My brother, his girlfriend, and I are building a house next summer in Milwaukee. We all own computers, and will all want internet access.
My brother and I currently live together, and he surfs the web by proxy through my computer (which has DOD ISDN), over an ethernet network run by a simple five plug router.
We plan on actually wiring some sort of network into the house along with the telephone jacks, essentially putting a data jack with each one. Originally I thought we could simply wire the house with ethernet cables, connected to a router in the basement, and hook that up to either ISDN or DSL.
Now I’m wondering about other options. Any ideas? Any good alternatives to an ethernet jack in each room? What about the internet connection? ISDN has been good, but DSL would be better.
Does anyone know if this sort of thing is becoming more common in new houses? It’s easy to see in twenty years, that all new houses will be wired for data. What are people doing now?
I’ve seen new housing developments here in CA which offered the option of Ethernet put in alongside the regular wiring when the house is built, but I have no idea how they terminate the cabling… they might just put a patch panel in the garage and be done with it.
Me and my partner have a network set up… as we live in an apartment and therefore don’t really have the option of ripping out the wallboard and doing the cabling properly, we just strung CAT 5 cable from room to room. We did drill small holes in the walls. Don’t tell the landlord. We have the servers and a switch hub in the living room and have internet access via DSL, with a Linux box doing NAT and basic firewalling. When we do get a house, we’ll do the network properly, and likely either convert a small closet into a server room or put it in the garage. If you’re not interested in stringing cable hither and yon, and you’re on Macs, you might want to look into Apple’s AirPort wireless networking gear. And yes, we ARE geeks.
ABSOLUTELY we are geeks. But we have FUN being geeks.If you look around, geeks are ruling right now and plan to rule for a little while.
I have networked over here and have basically run CAT 5 through the heating vents. I have a server in the basement connected to the Internet on cable and I run a software called IShare on it. All other computers can share this connection.
I currently run a laptop and a workstation on this setup and plan to add a second workstation near the entertainment center soon (DVD and SB Live).
Everything is connected to a hub to the server.
If I was in a position to work on a new building, I would definitely run cable evrywhere with drops in every room.
Good luck on your project.
you should seriously consider DSL for now
its pretty cheap and we are able to use 4 computers with one line.
what we did was hook up the dsl , the phone company did that, and they installed the dsl modem
then we got a 4 port hub and share the connection via ethernet cables
then all you need to do is drill holes in the wall to run cable to the different rooms
I dunno about networks, being utterly ungeekish, but if I was designing a new home I’d have every room, including bathrooms and basement wired for 4 phone lines and cable and I’d have multiple jacks (opposite sides) in the larger rooms.
That might sound excessive but we’ve been in this house for 25 years and I’ve spent half of that time string extension phone cords and cable everytime we rearranged the furniture.
We started out with one phone line. Added a line for the kid when he got old enough to get calls (that filled up the original two line wiring). Started with one cable outlet, currently have 4 with a total of 6 TVs running off them. Set up home office, added two more phone lines which meant all new wiring for those lines. Added a cable modem with its own cable coming in from the pole.
Currently have 3 computers running and a couple of spares…don’t even want to think about networking them (ain’t no more room in the walls anyway).
Moral to the story is to design for what you think you might need in the future…and then double it. It’s a lot cheaper in the long run.
We have the servers and a switch hub in the living room and have internet access via DSL, with a Linux box doing NAT and basic firewalling. When we do get a house, we’ll do the network properly, and likely either convert a small closet into a server room or put it in the garage. If you’re not interested in stringing cable hither and yon, and you’re on Macs, you might want to look into Apple’s AirPort wireless networking gear. And yes, we ARE geeks. 