Ask Slashdot: How Would You Build a Home Network To Fully Utilize Google Fiber? 279
kstatefan40 writes I am closing on a house next week which is connected to Google Fiber. I am ecstatic to have a gigabit connection, but the previous homeowner had them install the jack in an awful location. I'm going to be in a situation where I am paying for more than I can technically achieve over wireless. I have purchased a couple of 600mbps powerline adapters, but those still won't fully use the gigabit connection. Is there a better way to achieve a truly gigabit internal connection without substantial structural or wiring modifications?
more than I can technically achieve over wireless (Score:2, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I... [wikipedia.org]
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No it doesn't introduce latency (at least, not any appreciable amount, even for really sensitive applications) rather it's just too unreliable and such a waste of a gigabit broadband connection (remember AC requires channel bonding to get gigabit, and you aren't going to channel bond too well with multiple devices trying to fight for spectrum.) See my reply here:
http://ask.slashdot.org/commen... [slashdot.org]
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I've done some tests with my home setup, 2 stories, upstairs 2.4ghz 3 antenna AC -> downstairs router 3 antenna AC -> upstairs 3 antenna 5ghz AC. I get about 10mbps via SSH easily, and I suspect it would get significantly better 5ghz -> 5ghz. No channel bonding, full compatibility with N/G.
Its certainly not gigabit, but its way faster than anything you'd need on devices in arbitrary locations.
If I had gigabit then I'd have a NAS or spare computer right next to the router to suck stuff down at max s
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The OP should have said "more than I can realistically achieve over wireless".
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Don't forget a snake to chase the cables through the walls. Getting the cable from the attic to the right level at the wall is usually the hardest part. Depending on the home construction, it can be almost impossible.
I ran the surround sound speakers for a friend. The TV, receiver, etc, were in a corner of two outside walls. The standard local construction was concrete blocks, a 1x2 or 1x3 strip vertically, some very thin fiberglass and vapor barrier, and finally the drywall for the interior. Outs
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Break the bread and get the rare earth magnets made for the job. Or hack up a similar solution. Spherical magnets for the end of the wire. Big Strong honking Magnet for your hand.
Unless the house is lath and plaster. Then you're just fucked. Take key walls down to studs and upgrade everything, day 1.
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Connect your TOR forwarder and Torrent node directly to the GBIC.
Re: more than I can technically achieve over wirel (Score:2)
All MoCA speeds are theoretical and based on ridiculous conditions never found in the field. MoCA sucks. The best use for coax is pulling cat6 or cat 5e cable.
Just do it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Just do it (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Just do it (Score:5, Insightful)
I was excited to see a good discussion about software/hardware required to route 1 Gbps. How many people are running pfsense or Linux router with Google Fiber? What do people have for wireless? I want to separate my router and my AP. Consumer routers never seem to actually perform up to theoretical speeds or have problems with a large number of clients.
But instead it's simple answer: Install wires. Do people think that wires don't exist any more? I bought my current house because the basement has drop ceilings and I can wire everything in a day. Wireless is great for browsing the web or watching some videos. But when I need something backed up or want to edit something from a network drive nothing beats good ole ethernet.
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http://www.ubnt.com/edgemax/ed... [ubnt.com]
I dont' have gb internet, but it's the best router I know of for 100 bucks. Pair it up with a good wireless AP solution (I use ubiquiti for that as well) and your golden.
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That's what I'm thinking. I'd love to tinker with pfSense but with a kid on the way and a new job I don't have hours to dick around with settings. Ubiquity looks like a nice one stop shop for everything for less than a grand.
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The RB951G-2HnD is a bit underpowered for gigabit. If you are not doing much with it then it should be okay, but once you start pushing your connection with large numbers of connections and heavy use of encryption (e.g. VPN) it is going to struggle.
