All about networking

[Big Nate]

Ok I have made the decision to wire my house with network cable.


I am posting this thread to collect all the links and knowledge that we can about how to do this and what is the best way to go about it.

Post you links of how-to and good buys on cable and connectors here and I will merge them into my post.

[Picklz]

Well, being that networking is what I do for a living I suppose i should contribute some information here :)

Types of Cable
As far as cabling go there are different standards - Cat5 and Cat5e are the most common, Cat6 is around but not worth the extra money, if possible I would go with Cat5e as it will support Gigabit speeds without a problem, and usually isn't much if any more expensive. The difference between them is basically how many twists per inch the cable has - the twists (hence twisted pair cable) are what reduce / eliminate interference.

Within a given type of cable, Cat5e for example, there are two different types of wire used, solid conductor or braided. The solid is generally used in structured runs such as from a patch panel to a wall jack, or wall jack to wall jack. Something that isn't going to be moved. It's more brittle but has a little better conductivity. Braided is usually used in patch cables going from switches to patch panels, wall jacks to PCs, etc. The major thing to note here is there are different 'ends' to crimp on based on what type of conductor you have, so you want to make sure you get the right kind.

Pinouts:
Cat5 has 4 pairs of conductors, or 8 wires total. Only 4 of these are used Ethernet, 2 for transmit and 2 for receive, the used pins are 1,2,3 and 6. There are two different 'standards' for the order in which the conductors goes, refered to as 568a and 568b. If you are making cables to connect PC's to switches, or PC's to consumer routers (like a linksys or netgear) then you need both ends of the cable to match, either 568a or 568b, doesnt matter which.

Here is a pinout for 568b, which is probably the most common:
http://i266.photobucket.com/albums/ii251/subnetzero/ethcable568b.gif

And the same for 568a:
http://i266.photobucket.com/albums/ii251/subnetzero/ethcable568a.gif

If you are going to similar devices (PC to PC, switch to switch, etc) then you 'may' need a crossover cable which is one end of 568a and one end of 568b. What this basically does is reverse the transmit and receive pins, otherwise transmit will send to transmit on the other side, which obviously wont work too well. I say 'may' because many devices will recognize the problem and automatically switch the transmit and receive pairs.

More to come as I have time.

[Picklz]

Reserved for more stuff :)

[DrWebster]

If you're planning on buying wall plates, get Panduit Minicom series plates and jacks. They don't require a special punch-down tool to terminate the cat5 to the jack.

[asellus]

. . . What this basically does is reverse the transmit and receive pins, otherwise transmit will send to transmit on the other side, which obviously wont work too well.

More to come as I have time.

Do keep in mind, most devices as of 1998 will auto negotiate the send and receive lines to make up for a lack of a crossover cable (or not a crossover cable) thereby making them fairly obsolete. :)

[Picklz]

Id say some devices, I've had to use a fair number of crossover cables over the past 2-3 years. Consumer stuff seems to be sightly better at this though.

Not sure if you can go PC-PC though automaticly, couldn't back in the day but i Haven't tried that recently.

[JustROLLIN]

Nate, I have a nice NetGear 8-Port Hub that is in perfect condition if you need any hardware. I am willing to sell it to ya for cheap. Let me know, otherwise I will just Ebay it.

[AJ]

To shed some light on how I have my house hooked up I'm going to try and flow chart it out.

-Cable enters and goes to a Comcast Router
-Single Cat5e Cable goes into Linksys Wireless Router
-4 Cat5e Cables exit router
- 2 through the floor and into two different rooms in the basement
- 1 as a 'loose' cable ran out to the living room everytime I want to get on xbox live
- 1 routed to a standard plug by the computer desk mainly used for the desktop, but can be easily swiched for when I want non wireless for the laptop. Otherwise I used a my protected wireless.


Currently all but one cable gets used, but it's still plugged in. 2 cables are used for online gaming. the last for standard browsing.

If I could do something for a better setup I would. I've condsidered building more of a central routing hub in the dens closet for routing both internet and tv cable.

[Picklz]

Going to try and add more info later tonight or tomorrow if its slow at work, here was my setup a couple years ago when i first started networking stuff:

Cable Modem, 8 Port SMC Hub (ick), SMC Router + Print Server, 2 x 3com 10mbit hubs that I got for free, 1 Cisco 2501 Router.
http://www.subnet-zero.com/network01.jpg



And a little while later:
1U Webserver, Power Strip, Cable Modem, Linksys Router, Monitor (duh), 24 port patch pannel, 3 Cisco 2500 series routers, 32 port Olicom Layer 3 switch and a 24 port Olicom layer 2 switch.
http://www.subnet-zero.com/rack2.jpg

[DrWebster]

Ahhh, the days when everything I had to manage was in one rack...

