11:51PM (#9470410)
    I've been wanting to do something like that for a long-time, but the time investment is just too large.

    You should probably get a couple of patch panels and mount them in a rack..that's the most elegant solution!

    • Re:rack (Score:4, Insightful)

      by walt-sjc ( 145127 ) on Saturday June 19, 2004 @08:18AM (#9471755)
      You can get wall-mount mini racks that would work for something small like this.

      Something more appropriate is the Leviton [leviton.com] Integrated Networks system that has a panel and modules that are DESIGNED for smart-home systems. Reading comments further down I'm hearing "go wireless" - my answer is that there are MANY other things you can run over cat 5 - like an IR repeater system, digital AV senders, intercom, cameras, digital volume control for whole house sound systems, etc. - you should think outside the box.

      When I did some major rewiring of my house, I actually put in 2 sets of jacks in bedrooms allowing for easy reconfiguration. That puts 4 RG6U and 4 Cat5e in each bedroom. For the main entertainment system, I ran 8 Cat5e and 8 RG6U to the back panel of which most is already used. The leviton boxes I felt were a little limiting, but some of the components were useful such as the IR and AV modules. The little 8 port switch was not enough - I use an HP Procurve 2400 24 port switch that I got on ebay for $200 (new). I ALSO use wireless, but limit the use to laptops. 802.11g is pokey in certain cases - I do network backup to a server with an autoloader DLT drive, but still use the server for most storage.

      One thing I reccomend is putting a 4'x4' 3/4" plywood on the wall behind everything (in my case 4x8). Makes attaching stuff easier - not everything rack mounts nicely. For the few bits of rackmount equipment I have, I built a simple frame out of 2x2's, glued and screwed (and even some angle blackets) and used some door hinges to make it swing out from the wall. Total cost was about $10 compared to several hundred for a commercial wall mount rack system.

      OK, I admit it, this is over the top, but I'm a geek. Wife thinks I'm nuts but also doesn't complain about the whole house audio, being able to watch her soaps that she has tivo record (which is in the basement) on any TV in the house, etc. Oh yeah, did I mention the Asterisk [asteriskpbx.org] VoIP phone system? She likes that too - no more telemarketers. Power bill is a little high though :-)

  • Not too hard (Score:4, Informative)

    by danpat ( 119101 ) on Friday June 18, 2004 @11:58PM (#9470439) Homepage
    Here, buy these bits: Patch panels:
    Krone [ebay.com.au]
    Siemon [ebay.com.au]
    Small, shallow rack enclosure:
    here [ebay.com.au] Connect the leads coming out of the wall to the back of the patch panels and use short cat5 leads to link them together (or into a rack mountable hub/switch, like this one here [ebay.com.au]). If you do buy a rack mountable switch, make sure it's not too deep for your cabinet.

    Not sure what to do about the RG6 cables, but I imagine you can get patch panels for them too (although too many joints may kill your signal..)

    • Not sure what to do about the RG6 cables, but I imagine you can get patch panels for them too (although too many joints may kill your signal..)

      Yup, Usually you put BNC's on the end and plug them into the bottom row of a MUSA ulink bay [ebay.com.au] (Dont forget the u links [ebay.com.au]. The sources go into the top row (probably a UHF distributer in this case, or the outputs of a matrix). But if you're talking about the same RF signal, you'll probably be fine plugging straight into the DA, as you'll never want to re-patch (it's hard

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday June 19, 2004 @12:02AM (#9470458)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:all you need (Score:4, Insightful)

      by walt-sjc ( 145127 ) on Saturday June 19, 2004 @08:21AM (#9471765)
      I suggest velcro over tie wraps. Easy to undo and impossible to tie too tight (which I see all too often with Cat5 cables.)
      • The Velcro is OK - but you can always work on the "Tie wraps are cheap" theory (aka, cut them) - another choice (rarely seen) is to learn to use lacing cord - cheap, and will hold huge bundles neatly, and even pull them tight
        • Hmm. But velcro is reusable. Buy them once and you have them for life. You don't have to scrounge for another tie when making changes. Lacing cord, while cheap is a huge amount of work, and changes mean starting over. For some strange reason I keep finding that I new new jacks in various places, or additional drops. Since I use the velcro all over the place (where the wires hang from the ceiling too) lacing my entire basement would be silly. Between the coax and cat5e, I have several miles of cable installe
    • Aww, c'mon. Go old-school and use 12-cord. (Waxy string for you young'uns.) Learn to lace in the cables all pretty with the string and fiber paper... make it look like a 1960's Central Office in your basement!