I'd suggest a high end Buffalo router running DD-WRT. They are designed for the Japanese market where they have had gigabit internet since the early 2000s, so the technology is quite mature now. You will also get 802.11ac rather than just N, which again will help
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I am not running Google Fibre but even with the 120/20 cable connection I have from Teksavvy, the firewall I built using two PCI Gigabit Ethernet cards and an old Pentium 4 (Debian/iptables/Unbound) is a huge a huge improvement over the AP that was there before. I disabled NAT on the AP and set it up to route from WIFI over the new firewall and even my laptop and cell phone run faster.
Combine the 2 (Score:2)
Just put ethernet everywhere, it's not that much work. I asume the house you're moving into will be empty anyway.
He asked, "Is there a better way to achieve a truly gigabit internal connection without substantial structural or wiring modifications?" So the optimal solution here seems to be to put ethernet wherever it's feasible without altering the wiring, and go wireless for other places. Maybe have a few APs in the hard to reach places
Re:Combine the 2 (Score:5, Insightful)
And the answer is an unqualified 'no.'
Re:Combine the 2 (Score:5, Informative)
I'm going to give a qualified 'no' to this one. I'm a network engineer, this IS my business. The reality is that powerline and wifi both suck balls if you really are *that* excited to have gigabit and you want your whole house to take advantage of it. I've actually heard from hardware engineers that design embedded devices who say that they can't get wifi to work reliably past about 10 meters, and I very much believe them.
Between neighbors doing stupid things (e.g. having the bright idea of making their AP sit on channel 2 when everybody else is on channel 1, not realizing that doing this effectively has them jam your AP and you jam theirs in all areas that they overlap) and the overall noisiness of unlicensed bands in general, wifi sucks for a lot of things. I personally refuse to use it for anything except smartphones and tablets.
Powerline adapters are lame most of the time as well because they work under the assumption that your internal wiring isn't very noisy, which is a very bad assumption to make because the controls for limiting radio interference from certain devices to the power grid aren't very good in many cases, and since you're typically on the same grid as your neighbors, there's fuck all you can do about it. I was lazy when I moved once and I tried a powerline adapter...boy was that a stupid idea. Not only are those things overpriced, but even the best ones don't work for shit in my house. It was rated for 200mbit, and I think in my case it got 2mbit. Worthless.
That said, just wiring ethernet is the best thing you can do. And there's two ways you can do it:
1) Yourself
2) Hire somebody.
There are probably plenty of people you can hire to do it. I personally would wire a five bedroom house for the $150 range plus the cost of materials (usually not much more than $50 for the cabling, ends, jacks, and faceplates, in addition to any switches needed, which my favorite is the Trendnet TEG-S80G, which runs about $30-$40 and is a VERY good 8-port gigabit switch for the price, even has a lot of features and runs so energy efficient that its METAL housing is cool to the touch.) The reason my materials costs are cheaper is because I already have all of the materials, so I only use what I need rather than having to buy in larger quantities than YOU need. Again, somebody you hire is probably in the same boat.
I also do it with all internal wiring so there's no need to run conduit and/or get outdoor grade wiring, and cosmetically it just looks better. Some people balk about going through attics though and will only do external wiring. If the person you're going to hire either doesn't want to do that or demands extra for it, find somebody else (Which by the way, I'm overweight AND work in Arizona's typically 120F attics.) Anyways about an hour per room would earn me about $30 an hour. I think other people would be willing to do it for even less than that though.
If you're doing it yourself, you can probably do the job equally well as I can, but you'll need to go down to home depot or lowes and get the cheapest RJ45 crimper you can find (about $20) maybe a 300 foot spool of cat5e wire (as cheap as $20) a box of RJ45 terminators (about $20) modular jacks (about $5 each) and modular faceplates (about $1 each.)
