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Question by Scott McLellan posted 28 Aug 2005 | | Networking in the house - hubs, routers, and 66/110 blocks | Howdy. I'm trying to further network my house but I need more cables in the attic to go to more rooms. I know there is a single unused cable coming from the basement patch panel to the attic. Can I run this cable to a 66 or 110 block and then run cables from there to whatever rooms I need or do I need a hub/router/switch after the 66/110 block in order to route traffic properly?
Additional details:
Cable modem and hub are currently in home office upstairs. I want to move this to the basement to get the cable modem closer to the source of the signal instead of two floors and multiple splitters and splices away. But to do so, I need at least one additional cat5 in the bouns room to have the home office wired. I'd also like the option of adding wires in any other room upstairs as needed for future expansion. Yes, I could bridge the basement and the attic wirelessly, but I'd rather have as much wired access as possible in the home office.
Thanks in advance for any help! |  |
Answer by Joseph Golan posted 28 Aug 2005 | Dear Scott,
If the unused cable to the attic is category 5e or better you will have greater performance, if it is category 3 (or less) then the best possible speed would be 10BaseT. You will need a hub in the attic to feed individual stations on the network. My suggestion would be to terminate the unused cable on a jack and then use a patch cord to connect it to the input (up link) of the hub. you can then run from here to all your upstairs room. I would stay away from 66 blocks for data as the older styles were not category 5e compliant and termination to achieve 100BaseT is different then the older familiar style used by telcos. Don't forget that you will need power for the attic hub.
You do not say how many ports your modem/hub has but I will guess at 4. I am going to assume that the bonus room is your office but this is not clear. If it is, run the new cable from there to the new hub location in the attic. All new cable runs should terminate on jacks or a small patch panel and then patched into the hubs, I do not recommend terminating the cable with an 8 pin modular plug, this will cause you heartache and many hours lost in troubleshooting problems later.
Sincerely,
Joseph Golan, RCDD
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