  • One word: Ether... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by PaulBu ( 473180 )
    Yeah, a properly secured WiFi network...

    Why does a single house need that many cables in the closet anyway? I know that I have a mess of power, 10baseT and USB cables next to my workstation (many of them belonging to the broken/obsolete appliances and totally unused), but how many places in your house do you need to run a real cable connection to?

    Paul B.
    • Me, I like to run cables everywhere. I mean, wireless isn't flawless yet. There are little nagging problems like concrete slabs that have stopped me from getting an access point, even though my laptop has built-in wireless.

    • Re:One word: Ether... (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      When I wired my house five years ago, I put ports everywhere except to bathroom. Most of them I have not used, but it is very difficult to predict usage patterns. Where will you sit with your laptop? Could you have guessed about new devices such as networked DVD players. By having all that wiring, it is very flexible.
    • Wireless can be secured if you work at it, yes. It is VERY nice to be able to just walk around with a computer. But the guy already RAN THE CABLES and CUT THE HOLES! How can wireless help him now? Or at all?

      WiFi is great, I like being able to work on my back deck with my laptop when it's nice out. But sometimes I need to transfer large files to or from my desktop. That's why I chose to run a buttload of cable everywhere while the plumbers were in installing our central air and the holes existed. I ju

    • I should have taken pictures of the Cat5e/RG-6QS runs throughout my old house. Every place that had a box got one of the following:

      -Box 1---
      (2) blue cat5e (data)
      (1) white cat5e (voice)
      (1) RG-6QS (CATV)

      -Box 2---
      (1) blue cat5e (data)
      (1) white cat5e (voice)
      (1) RG-6QS (CATV)

      In an existing home (esp mine with finished drywall ceilings in the basement[Uck!]), this project for the weekend warrior could take a couple weeks. But, it now has GigE capable drops to each room in the house (at least one in -every- r
      • That sounds like you did it right! 66 blocks are easy to find in your local Home Depot now, But I would try Graybar or somewhere and use 110. That way you don't have to keep switching your punchdown tool, and no chance of shorts. I hate 66 blocks. :-)
        • Luckily where I was at the time Graybar was right down the road from where I worked :) Got all that I needed from them, including the non-impact 66-block punch for jury-rigging the 66-block for POTS service :) Graybar customer for life :)
    • a properly secured WiFi network

      Its oxymoron.
      • wireline equivalent protection, or something? ;-) I did not say "secure WiFi", I said "properly secured", which would just mean "as secure as the phone line out of the house", i.e., not at all against someone who cares about YOU in particular, but good enough against a random wardriver.

        Paul B.
        • "as secure as the phone line out of the house"
          like the landline ? you mean plain text / no encryption / wires hanging out of the building wall asking to be mocked ? :) Thats just like 95% of the wifi looks wright now.
      • a properly secured WiFi network Its oxymoron.

        No it isn't. Attach your wireless access points to a router, set the router to reject non vpn connections, and use strong crypto to encrypt and authenticate vpn connections.

        If your attackers can get through that then give up since they've probably already installed loggers and bugged your home.

        • No it isn't. Attach your wireless access points to a router, set the router to reject non vpn connections, and use strong crypto to encrypt and authenticate vpn connections.

          1 Rogue acces point and all your passwords are belong to us.
          2 deassociate the hell out of them waiting as long that they give up those fancy dandy little VPNs of their, or wifi all the way for cable.