Go spend about an hour on youtube to see how to crimp RJ45 ends (it's actually easier than it sounds) and stick with the 568-b standard for all ends. Don't worry about crossover, straight through, etc. Every time I hear people try to be "smart" and talk about doing it "right" I kind of chuckle, and here's why: Part of the gigabit ethernet standard (that is, to receive IEEE 802.3 certification for gigabit) the switches AND the ethernet ports MUST provide the auto-MDIX feature, so fretting about crossover is pointless.
As for the jacks, they're really easy to wire, just follow the little instruction manual, they even include the little plastic punch tool in the box (at least, I haven't seen any brand that doesn't include it.)
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Re:Combine the 2 (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you saying here that 1) You don't punch both ends with the proper wiring (straight through) (you also seem to think it doesn't matter) and 2) that you are seriously suggesting wiring wallports to RJ-45 ends as opposed to a proper patch panel?
1) No, he's saying wire all the ends into the 568-b standard colors that will be clearly marked on the RJ45 wallports, and follow the 568-b pinout on wikipedia for the RJ45 plug ends.
2) Yeah, I read that too... I've always done the 'patch panel' end using standard wall-ports and a 6-gang wall plate. It fits in much better in a home environment than a 1RU patch panel. But he is suggesting not doing sockets at the far end, just getting one of those wall plates with a big hole and terminating them as plugs to go straight into a switch/router. I wouldn't do it that way, but if it's in a cupboard out of the way, it is the simplest and cheapest option.
What you do in a domestic environment is different from commercial.
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Are you saying here that 1) You don't punch both ends with the proper wiring (straight through) (you also seem to think it doesn't matter) and 2) that you are seriously suggesting wiring wallports to RJ-45 ends as opposed to a proper patch panel?
For your first point, he's saying don't bother with wiring the house with crossover lines, just use straight through cable to go from your jacks (which if you noticed the next line after what you quoted, he is running jacks in the room, not RJ-45 crimps) in each room to the central switch. Don't forget that this is for residential use: One jack per room is usually sufficient. He is right that using a Gigabit Ethernet switch should automatically change the port operation from straight-through to crossover
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Man, the attics only get to 120F in Arizona? I would've guessed quite a bit higher, given that those near the northern border will easily reach that in the summer as well.
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If you're doing it yourself, you can probably do the job equally well as I can, but you'll need to go down to home depot or lowes and get the cheapest RJ45 crimper you can find (about $20) maybe a 300 foot spool of cat5e wire (as cheap as $20) a box of RJ45 terminators (about $20) modular jacks (about $5 each) and modular faceplates (about $1 each.)
Go spend about an hour on youtube to see how to crimp RJ45 ends (it's actually easier than it sounds) and stick with the 568-b standard for all ends. Don't worry about crossover, straight through, etc. Every time I hear people try to be "smart" and talk about doing it "right" I kind of chuckle, and here's why: Part of the gigabit ethernet standard (that is, to receive IEEE 802.3 certification for gigabit) the switches AND the ethernet ports MUST provide the auto-MDIX feature, so fretting about crossover is pointless.
105 metres of cable doesn't sound like a lot for a 5 bedroom house to me. I have part-wired my 2 bedroom house (finishing the job is on my todo list) and 105 metres of cat6 got me 4 sockets in the living room and 3 sockets in the office, all running back to a cabinet in the office. At some point I will finish the job to a total of 4 sockets in the living room, 2 in each bedroom, 2 in the kitchen, 2 in the stair well (for one of the wifi APs), 2 in the attic, 6 - 10 in the office.
As for crossing over - IMH
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I'm a network engineer, who does microwave backhauls (licensed and unlicensed), myself. And it's an unqualified no. And although you say it's a qualified no, you then go on to explain all the reasons it doesn't work. :-)
There is zero way to get useful, reliable gigabit speeds over a wireless LAN setup, or over BoP. The spectrum and SnR just aren't there.