I should take a pic of my data center at work sometime.

[Picklz]

Well thats MY stuff, not work :p I wish I only had one rack full of stuff there lol.

[asellus]

I'm loving how there's some decent equipment, all fed from the OMFGWTFFAIL RCA modem. XD

[Big Nate]

What about this site for a cable modem cablemodems.com (http://www.cablemodems.com/)
are there any good modems on this site?

[DrWebster]

I have a Linksys cable modem at home, it's worked great for me for the past 2 years. It replaced a D-Link one that was shit.

[Picklz]

Whats funny is I never had a single problem with that RCA modem, I was a little unhappy at first that they gave it to me (Leased it) but it worked like a champ. Shortly after that though I swapped to DSL and had a cisco ADSL mod in a 3640.


What about this site for a cable modem cablemodems.com (http://www.cablemodems.com/)
are there any good modems on this site?

I haven't been on that site per-say but the Linksys and some of the Motorola's seem to do pretty well. broadbandreports.com is another good site to check out.

[AJ]

So what's the best route to getting the most out of your cable at home?

[JustROLLIN]

I use a cheap router from BestBuy and it works great. Fast wireless to the PS3 and very fast wired connection to my computer. It was like $35 and I would recommend it.

[asellus]

What about this site for a cable modem cablemodems.com (http://www.cablemodems.com/)
are there any good modems on this site?

Working at a cable company, I know a thing or two about cable modem experiences...

RCA - Shit, can't handle large numbers of connections for the most part.
Toshiba - For the most part, awesome, but can only do dynamic addressing.
SMC - Great for static management, as it can function as a simple bridge but still allow a static through for multiple IP ranges. They're slightly fragile with enormous amounts of data (ie, sending 50,000 emails at the same time tends to fry them for some reason). I've had customers repeatedly fry SMC's.
Netgear - HORRIBLE. They take forever to boot, and they have issues with VPN and RDP related traffic.
Surfboard - Hit or miss. I'm a fan of the 5101 and the 5220, though the latter is an MTA/CM combo.
D-Link - Absolute shit, stay away from it at all costs.
Linksys - Ehhhh, okay for general consumer use. Get a dedicated CM though, not a combo router/CM.

[JustROLLIN]

Oh, I use a Motorola cable modem... I have for years, not one single problem.

Nate, I saw a deal the other day, you get a free cable modem from Circuit City if you sign up for Comcast internet. Good deal if you dont already have service. It will save ya the rental from them every month.

[JustROLLIN]

Working at a cable company, I know a thing or two about cable modem experiences...

RCA - Shit, can't handle large numbers of connections for the most part.
Toshiba - For the most part, awesome, but can only do dynamic addressing.
SMC - Great for static management, as it can function as a simple bridge but still allow a static through for multiple IP ranges. They're slightly fragile with enormous amounts of data (ie, sending 50,000 emails at the same time tends to fry them for some reason). I've had customers repeatedly fry SMC's.
Netgear - HORRIBLE. They take forever to boot, and they have issues with VPN and RDP related traffic.
Surfboard - Hit or miss. I'm a fan of the 5101 and the 5220, though the latter is an MTA/CM combo.
D-Link - Absolute shit, stay away from it at all costs.
Linksys - Ehhhh, okay for general consumer use. Get a dedicated CM though, not a combo router/CM.

I used to use D-Link equipment, and I never will again. I had so much of their equipment fail on me. Plus, it was all within 1 year. Yeah, stay away.

[asellus]

Oh, I use a Motorola cable modem... I have for years, not one single problem.

Nate, I saw a deal the other day, you get a free cable modem from Circuit City if you sign up for Comcast internet. Good deal if you dont already have service. It will save ya the rental from them every month.

Owning a modem is a double edged sword, really. If something happens to it... you're fucked... as opposed to a rental modem you just get a new modem, free of charge (save for the $3/mo). Then again, I'm used to business services, not residential bullshit.... :D

[AJ]

Say I want to replace my current Linksys wireless router with a more savvy unit to support more outputs than the 4 I have now. What direction would you guys suggest.

In my situation I have a den room upstairs, it has a little closet that resides over the stairway and thus easy access to the basement. I'm hoping to make this into a server room of sorts over time. Have everything ran though one cental point and then routed under the floor and in the walls to all rooms.