          • No it isn't. Attach your wireless access points to a router, set the router to reject non vpn connections, and use strong crypto to encrypt and authenticate vpn connections. 1 Rogue acces point and all your passwords are belong to us. 2 deassociate the hell out of them waiting as long that they give up those fancy dandy little VPNs of their, or wifi all the way for cable.

            Nothing prevents users from installing a rogue access point on a regular wired connection so that point doesn't really count. If y

            • Nothing prevents users from installing a rogue access point on a regular wired connection so that point doesn't really count. If you're worried about someone on the internal network intercepting communications then you can use encryption all the way to the internal server that provides the service the client is requesting or to internet gateway.

              well, but its only a part of the plan

              As for point 2, a DOS attack doesn't compromise security. It just means that the target will either switch over to a physic

    • Why does a single house need that many cables in the closet anyway?

      Our new house (over 7000 square feet under-roof) will have 12 audio/visual sources routed to 12 separate zones (some of which have multiple output points per zone) via an AutoPatch Modula matrix switcher, almost all of which runs as baseband signals on CAT5e. IR signals are also sent back to the AV closet via CAT5e, and telephony runs on CAT5e. Additionally, we have LAN jacks in 10 locations.

      So: one house, 38 CAT5e cable runs.

      Easy.
      • If you have a 7000 sq foot house I think you can just afford to have someone install all of this for you!
        • The question was "why" and was unrelated to the cost, but yes, you're right. It only costs about $1500 to have somebody do the install, and that includes them supplying the cable. In the bigger picture, it's very much worth it to pay someone else to do it.

          The funny part is, we do also have a wireless point almost dead-center in the house. However, my wife does a lot of video editing at that sort of thing, so we can't realistically get away from the wire yet.

          I personally have great hopes for the new HomePl

  • Well. In the end, how much do you want to spend? (Score:5, Informative)

    by millisa ( 151093 ) on Saturday June 19, 2004 @12:06AM (#9470483)
    Get a Paladin Toner and Probe [yimg.com] (somewhere around $80) or something similar. Get your son/wife/trainedchimp to go through jacks plugging in the toner (cellphones help here; or just yell real loud) while you tone the cable to find which one is which.

    Assuming you are putting these cables in a Patch panel [levitonvoicedata.com] you can just masking tape label them until you get them into their ports. Worst case is the tape comes off and you have to retone your wires (you didn't seem to have more than 30?). As for Making it look pretty [levitonvoicedata.com] just go with whatever cable management [chatsworth.com] fits your budget and your mounting method. If it's in a basement and the stuff isn't gonna be bumped, you might as well go with an open relay rack [chatsworth.com] bolted into your floor (you can hacksaw them down to size fairly easily since they are usually aluminum).

    Supplied links are my personal hardware preferences . . .
    • Get a Paladin Toner and Probe (somewhere around $80) or something similar. Get your son/wife/trainedchimp to go through jacks plugging in the toner (cellphones help here; or just yell real loud) while you tone the cable to find which one is which.
      Slower but cheaper: Just use the link status lights on whatever laptops, hubs, etc. you have.
      • The end has to be terminated first if you wanna do that, however. While you could punch down and just label the jacks later, it's a whole lot easier in the long run to have the jacks from one wall outlet in a group, and to have all those groups in a room grouped together. If you punch down and label later, you can't exactly do that.
    • Or you could pake one cat 5 cable that connects the a pair together, plug it in sequentially on each socket, and make another cat 5 cable that takes those pairs and gives you two wires. Plug into a multimeter and measure resistance (you might have a beeping continuity checker in yours). Wait for the low resistance.

      Total cost less then $5 including the meter.

      Spending $80 on checking a few cables for home use is stupid. You'll do it once and that's it.

  • Leviton is your friend (Score:5, Informative)

    by renehollan ( 138013 ) <[rhollan] [at] [clearwire.net]> on Saturday June 19, 2004 @12:21AM (#9470550) Homepage Journal
    They make "universal" metal enclosures (i.e. a box with cover that can even be locked) with plywood backing in 14" and 28" by 16" (wide) sizes, designed to mount between (or on, for retrofit, on-wall, installation) studs.