Even licensed links have issues getting gig+ speeds. The usu
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I would add:
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I think you'll need to look for a decent main router/firewall pretty hard, I'm not sure about some of the newer home based ones, but I've heard many consumer routers, even ones rated for GBit internally, won't do GBit on the WAN port to the ISP. So you're going to want to make sure you
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I agree that installing a proper data infrastructure in a home is key for proper nerding out, and you have a lot of options to go over.
If you want to go for broke, put a 2" wall mount telecom rack somewhere near ground level (basements and storage closets are perfect for this) to keep noise in the system to a minimum. Go with cat5e or better for data, cat3 or better (cat5 or better works, but is usually more expensive per ft.) for telephone lines, and RG6 or RG59 (RG6 is lower loss, but more expensive and
Man up (Score:3, Informative)
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And, once these multi rate gigabit [design-reuse.com] get cheaper, cat5e should be good up to 5gig at 100m, 10G short run. :D
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It gets better , when you realize most rooms only need one jack or none at all.
you will probably only need one box of cat6 and a dozen jacks. 2 per bedroom, 2 for living room, 2 to 4 for office. I get by with a 4 port router. with only 3 cables plugged in. one for the TV, one for the ROKU box(always hardwire these) and one in case I need to update settings or really play games.(always disable wireless administration)
everything else is running on 802.11N (5ghz)of which I am the only user in the apartmen
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It gets better , when you realize most rooms only need one jack or none at all.
I would argue false economy on this. Cable is cheap and labour is expensive (even if it is your own time) if you are pulling a single cable to a room, pull at least 2. You DO NOT want to do this job twice and while you are crawling around your roof cavity you may as well hit every room that is possible.
2 per bedroom is probably enough. Main lounge I would argue at least 4. It is easy to fill those ports if you own consoles or media centres. Then there are the usages you didn't think of. I have a young
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As I said in another post, two per room, then at least two, maybe three to each entertainment center, one to the center of the ceil
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5 or 8 port switch at the entertainment center (Score:2)
> what would I do differently? Most rooms are fine. I find I could use more in one of the entertainment areas, but some of those devices are both wired and wireless (and if push came to shove, I would simply move a device to WiFi).
You could also put a 5 port switch at the entertainment center. Then decide which devices can share a gigabit connection - you're not using them all at once anyway.
At my house, the office has several devices, and two jacks on opposite walls. Three or four devices connect t
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I'd rather have a direct run back to the switch. It's different if one is traversing buildings, but in a house it's not an issue most of the time.
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For a house, I recommend Cat6 for all permanent lines, and 5e only for the leaf lines. Same speed, but Cat6 is more resilient in several ways, at the cost of cables being stiffer and more expensive. But over a few years, whether you pay $100 or $150 for the cabling doesn't matter much. That you won't have to re-cable or run diagnostics to find out where the problem is can be more of a concern.
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Thing is, the quantity discount for a larger quantity of cat6 cable will probably make it cheaper to buy a roll of cat6 than a partial roll each of 6 and 5e. For anything but the most excessive of McMansions a single roll should more than service a home.
What you probably want is plenum/riser grade cable.
Also, I'd spend the money to put jacks & a patch panel in.
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Because of the exact circumstances regarding the build of my house, I ended up using a structured cable bundle that includes fiber. Have no idea what I am ever going to do with it but I've got it.
That 5 cable bundle was not significantly more expensive than running a single cat5 line.
A wired GigE network is so much better than wireless.
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That 5 cable bundle was not significantly more expensive than running a single cat5 line.
Interesting.... although for a completely new build.. I would probably suggest installing conduit in order to facilitate future cable changes or replacements in order to address wiring that fails or needs to be repaired/scrapped/upgraded later. :)
Permanent conduits are the only way to go! (Score:2)
Here in Norway all electrical cables are installed inside plastic tubing, so you can pull out/replace them if you need to, with no need to tear down any walls. (BTW, we also do the same for water pipes: They are always installed as pipes-in-pipes, with a central drain point for the external pipes: This way any leak will be contained and you can fix it by pulling out the broken (usually due to freezing in winter) pipe and replace it.)