Ideally I'd want at least 8 connections

Upstairs
Bedroom 1
Bedroom 2
Den
Living Room
Kitchen

Downstairs
Family room
Bedroom

And then one in the garage ran though what I assume woudl just be some pvc conduit I'd put in the ground.

[asellus]

If nothing is wrong with the router itself, all you need is a simple switch (NOT a hub, if you can even get those anymore). If you wanna get fancy and take the performance hit, you can have multiple access points that span over to wired networks again... but this is slow and expensive. :P

There are several different pieces of network equipment:

Hub -- the most basic networking equipment. Horrible if you have more then 2 people on it.
Switch -- an intelligent hub, can handle literally hundreds of clients with ease.
Router -- an intelligent switch. They usually incorporate DNS forwarding, a DHCP server, NAT/NAPT, a switch, and sometimes a WAP.
WAP -- wireless access point. A simple physical bridge from wired to wireless.

[JustROLLIN]

AJ, I have the switch he is talking about and it supports 8 connections. I have a NetGear DS108 Dual Speed that I am not using and willing to sell at a very reasonable price. Let me know if you are interested. I also put the same offer out to Nate or anyone else who may need one... Let me know.

Link to the product: http://www.amazon.com/NETGEAR-DS108-Port-Mbps-Speed/dp/B00000J4L5/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/105-6889251-7748452?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1200028489&sr=8-1

[JustROLLIN]

Owning a modem is a double edged sword, really. If something happens to it... you're fucked... as opposed to a rental modem you just get a new modem, free of charge (save for the $3/mo). Then again, I'm used to business services, not residential bullshit.... :D

Oh, I completely agree. But, with this offer you get one at no cost when you sign up. That way Nate can get the free one and save the $3 charge until that modem fails. (If it does) Then, just call Comcast and get their modem for the $3/mo. charge.

[Big Nate]

I already have a motorola from Comcast I was just think I may want to own my modem. But from what I hear in this thread I am going to just keep renting and let it be.

Also how can you hook up a wireless router that is to small (ie not enough ports) to the switch like JustROLLIN is talking about?

[Picklz]

Just a cable from one of the 'pc' ports on the router to the switch. Then you can plug all your PC's into the switch (or some into the router / some into the switch). I would advise against buying a Hub - they offer rather low performance in comparison to a switch.

Switch - Takes in a 'packet' looks at where it is supposed to go, looks in a table of addresses and figures out what port the destination is on, and forwards the packet there.

Hub - Takes in a packet - forwards it out all other ports, every time.

And also I agree that leasing for $3/mo from comcast isn't a bad deal, they can't just say oh its your modem then because its THEIR modem :), if it aint broke I wouldn't mess with it.

If you are looking to hook up 8+ Devices I'd reccomend a 16 port switch, you are going to need 1 port for the connection up to the router, so that'll leave you some room to expand also, something like this would work:
http://www.mwave.com/mwave/skusearch.hmx?SCriteria=1098773&CartID=done&nextloc=

You could go cheaper or more expensive, you don't really need all the features the more expensive managed switch would provide so just a soho switch should work just fine.

[AJ]

Say I get a switch, would anything above allow me to see the differance between my current 6mg service and upgrading to the 8mg? Needless to say in my eyes there is never fast enough cable connection. :-)

[dmention7]

AJ, most networking equipment operates at either 100mbs or 1000mbs. That means your cable modem is the slowest spot in your network. So upgrading your connection would be noticable no matter what kind of switches/NICs you have.

On the other hand, upgrading to all gigabit equipent would not make a lick of difference in your internet speeds. Where it would make a difference is on file transfers on your local network (i.e. networked printers, or storage devices).

[Big Nate]

Wow there is just too much crap to learn. WTF is 6mg and 8mg?

[dmention7]

By "mg", he meant "Mb/s" or megabit/sec. 1 Mb/s = 1 million bits per second. Make sure you keep track of bits and bytes though. It's a littkle confusing because bytes (abbreviated capital "B") are the typical measurement of storage, but bits (abbreviated lower case "b") are used for transfer speeds.

1 byte = 8 bits. So an 8Mb/s connection would be able to transfer 1 MB (megabyte, the familair unit of storage) per second.

As a point of reference, the typical mp3 file is 3-5 MB (megabytes)

[Picklz]

That refers to the speed at which you can transfer data over your internet connection. Now days most connections are measured in Megabits per second. There are 8 bits in a byte so 8megabits would be 1megabyte per second. Cable around the cities usually seems to be 6 or 8mb (megabits) per second, DSL can be anywhere from 1.5mb (or slower) up to around 7 or 8.