    They also make "universal" patch panels that accept up to 12 snap in connectors (like you can get at Home Depot -- they're cheaper in contracter packs). These come in 8P8C, 6P6C, Cat5, Cat5e, Cat6, RF, line level audio, and blank varieties. Terminate the incoming lines to a connector on a patch panel. Then you patch from there to whereever (a satellite multiswitch, or RF amp, or router/firewall) as appropriate.

    For POTS (telephone lines), you can use cheap BIX-66 blocks (which happen to be the same size as the universal ones): you don't need fancy patch panels for that if you get good with a punch-down tool. Hint: get a good one, like a Greenlee. Last time I checked, they were about US$45 at Home depot, and the extra blade was another $15: you'll want a 66 and a 110 blade.

    Save $$$ and make your own patch cables: get a spool or Cat5e and a crimping tool -- I happen to like Greenlee, but that's just from personal experience and satisfaction. The crimping tool goes for around US$60 and comes in a kit with a bunch of 8P8C and 6P6C plugs.

    I did this in the first house I wired, as a retrofit withe the enclosures mounted on-wall. I used two enclosures: one for RF stuff, and one for voice and data. this was for a five bedroom 3200 square foot house. Yeah, 2xCat5e and 2xRG6-U cable to each drop.

    Don't forget to allow for incoming lines: like from the phone company, cable company, and/or satellite dish. Hint, wire TWO cables to the POTS and cable entrances: that way you can "return" a feed to legacy house wiring (all in parallel) from your head end to the point where it used to enter the house.

    In the next house I wired, I actually got an on-wall SwingLine rack (Ebay is great!), and rack-mountable patch panels. This costs a bit more, but lets you mount rack-mounted equipment, like multiswitches, routers, etc. Do leave a "universal" mounting board (plywood) nearby where you can mount equipment that can't be mounted in a rack. Alternately, have a shelf for such equipment (though I prefer wall mounts wherever possible).

    • I like the Leviton Cat5 plugs w/faceplates because I hate putting male connectors on the end of the cables. I always make mistakes in feeding in the wires into the tiny sockets... With the plugs you have plenty of room to clamp down the individual wires.

      Here's another hint... Phones take 2 wires and 10baseT takes 4. So if all you have is one cat5 cable going to some obscure location in your house, and you don't need high bandwidth, you can get 1 ethernet connection and 2 phone lines. Useful...
      • Actually, 100base-t requires the same 2 pair that 10base-t require. Only needs the orange and green pairs (1-2 and 3-6). Blue and brown are free for use in POTS, but I'm not sure about the crosstalk once a 90vAC current is put down the wire for the ringer on a POTS phone versus a 100base-t connection... >.>
        • Personally, I would still run 2 sets of cables. But then, I'm a little nuts and use VoIP phones that use POE. Cable is cheap. Get multiple boxes so it doesn't take any longer to do the pulls. Cheaping out on the cables at install time is a Very Bad Idea. If you don't need the jack yet, just don't terminate it.
          • I agree. If every jack is 8-wire, then you can decide in the basement which jacks are phone and which are network, and change your mind at any time. I bought my current house when bell atlantic was offering wiring installations, so they wired my house with cat5 and I got to pick where each jack went. Every room has at least 2 RJ45 jacks and I can reconfigure them any time I want by just changing some plugs in the basement.
            • If you put a 6 pin connector in the 8 pin, you will force the outer pins up too much and in the future won't work reliably when you put in an 8 pin latter.
              • Interesting, I never thought about that. Good thing they are easy to change out.
              • This is a very good point. One way of handling this is to use special cables that have an RJ45 on one end and RJ11 on the other (this is what I do.) The other is to use a "breakout" cable that uses an RJ45 plug, and offers "line 1 - 4" jacks (Leviton sells these too.) Some modern "high-end" jacks actually use springs to push down, and not just bent wire. They have less tendancy to deform over time.