When we built a new home a few years ago I specified that the electricians
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Cat6 can't go over 1000-megabits
Citation? Per Wiki [wikipedia.org] it says that cat6 can do 10Gb, just at a max of 55 meters. [wikipedia.org] Cat6a can do 100M at that speed.
Given that my house is ~60x30 feet, you could darn near run the entire perimeter and still be under 55 meters.
Still, remember that typically speaking the largest cost for running wire is the labor; it's cheaper to run the 'good stuff' in the first place.
One odd thought - running conduit might not be a bad idea. Higher expense up front, but if you ever need to upgrade, such as to fiber, it'll be m
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If it's just a shorty 3-meter wall-to-NIC patch you can run 10gigE over cat5e even.
This is not in spec. Just because two devices will see each other and negotiate 10Gig speed does not mean it will actually work correctly, and out-of-spec config very well result in media errors receiving packets. 10GBASET to 100 meters requires Cat6A or Cat7 to be proper and in spec.
To very short distances, Cat6 is in spec for 10GBaseT, but never Cat5E.
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"Very Short" in this case is still 55 meters, which will more than cover 'most' houses, especially if you put the patch panel in a central location.
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When I do my house, Cat6a is the plan. Main stumbling block is locating the MDF, I've got a couple of possible nooks to use, but all will require some moderate construction. Nothing I can't do myself, but laziness and other demands on my time make me hesitate to
I have two answers for you (Score:5, Interesting)
First, go plug your laptop in via ethernet in the awful location, and admire the glorious bandwidth.
Second, use your powerline adapters and/or some 802.11ac routers to get internet in the rest of your house. I'm almost certain there is no real need for you to use the full gigabit connection, so for now just don't worry about it. Of course this is not the answer you want, but it's the practical solution.
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+1 to this, I bet you couldn't even get gigabit from you to even Google severs and kit, let alone the rest of the internet.
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Me, my previous car anyway... my new car I haven't had a chance.
No, but the car was just over $20,000
Any interstate of which there were several. What are my taxes for, anyway?
Based on infrastructure experience... (Score:5, Informative)
In my case, if I were in your shoes, I'd install a telecom closet where the old flue for the now-gone basement wood-burning-stove pipes through the ground floor. I'd run two copper Cat6a drops to most rooms, and I'd cable to the entertainment centers at least two, possibly three. To my office I'd pull six. I'd put at least one to ceiling locations in the basement, the ground floor, and the detached workshop, probably digging a trench for a 2" conduit, transition from general-purpose indoor cable to OSP cable when I go outside and back in. I might also put in lightning arrestors that are PoE capable to protect the switch from the WAP or cable being struck; wouldn't worry about protecting the WAP, it'll die if struck regardless.
I'd probably look at a Cisco 3560G 8port PoE switch, it technically has ten ports, eight PoE capable, two not (that can accept fiber SFP transceivers) and there should be at least some L3 capability. Then get a vlan-trunk-capable L3 router/firewall device, put the WAPs on a separate VLAN (and go with VLAN-capable WAPs, for trusted/owned and untrusted/visitor devices) and build rules for the various VLANs, ie trusted can get to LAN devices, untrusted can't.
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I wouldn't even mind some of the older full-gig switches; the 2960S can be had used for a decent price sometimes.
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The bend-radius of Cat6a might be worse than 6 or 5e, but it's not so bad as to be a problem if you're smart about your penetrations. Besides, if your bend radii are so tight that you can't use 6a, those pullstrings are going to be useless down the road as they won't manage to let cables pass.
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if you're smart about your penetrations
Good advice for life, but I don't see how it relates to installing Cat6a ethernet wiring.
