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All about networking

Big Nate

Big Nate

Chaos Engineer
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

Picklz

SUDO Make me a SAMCH
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:


And the same for 568a:


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.
 
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DrWebster

Guest
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.
 
A

asellus

Member
MrMatt said:
. . . 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.
Click to expand...
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

Picklz

SUDO Make me a SAMCH
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.
 
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J

JustROLLIN

Guest
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

AJ

110 HP of FURY!
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

Picklz

SUDO Make me a SAMCH
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.




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.
 
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DrWebster

Guest
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

Picklz

SUDO Make me a SAMCH
Well thats MY stuff, not work :p I wish I only had one rack full of stuff there lol.
 
D

DrWebster

Guest
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

Picklz

SUDO Make me a SAMCH
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.

Speed6 Guy said:
What about this site for a cable modem cablemodems.com
are there any good modems on this site?
Click to expand...
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.
 
J

JustROLLIN

Guest
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.
 
A

asellus

Member
Speed6 Guy said:
What about this site for a cable modem cablemodems.com
are there any good modems on this site?
Click to expand...
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.
 
J

JustROLLIN

Guest
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.
 
J

JustROLLIN

Guest
asellus said:
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.
Click to expand...
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.
 
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