                For flexability, I still recommend standard 8-pin RJ45's.
          • Where did you find cheap PoE switches? I see them for around $100 a port -- I'm almost thinking of going WiSIP and just hardwiring a couple of lifeline phones with PoE and a POTS lifeline for 911. (Yes, I plan for the WiSIP phones to be on an Asterisk dialplan which will allow 911 out the POTS line, but if Asterisk crashes, or the WiSIP battery dies I want at least one hardwired phone on each floor that can give me 911, but still be available for VoIP calls under normal circumstances (Otherwise my wife will
            • I didn't :-(... Instead, I used individual POE injectors but put them in the basement so I don't need wall warts by the phones. These are about $45 each, and are ideal if you only have a few phones.

              I have seen some projects where people have added POE at the patch panel by just supplying voltage on the correct pins, but this looks dangerous if you plug in a normal phone or other device. It's best to get an 802.3af unit (or whatever your device needs.
        • I think the reference I originally used was http://www.arcelect.com/10baset.htm ... It appears there are a few kinds of 100baseT - 100baseTX, 100baseT4 and 100baseVG. It looks like TX is the most commonly used ands it uses 2 pairs. So you are right.
        • I've seen crosstalk problems with this on 100BaseT. Stick with two cables.
      • 100BaseT only uses 4 wires also... so much for your grand-plan of convincing him to lower his bandwidth. In case you hadn't noticed he already has his cables installed too... RTFA.

        Sigh...
    • Save $$$ and make your own patch cables: get a spool or Cat5e and a crimping tool -- I happen to like Greenlee, but that's just from personal experience and satisfaction. The crimping tool goes for around US$60 and comes in a kit with a bunch of 8P8C and 6P6C plugs.

      Lets be realistic. It take time (and wrongly crimped ends) to crimp patch cables. Assuming you dont alread have one, spend $50 on some very short molded patch cables instead. Or borrow a crimper from your local computer shop.
      • I believe that the $50 invested in a good crimper is worth the money. Besides, you'll have a couple bad crimps here and there, but after a while you'll get pretty damn good at it and maybe have a failure once every 100 or so crimps (my going rate right now). One of the most usefull skills I've learned was making a proper TIA-568B cable (what everyone calls Cat5 patch cable).

        Add to that that you can make the enclosure look nice and professional looking by having little slack in the cables. Makes for a ni
        • Crimping cat 5 is an important skill. I suck at them (we had to make up about 100 cables for the European Election coverage last week, By the time I did about 5, one of my colleuges had done about 20). Cat 5 is 'orrble too, compared with coax. When I look at all the cables going into the back of a 128*128 matrix, all the right length, just perfect and beautiful, it makes we weep with joy that I dont have to do that!

          But when the only time you'll use that skill is a few cables in your own home, it's not wort
        • Proper dressing of cables *includes* a little "slack". It's called a service loop and it's there for when you find out one of those cable ends is screwed up and you'd like to attempt to repair it without pulling out the entire damn bundle.
  • I've done almost exactly the same thing, only with (it looks like) three to four times as many drops. Large house, did at least two drops per room, also two cat5e and two RG-6.

    Trouble is, I'm at a bit of a loss as to how to wire phones properly over one of the two cat5e lines. I'd really like to have them terminated in a 48-port patch panel I have, so I can just run around and swap the terminator key jacks on the outlets when I want to go RJ45 everywhere.

    So, it looks like this: Top row (24 ports) of the
    • Jury rig a 66-block. Connect the top pair on one side, and then use extra wire (preferably from piece of cat5, you'll need about 3 feet) to punch-down to each corresponding pair below it (you'll need a 66-block punchdown tool, just make sure not to use the blade side except to trim the extra wire :P). Connect all your bridging clips to the middle posts, then the other side you'll have 25 unterminated POTS jacks. From there get cable (either standard telephone[make sure it's solid core] or raw 1-pair telc
      • Oh for god's sake... buy a handful of bridge clips!!!