Pull your own (Score:2)
Cost effective wire fish (Score:2)
No subsitute for hardwired Ethernet (Score:5, Informative)
I've tried both wireless client bridges (300Mbps N) and powerline Ethernet adapters for an HDHomerun tuner, and my results were: a) only one tuner could stream over the wireless and b) the powerline adapters were an epic fail. The punch line is that the HDHomerun works fine and dandy over 100BaseT. Between the crowded 2.4 GHz spectrum and the poor penetration of 5 GHz, wireless just doesn't cut it for anything that needs throughput.
String some Cat5e or Cat6, and leave the wireless for laptops and tablets.
Cat5e will work fine for gigabit. Cat6 will support 10G, but 10G costs a fortune.
Answer: You can't. Even wired (Score:2)
I have Google fiber. I wired my house with Cat5E, and I have a nice Extreme Networks gigabit switch tying it all together.
You will never put a DENT in Google Fiber. I've only found two speed test servers that can even come close, and one of them is hosted by Google right on the Fiber plant.
The KC Startup Village (http://www.kcstartupvillage.org/) got some early hype because they leased a home with Fiber and loan out the rooms to various hackers. Even they can't do more than momentarily scratch the surfac
Run a cable to where you want it (Score:2)
Order cable, or satellite TV.
Watch how the installers run lines around the outside of your domicile and then punch a hole through the wall to get into the specific room.
Do the same thing yourself with ethernet (use the right rating of cable, and add conduit if necessary).
** Bonus points: Do your research and check out a neighbor or friend's place instead of ordering services.
Check your phone wiring (Score:2)
Houses built in the last 5 years or so usually have cat5 wiring to the phone jacks. And they are probably pulled to a convenient location for a switch. My last home was like that and I rewired the phone for gigabit, got a switch that supported PoE and installed HP intellijack switches on the walls where I needed multiple ports. Worked great. The new owners should be thanking me!
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I've seen what normal electrical subs do with cat5. It's not pretty. It's downright scary. It's the stuff of nightmares. Assuming that you can just use cat5 used for phone runs may not necessarily work out for you.
This is why I had my house wired with structured cabling. That kind of dense cable bundle can't quite be abused as readily as a single strand of cat5.
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I've seen what normal electrical subs do with cat5. It's not pretty. It's downright scary. It's the stuff of nightmares. Assuming that you can just use cat5 used for phone runs may not necessarily work out for you.
This is why I had my house wired with structured cabling. That kind of dense cable bundle can't quite be abused as readily as a single strand of cat5.
I'm not sure I would trust a normal sparky to do networking stuff... Friend of mine just got an office rewired - sparky was told to put in a phone socket and 2 ethernet sockets per desk. Cat6 was specified throughout, but it sounds like the bosses (who were telling the sparky what to do) never actually gave him that specification. Ended up with cat3 for the phones and cat6 for ethernet.
Even given that the sparky seemingly hadn't been explicitly told to use cat6 for the phones, who the hell cables up a mo
you need some wireless backhaul (Score:2)
What you need to do is get one of these wireless backhaul things and put one at one end of your house, and one on the other.
http://www.microwave-eetimes.c... [microwave-eetimes.com]
Then you've got a 4Gbps backhaul from your fiber point to the rest of your house. Stock up on a bunch of those, and you should be able to exercise your fiber like crazy.
As a bonus, you can cook your dinner by just putting your food in the beam pathway.
Wired or bust! (Score:2)
the edge providers don't support those speeds (Score:2)
it sounds nice but in the real world netflix won't break 10mbps on google fiber. their CDN boxes will have 100gbps connections for tens of thousands of users to share.
and every other edge provider can't support all their users at 1gbps. either they don't pay for enough bandwidth on their end or they don't have enough capacity to support all their users at speeds like that.
i've had dropbox uploads go 1mbps on a 50mbps connection for this very reason
save your money. the internet is more than just your ISP. on
depends (Score:2)
Depends on how many people are living there and what they're doing. The way to think of it is that the 1 GB connection is a great big ol' pipe that'll never be a choke point, no matter how many people are streaming Netflix or torrenting Fedora 20.
