Computer Noob Building House..please help!

[ZServe]

Hi, I am building a townhome and would like to have high speed internet access in every bedroom plus the basement and living room. There was talk in another thread about wiring the house for ethernet, but I am unsure what this means. Does this mean that I run ethernet wire through the phone jacks, instead of regular phone wire? If so, will I still be able to have a phone in these rooms?

Or does it mean that I need two jacks, one for the phone wire and the other for ethernet?

I understand that I will need to buy a router. I will still need my DSL modem though, right?

If anyone could dumb this down so a total dumb ass (me) can understand I would appreciate it!

Thanks

[ZServe]

I called Verizon DSL tech support and when I asked about wiring the house for ethernet they seemed to think I was crazy. They said just use a wireless router and get wireless cards for every computer. The lady said she has never heard of anyone running ethernet through their whole house.

So I am guessing that while it is possible to wire the whole house for ethernet, that it is simpler for a NOOB like me to just do it this way? Would the speed be that much better with ethernet?

I am so confused, I just want to be able to have 4 computers and have them all access the internet at the same time with a good speed [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

[MisterW]

The easiest way to set up a home network and connect every computer to the internet is to use a wireless router and plug wireless cards into every computer. Security is an issue with wireless networks, so you would want to enable security on your router.

However, since you are building a new house and have the power to wire it, it is never a bad idea to wire it for ethernet. You can get phone/ethernet jacks where, instead of just a phone jack, it has one jack for phone and one for ethernet. This way you can avoid having random jacks all over your room, simply have multiple jacks at one location.

Another option is to put wiring runs to every room (basically tubes that can hold future wires in addition to phone/cable/etc wires that you will intall in your house). This way, if a future technology comes along that you want to wire to specific rooms, you can run the new wires through the wiring runs without having to rip walls apart.

To answer your other questions: Yes, you will still need a modem to connect to the internet. Whether you choose a DSL modem, cable modem, or another technology is up to you. This modem is then connected to a router (to which you can connect additional computers, either wirelessly if you get a wireless router or hard-wired using ethernet cables). I think your other question was about network speed - unless you're transferring huge files between computers on the network, wireless networks are just as fast as hard-wired networks for anything you'd want to do using the internet.

If it were me, I'd wire the rooms with ethernet simply because it's a more reliable network and doesn't suffer from the same security issues as a wireless network. FWIW, I have a wireless network right now, but I'd prefer a hard-wired network. This is only my preference, and you can have always have a hard wired network with a wireless router if you want the best of both worlds.

Hope this helps.

Edit: I re-read your original post and running ethernet throughout your house means running ethernet wire to those rooms you want ethernet connectivity to. Ethernet cable has more wires in it than a phone cable, so yes, you would have separate jacks for phone and for ethernet. The Verizon person who laughed at you is an idiot, a lot of people wire their houses for ethernet. Even owners of older houses are spending the money to wire their houses.

[ZServe]

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Hope this helps.

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Well lets see, you answered every question I had in an easy to read way, and used very basic terminology that my noob mind could understand. I was totally confused before, and now I fully understand.

So no, you were no help at all [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

Thanks!

[CORed]

If you want to go wired, you need to run cat-5 or cat-6 ethernet cable and put an ethernet jack wherever you want to be able to plug in a computer. This will probably be more expensive than going wireless. The biggest advantage is security. Nobody can use you network but you. If ethernet is also faster, but you probably won't notice the difference unless you are copying big files within your local network. Both wireless and ethernet will be faster than you internet connection, so you won't see much diffference in internet download speeds. For new construction putting in a wired network shouldn't be all that difficult or expensive. If you were trying to wire an existing house, it probably wouldn't be worth it, as you would have to knock holes in walls and pull cable through.

Wireless give you more flexibility, as you're not tied to a jack in the wall, so you can take your laptop into the bathroom and play poker while taking a dump, if you want to.

[livinitup0]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Hope this helps.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well lets see, you answered every question I had in an easy to read way, and used very basic terminology that my noob mind could understand. I was totally confused before, and now I fully understand.

So no, you were no help at all [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

Thanks!

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[img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

[MisterW]

Some other things to consider - If you plan to install a home theater system in a room, this is a good time to install surround sound speaker wiring in the walls and, if you're really serious about it and want to hang a plasma TV on the wall, you can set up the wiring in the wall to connect behind the TV so you don't see any cables. Everything you can think of and put in now will save you money and time in the future.

[Beavis68]

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The lady said she has never heard of anyone running ethernet through their whole house.


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I guess she was hired sometime after 1994

[Guthrie]

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I called Verizon DSL tech support and when I asked about wiring the house for ethernet they seemed to think I was crazy. They said just use a wireless router and get wireless cards for every computer. The lady said she has never heard of anyone running ethernet through their whole house.

[/ QUOTE ]
This idiot has no business giving tech support on the phone.

I won't say never, but I can't imagine a time when wireless will ever be better, faster, more secure than wired. It might be more convenient, but if you can use a wire, use it. Most new construction, especially the high-end stuff, is completely wired for phone, data, and video, and some even with fiber. It's foolish to spend a few hundred thousand on a house and not put another couple hundred bucks into low-voltage wire before the sheetrock goes up.

If you have the money, have your house wired professionally for low voltage.

I recently remodeled my 50-year-old house and wired it for phone and data using Cat 5e. Every room has at least two boxes, except the bathrooms which have one each, and my office, which has six. Each box has both Cat 5e for phone and data and coax for video.

If I were doing it over, I would drop two Cat 5e lines and two coax lines to each box. While one Cat 5e wire has four twisted pairs, which will handle three phone lines and one data line, you need splitter cables at each end to properly accomplish this. It's cheaper, and neater, to run another piece of Cat 5e than to put a splitter on each end. Running two coax lines to each box will also give you more video options, or one of them can also be used for ethernet if you're old school.

Go to Lowes or Home Depot and look at their low-voltage wiring stuff to get an idea of what's available and what it costs. You'll have a control center that takes in data from the phone company, cable company, or satellite dish, and redistributes it all over your house. You can patch anything to anything else from here. I spent a few hundred on my system doing it myself. A professional job will cost a lot more.

Both my nephew the electrician, and the electrical inspector, thought I was crazy, but when they saw my three computers, six monitors, and a slew of video gear in my office, they started to understand why I ran so much wire.

[ottsville]

Definitely spend the money to do this now. A good library will have books on this.