        What is with all you morons that don't know that bridge clips for 66 blocks exist exactly for this purpose?

        This is like the fourth post I've seen where someone recommends "jury-rigging" a 66-block when at any reasonable store there's a box full of bridge clips right next to the damn 66-blocks on the shelf.
        • Can you not read? I explicitly said 'bridging clips' in my posts! The 66-block that I purchased from Graybar *did* infact come with the bridging clips and they were used as specified, to bridge the two center columns of pins for each row. Input on the left column of pins, output on the right column of pins, bridge clips in between. I've been wiring things like this for the past couple years, I do think that I know what I'm doing (including contracts for AT&T, BellSouth and General Dynamics)

          And for
          • Sorry -- if you look at the other posts with the phrase "jury rig" in them in the threads you'll see that most folks were doing something stupid like putting their connections into the same side of the block. Sorry.

    • I have a 'managed cabling' system where I work that handles the telephone system as well as data networking. All the distribution cables come into one set of (RJ45) patch panels in a rack; the incoming telephony copper pairs also come into one (RJ45) patch panel. We can patch through the phone lines to any distribution drop and plug in the phone using a PABX Master RJ45 to BT Adapter [best4systems.co.uk]. Note that these act as a 'master' socket, so we don't have to have them lined up on the wall next to the rack. Of course, th

    • RJ11 has the same connector as RJ45, just narrower. It will snap in place just fine.

      So, wire your RJ45 using only the center 4 wires, exactly like an RJ11 jack. The phone cables will snap in, lock, and connect just fine.

  • 2 RG6 to each room? Who are you Jennicam? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Radical Rad ( 138892 ) on Saturday June 19, 2004 @12:52AM (#9470688) Homepage
    First put your drywall up. It looks like you already have an electrical outlet nearby. You might want another one there and now is the time to do it. I would make separate holes for the Cat5 and the RG6. Then put up a 2'x2' plywood backboard to screw things into. Screw that into the studs with drywall screws. Go buy a drill bit that makes 2" holes so it looks nice where the cables feed out.

    Forget the cabinet. Just buy a little 19" rack with about 12 RJ45 jacks (modular racks are much more expensive but then you could probably terminate your RG6 into it) and terminate all your cat5 wire neatly. Punch down all 8 conductors. That way you may be able to do 1000Mbit networking on your cat5 wire IF the runs are short and IF you bought cat5e connectors for both ends and IF you terminated to 5e spec using the 568a or b wiring standard.

    Also make sure that the rack you buy lets you plug RJ12 into the same connectors so you can use the wiring for phones if you feel like it. Of course you would need dialtone down there to do that and a way to split it out. That's why I suggested a rack with 12 connectors. Punch down several of those to a 66 block and then you can cross connect dialtone to any of the new connectors.

    You don't need a 19" switch to mount in the rack. Just mount your little switches or routers above the rack to the backboard using woodscrews. It will still look very nice and neat. Use 3' patch cables to reduce clutter. This whole project should cost you about $120 not counting the drywall or the short patch cables.

  • as you can see from the pictures?? (Score:5, Funny)

    by (eternal_software) ( 233207 ) on Saturday June 19, 2004 @01:22AM (#9470817)
    Hint: When you post to Slashdot, make sure your post does not contain the words "as you can see from the pictures"!

  • uhh.. (Score:1, Funny)

    by nukka ( 777713 )
    it looks fine to me. i mean it is in the basement on a wall with no drywall. why waste your money/time (time = money so money2) on building a cabinet now? if i were you i'd just get some zip ties and booze.
  • We had a large mass of cabling coming out of the ceiling at work similar to your pictures. We used dryer vent hose to hide it all. Of course now our rack looks like some deranged dryer exhausting itself into the ceiling, but you don't see any spaghetti. I guess you could use that downspout extender tubing stuff if you wanted it to be more rigid. Either way it's cheap!