That said, my main workstation goes to a 1 GB switch attached to Cat 6 I had punched through the upstairs into the attic, threaded down the folding ladder frame, tacked across the garage ceiling to where the fiber modem is located in the far corner of the garage.
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Wait this is to the home, 1Gbps is a big pipe! You can stream multiple Netflix 1080p movies (approx 7Mbps/sec) and quite a bit of web browsing all at the same time.
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Yeah, that's true, but one assumes there will be uses eventually for which such an infrastructure will be appropriate. The next level is probably 4K media.
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Netflix has already been pushing 4K as an upcoming feature. They're publishing streaming rates of 16Mbps which isn't bad, even 3D Hidef is around 12Mbps still a lot of bandwidth left in that 1Gbps pipe. I'd be more worried about upstream problems, Layer 3, VZ etc. constraining it before it gets on to Google's network.
In a word, no.... (Score:2)
Almost all of the wireless technologies quote transfer rates which are VERY optimistic (as in; "We achieved this maximum speed in a lab, in completely controlled conditions which will be nothing like you'll ever have where you intend to use it!"). Same with the power over ethernet adapters out there. (You'll find quite a few of them that only provide 10/100 ethernet ports despite claims of doing 500mbit speeds. Why? Because they know in real world usage, you'll never get close enough to saturate the 100mb
Looooong Cable (Score:2)
Depending on how ridiculous you feel like getting you could just run a really long Cat6 cable... I mean, as a temporary solution until I finish wiring my house I have that right now (I absolutely hate it, but its motivation to finish the new network faster I guess?).
Just run the cable. Jebus. (Score:2)
The equipment and supplies required to fish cable through attics, walls, ceilings, basements and even running it around the house isn't expensive, novel or hard to use. It's more time consuming and frustrating than anything else. It's fall so temperatures in the attic aren't bad, and it's not freezing cold outside. Call a buddy/spouse/family member and get it done.
Lovejoy (Score:2)
Short answer: No with a "but".
Long answer: Yes with an "if".
Real advice: Just wire it. If you've got a basement or crawlspace come up from below. If you've got an attic, come down from above. Or hire someone to do it. Don't be penny wise and pound foolish. You're spending six figures on a home (I assume) and balking at three figures of improvements. How much are you thinking of spending on wireless and powerline stuff knowing it's a half-assed patch that won't maximize performance? Do the job right
Constantly amazed (Score:2)
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Nonsense, legally downloading four disk set of DVD for a Linux distro (while your family gets no movies) would take an hour. We like instant gratification in this country, get with the program
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I'm sure glad the world doesn't rely on your imagination.
Maybe I just bought NBA 2K15 on my PS4 and I don't want to wait until next Tuesday for the 46 gigabyte download to finish and I want to be able to stream an HD movie from Netflix at full quality while that's happening. And Steam's downloading 10 gigs of game updates on my computer while working on 12 gigs on the kid's computer. And my kid's streaming some educational video. And the wife is taking an online course in underwater basket weaving and sh
For crying out loud (Score:2)
Dragging CAT6 is no worse than dragging a phone line. Get off your lazy arse and do it.
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Dragging CAT6 is better than a phone line as you can use it for so many other things (aswell as a phone line).
Powerline adapters? (Score:3)
Seriously it is super easy to run cat5e in a house; even if you rent you can do it in a way that does not damage anything.
What the hell has happened to Slashdot when people can't be arsed to run a bit of cable?
Running Ethernet cable not always difficult (Score:2)
Is your router on the first floor, and does your house have an unfinished basement (no finished ceiling)? If so, you can easily run Ethernet cable through the basement. Just drill one hole in the floor near the fiber device, and another hole where you need your computer. Run the cable into the basement. This is easy to hide if you have carpet -- if you have hardwood, drill it near an existing opening (like the heating duct).