That is download speed, unfortunatly with cable upload is a lot slower, somewhere around 256-512kb (kilobits, around 1000 of those in a megabit). DSL can offer faster upload speeds (generally speaking) I had 7mb/784k DSK for quite a while and loved it.

Damn Jay you beat me!!

[Big Nate]

OK Which one is best?
Do i need to know what i have?
Will it affect what i buy?

[Picklz]

Well faster is better of course :) It will not affect what you buy in any way. Like was said above the connection you get from cable or DSL is going to be the weakest link in speed. Anything you buy for your home network is going to be able to transfer faster than your internet connection.

[AJ]

Can I just stick a T3 line in ground and be done with it? Seriously, I wish there was somthing that allowed me to get like 12mg up and down service.

I DL a crap load of info and data.

[dmention7]

Check out business class service AJ. I don't know if it's possible to get it to residential addresses, but you can get service that's a shit-ton faster than cable through business class service packages.

[AJ]

I may look into this and I'll post what I find. Worst case just for the info itself.

[Picklz]

A full DS3 is 45megs both ways, and will cost into the thousands of dollars per month. A DS1 (t1) is 1.5mb both directions and will probably run 300-500 a month. You can also get fractional DS3's (t3) if you dont need a full 45 megs.

Like Jay said a business class service may get you features such as a faster upload and static IP addresses, but at a higher cost. Upload is great if your sending files to someone, hosting a web or public file server at your house, etc but if your just downloading large files a big upload wont make much difference.

[JustROLLIN]

Isn't there a higher tier cable connection that Comcast offers? I am pretty sure they have 3 levels of service. The low grade that they dont even advertise, the mid that they push like crazy, and a high end which is higher D/L speeds and more bandwidth.

I dont know how much of an improvement or if you already have it AJ, but it may be worth looking into.

[dmention7]

Comcast offers an "upgrade" for about 10 bucks/month but that is just the 8Mbs vs 6Mbs. Also, that upgrade is only available to customers who also purchase a cable TV package.

Unless they have some hidden options that they never show me!

[JustROLLIN]

OK, I guess thats the higher end I was talking about then. I was not certain about pricing on it, but that must be it. Still, an improvement from their middle level package. And yes, there is definitely a low end package. Comcast does not advertise it at all, but if you call them and speak to an operator, they will tell you about it only when questioned about it.

[asellus]

Yep, I believe for resi there's the 4 meg, 6 meg, and 8 meg. You can get them all 'a la carte' if you will, but good luck finding a sales person who will actually sell JUST that service to you...

[dmention7]

So, can someone walk me through the pros and cons of setting up a low-end PC as a file server versus simply going with, say, a pair of hard drives in a network-attached storage device?

At this point, I'm a little unsure of exactly what capabilities a file server would gain me (if it was to be used primarily as a media repository) and how I'd best configure a PC for such duties.

[DrWebster]

A proper file server can be configured to do more than just serve files...you can use it to share a printer, serve e-mail, host a Web site, etc. Most NAS devices do only file sharing, and don't have much by way of security options either.

[dmention7]

Well, I already use a print server, and have no need for email or web hosting... so in that case, would NAS and a file server be roughly equivalent? I mean, at work our computer guy was trying to sell us about $7k worth of server equipment, and I said screw it... give us a 1TB NAS device for $500, and that's been filling our needs perfectly.

[Picklz]

Yeah there are pro's and con's - NAS generally has a smaller footprint and sucks up less power, but not as feature-rich, and you can't do other things with it. If ALL you ever want to do is store files, aren't too worried about security / access rights then NAS might be alright.

Nice thing about using an actual PC is you could provide access to it over the web (via http or ftp) and you have some flexibility to do some other things with it (record & store TV for example).

[dmention7]

Well, how about this, then...

Since I am in the process of putting together a PC for the primary purpose of being a media center PC, would it be a good idea to have it serve double duty as a file server, or is that a job best left to an older rig that I can stash away in the basement, and that will have lower power consumption?

[Picklz]

If you were planning on having the Media Center box on all the time or anytime you'd want to access files (during the day, shut down at night for example) then that would be perfect.

And depending on what you are building for a media center box the difference in power draw might not be all that much, the disks are going to eat up power either way, and most modern machines clock themselves down to save power while not under load.

[AJ]

So are you guys talking about having one place for all application and datastorage, and just have the ability to print, and work out of the computer hooked up to it?

Cause that's what I want to do. Have one dedicated machine to be the host to all my software and have my laptop and desktop free of duplicate shit.

[Big Nate]

That is what I am looking for.

[asellus]

All your software...

All of your INSTALLED software? Or all your shit like movies and games? Either way you're almost better off with a terrabyte NAS if all you wanna do is have a fileserver.