  • A web site for everything (Score:5, Informative)

    by pauljlucas ( 529435 ) on Saturday June 19, 2004 @12:05PM (#9472592) Homepage Journal
    Really, Google is your friend: Structured Wiring How-To [swhowto.com].
  • Well the mess you have is almost nothing compared to what I've done in my house. In another post somewhere, I described a network that I set up between my house and my two barns, and the wires my neighbor and I ran across a 1/4 mile long field between my barns and his, so we could collaborate on our hobbies. (Eventually, he's going to connect his barn to his house, and we're getting the rest of the neighbors, all within 2 miles or so, to add their homes and/or barns, so we will have a small community physic
  • I've never been able to find a definitive on whether you can reliably use standard crimpable ends on solid core. I've always found it to cause problems. While some people swear they never have a problem.

    I have also run into problems where CAT3 runs have been put stereo companies or electitions, sometime even marked as CAT5. (or even better have CAT5 spliced at the ends of the runs in the wall.) What are the limits when using ethernet over CAT3?
    • its highly unlikely that even though the cable is CAT5, that it is run to CAT5 specs. There are a lot of physical restrictions that make a CAT5 run CAT5, such as "more than X distance from florescent lighting", and "No bends less than X inches in radius". ( I forget the exact numbers).

      You can run standard 10Mbps Ethernet over Cat3 all day. FastE wants CAT5 to run clean, but you can get away with it for really short runs.
      • any thoughts on crimping on solid core?
        • Works sometimes, doesn't work others. Get the appropriate crimps for solid core cable. Its all I use. My experience is that connections on stranded wire made with solid core crimps are much more reliable than stranded crimps on solid core.
        • Yeah, buy the right RJ45's for the job. Amphenol and others make both solid and stranded core RJ45's, and having been through the hell of cleaning up a telecommunications project where some jackass used stranded ones on T1 (solid) cables, I've been there, done that.

          Just buy the right tools for the job. If the connectors aren't specifically labeled for one use or another, the manufacturer is clueless.

          Buy Amphenol or one of the big brands that has a clue and labels their boxes.

          Don't get suckered into buy
        • The solid core ones tend to have an edge that hits the wire while the stranded ones tend to use two (or three) points that cut into the wire.

          Some of the better solid ones have two blades that hit both sides of the wire. There are also cheap ones that happen to crimp into foil wire which tends to be found in the cheap flexiable cords used in phone handsets.

          You also need to get the jacket shape right. They come in round and flat and short and long body. Most of the Rj11 ones are short and most of the RJ45
        • I've run into the same inconsistancies with ends: had major probs accidentally trying to use stranded ends on solid core (didn't even know there was a difference the first time I wired a house). Friends of mine also didn't know there was a difference, but had never had probs.
          Moral I guess is to use the appropriate ends for each type of cable.
  • I find that it's much easier to use your carpet as a source of organization. Or, better yet, staple your cables to the walls and/or cabinetry. I recommend purchasing multi-colored cabling, to show off your diversity. As for patch-panels.. well, it's far easier to daisy-chain a few 4-port hubs together and let them hang off a wall, suspended by a few cables. Nothing says elegance quite like a cabling setup that uses all available resources.
  • First off, get a nice patch panel and run your cables through that. Make sure that everything's labeled, and then you can have all the fun that you may want to with your home network/sub nets/whatever.

    Also just get a mini (or a full-sized if you want to be the big dog among your geek friends) rack and mount the panel in there, as well as all of your other servers or whatever, and you shouldn't have to worry about noise from fans or even heating/cooling (assuming that your basement is all underground, and n
  • Actually, I'd say your current layout looks rather organic ... like something you would find in an equipment bay on the Taelon mother ship.
  • I used PVC tubing from the local hardware store. It is intended for plubing, but you can fit a lot of wires inside a 2 inch tube. I use the tubing for vertical runs, similar to the pictures you included. I have this setup in a warehouse. The plastic PVC tubing is used to channel all the wires meeting at the hubs/switches/routers. Throughout the warehouse, I use steel 1/2" metal tubing to send the network cable to various jacks. This tubing was lying in a corner at the warehouse. I don't know if it is

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