No home router can handle 1Gb/s (Score:2)
My relatively new Linksys cannot even handle my 110 Mb/s connection. There are home routers out there from the tests that seem to handle upwards of 800 Mb/s, so be sure to buy one of those since they are actually pretty close to the real-world throughput of 1 GB/s copper ethernet.
As for how to take advantage? No question that you have to go with 1000 Mb/s ethernet, if not for the sake of your inetnet, then just for local sharing. You might also want to upgrade your wireless to take advantage, but really
For real use or as a hobby? (Score:2)
Real use: get the best 802.11ac router and count your blessings. It's very unlikely that any of internet services you actually use is able to saturate 433 mbps or whatever you get our of WiFi in practical use.
Hobby: Get contractor recommendations from friends and compare prices. They don't have to be electricians let alone network specialists, just people who know how to tinker with walls a bit. You'll probably be able to get a couple of outlets for under $1K, especially if you are Ok with wires running aro
First, sell the powerline adaptors (Score:2)
Honestly, I don't know what kind of end equipment Google provides. Flat CAT6 cable isn't very expensive, a 100
Powerline AV2 hardware is coming out soon (Score:2)
Homeplug AV2 offers a 1200mbps symbol rate. Real speed will be lower, of course, but it'll get you closer. Here's a product that should be out soonish: http://www.trendnet.com/press/... [trendnet.com]
Buy Pre-terminated cables (Score:2)
What do you want to DO with Google Fiber? (Score:3)
I'm a bit amazed (well, then again, not at all) that no one asked what you actually want to DO with Google fiber. Who cares if you can't use its full speed over wireless when all you're doing on your PC is the usual /./FB/email-stuff.
Put a small server (probabkly those NAS based things that run full-blown linux) next to your fiber jack. Have it handle all those big downloads that actually profit from the external fiber speed. Run a network cable to your TV and if you're using a desktop machine, to that machine.
For everything else, use wireless. Your tablets cpu will be slower than even the wifi anyway already.
Get it done. (Score:2)
Phone lines might be cat5e (Score:2)
All my phone lines are cat5e. You just need to find where your POTS is wired into your internal lines and put in a switch and rewire the cables/jacks you want as ethernet instead of phone. If you don't have cat5e or better you either need to wire your house depending on the level of difficulty or just use 802.11ac.
You Don't Have to Go Nuts (Score:3)
You don't have to go nuts wiring the whole house, (although that would be ideal). You could have one or two rooms wired, and use slower wireless elsewhere in the house. It's not like you always need gigabit. I have two desks in two different rooms where I can plug into the ethernet, Elsewhere, I just use the wifi. Not that I even have gigabit internet - I'm a Time/Warner Monopoly slave.
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I can already fill a gigabit connection pushing stuff around the house. Having a local gigabit ISP would just allow me to expand this to friends and family.
A cloud backup without the cloud would be a good start.
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I've grown very tired of my apartment complex's saturated wireless spectrum (both 2.4 and 5) because everyone is right on top of each other and every apartment has one of three routers from the different ISP options.
Interesting. I didn't know that it was really possible to saturate the 5Ghz spectrum. 2.4 is easy with only having 3 non-overlapping channels, but 5Ghz has over twenty, and by default none of the channels overlap.
Last time I was in a dormitory I found over 20 networks within scanning range of the guy's room, but there was only ONE other network on the 5Ghz spectrum.
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It does not add measurable value to your home to be fully wired. It does help a house stay on the market a shorter amount of time.
I'm not convinced enough people care about a wired house for it to make a measurable difference on anything at all. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the vast majority of people don't understand why they might want wired rather than wireless (and an increasing proportion of the population are using computing devices that can't even be connected to a wired network these days too).
As a techy, whether or not a house is wired is probably something that I would care about, but there are an awful lot of othe