[AJ]

Say I have dreamweaver, I want to install it in one spot and run it off any machine connected. I have 1 laptop (XP) and one desktop (XP).

[Picklz]

Cant really do that unless your using citrix or something like that maybe...at least as far as I know. Applications generally need to be installed locally.

[asellus]

With windows, you have a thing called the registry. That's stored locally. Unless you're running a fancy MS-only network, you'll have to have the registry always be local, and always be up to date with the current programs install.

For example, if you have a network-installed program, //server/program1/ let's say, and you installed it from PC1 running Windows, then PC1 has a registry entry (like 100-200 registry entries actually) pointing to //server/program1/modules/ and //server/program1/plugins/ and all that crap so when the program is run, it looks to the registry to see where it actually is on the hard drive. Some programs can rebuild the registry entries if they are damaged or simply not there. For example, let's say you have //server/steam/ but never installed steam on PC1. When you run //server/steam/steam.exe, Steam will see there are no registry entries, and fix that.

However, this is far from Ubuntu and therefore very off topic. Enough rambling from me. :)

[dmention7]

Yeah, generally you'd have to have software that's specifically designed to be run in a network environment like that, or else some fancy software that's designed for sharing applications across a network. Neither of which are really practical for home use.

Hmm, I wonder if you could just remote desktop into your "server" and run applications that way? Would that be anything even approaching practical? lol


(also, I'm moving the last few posts to the "All About Networking" thread)

[Picklz]

Thats an option Jay depending on the application, it's not quite as nice as having the app on your PC

I'm not quite sure what the issue is of having to install the app on the actual PC versus having it running on the server? File storage I understand but the reasoning for doing it with apps to is escaping me.

[AJ]

Ok, fuck the applications then, over the top for me. Data storage and networked printing and such, that's for this ubantu thing?

To give you guys an idea, I'm using 2 externals to keep my computer hard drives from filling up, I'm not far away from needing a 3rd, and I'd like to avoid the need.
I heart porn.

[Picklz]

Ubuntu is just a distro of Linux, another operating system. You could do file sharing, network printing, etc from windows too if you wanted. Each has pro's and con's

[AJ]

So is there anything out there that's "P&P" type shit that I could use as a mass storage unit and connect to multiple systems and print though with my 2 XP systems?

[dmention7]

Yup, you just need an old desktop with a couple of hard drives and a printer.

Otherwise, you could get a print server (puts your printer on your network, so it's accessible from any networked computer) and a Network-Attached Storage device. Basically a box that you put hard drives into, and it makes the data on the drives accessible from anywhere on your network, similar to having shared folders in windows.

[dmention7]

cable internet question!

So, on a whim I decided to redo a bit of the coax routing in my house--not much, but I replaced the crusty old 4-way splitter that fed my living room and bedrooms from the main drop with a nice shiny 5-2000MHz splitter, ditched an old splitter that was being used merely as a M-M coupler inline with the cable modem, and capped off any open connections with proper terminators.

Now, it could just be a coincidence, but a month or so ago, I was getting 6000kbps down and 1.8kpbs up consistently on a couple different speed test sites at different times of day--now I'm hitting 8000-11000 down and 2000-5000 up depending on which sites I use and the time of day. Sounds good so far... but when I checked my cable modems diagnostic settings, I noticed that the bit error rate has been holding steady for several days at ~1.1-1.3%, which seems awfully high. I didn't take note of the level before the cabling tweaks, but I don't think it was that high.

Anyways, the rest of the diagnostic numbers seem good according to several broadband references: downstream SNR: 37.X dB, received signal strength: -6.3 dBmV (up from 11-12 before I removed a splitter from the line), output power level: 47-48 dB. I haven't found any direct references to what the bit error rate "should" be, but I've seen several indirect mentions that make it seem like mine is orders of magnitude too high.

Suggestions?

[Big Nate]

Funny thing is you can have too much signal going to your modem. But I have read your post three times now and fail to see you ask a question othe then "Suggestions?". But with every split you make in your cable be it going to a tv or going to nothing you split the signal. So taking out a split that is unneeded will help your signal. Even an inline extention will affect your signal. So that is all i know about coax cable short of it sucks to run.




On a side note. I just purchased a bendable drill for fishing cable. I used it on two projects so far and love it. It was a bit spendy (around $50) so if anyone would like to use it or if anyone needs help just post it up.

[dmention7]

Sorry if I was unclear... my question was about what to make of the high bit error rate, and what might be causing it, or what I can do about it--given that the rest of the parameters I can measure seem right in spec.