Is Cabling up for Networking or Phone Systems Still Justified?

that should be formatted, de personalised (I's and Yous') and added to the DIY wiki as it sums everything up very nicely indeed.

"Andy Hall" wrote

Thanks Andy for such a comprehensive overview. I already have Cat5 around the house to the majority of rooms. Am constantly being hassled by kids and SWMBO for broadband.

To avoid the security issues and the issue of having kids monopolising every room in the house with wireless laptops etc. I am inclined to stick with the wired solution for broadband. Then add a wireless access point later when the kids have gone!

Phil

Well, I'd be delighted to hear of any radio link that works better than cable. It might under certain circumstances work nearly as well, but under many more not.

Wireless links are ideal when you're on the move or cabling is impossible. Other than that best avoided.

TheScullster pretended :

I have wired up the entire house for both too, but it is only useful for those things which permanently reside at fixed places. CAT5 is obviously faster than wireless, but that is only of use when large files need to be moved between system in a hurry.

Peter Andrews expressed precisely :

Isn't that where a mobile comes in?

I rewired the whole house for everything, so it wasn't much bother. Power, telephone (with PBX), burglar alarm, smoke alarms, etc. Plus network of course. As for the 'fixed places' thing, I just have a LOT of network sockets (about 30) so there is always one nearby. The house isn't very suited to wifi, and so far visitors have just plugged into the nearest socket. I guess an access point will appear some time.

fiber termination bits are alot more expensive than a secondhand 100Mbps switch that ios being tossed in a skip..and 100Mbps cards likewise.

Thats because they aren't D-I-Yers.

Good comments from Andy.

I did a very large project for a major Telcoms provider, and the problems we had country wide with the unlicensed spectrum that is allocated (2.4GHz) was very significant. When we had performance issues - a sniffer would show that packet retransmission was far higher than people expected - due to blocking of channels by all sorts of devices. Bluetooth phones, PDA's, motion detectors, microwaves, Wireless Lans etc.

This brought the expected data throughput down dramatically form the theoretical figures expected.

Most companies will stick to cabled infrastructure, cheap, manageable, understood, and almost immune from interference.

In my own house I have multiple CAT5e & CT100 points to every room, when my son had a PC for XMAS ... took seconds to patch him in to my ethernet router. I can also unplug him just as easily :-)

Yes I have a WiFi access point for when I want to use my lap top and move about in the house, but this is secure (reasonably) with WPA-PSK TKIP encryption, and even then once a link established a VPN connection is used.

I agree with Andy - I have checked locally ... and most of my neighbours have open port WiFi modems on their Broadband lines.

Wired is safer and more sensible for the home.

Good point. I shall remember that.

Ah, yes...I did the CT100 too...!

Yes...same here. Also good for unplugging the CT100 from his room...haven't yet worked out how to 'remote disable' a GameBoy being played under the bedclothes...!

Mobile Handheld on 2m, S20 'CQ.... er, help.... my QTH is on fire???'

:-p

-- Adrian C

Still not to be relied upon for emergency communications as many people round here found out when the power to the local cell went off for

A POTS phone will generally work a lot more reliably than a GSM mobile or DECT device.

On Fri, 5 Jan 2007 10:19:25 +0000 someone who may be tony sayer wrote this:-

Their laptops presumably have little sockets, into which network cables can be plugged.

Personally, a visitor can use the little sockets I have provided in the bedrooms or living room. There are no little sockets in the kitchen for anything, as that is for cooking in rather than playing with toys and the amount of mess while cooking means that this is a service to them:-)

Oh, we do have a socket under the breakfast bar. Just in case one day we get an IPv6 Internet enabled toaster...

And the fact that if you visit any of the shed type stores you'll find shelves of wireless networky stuff, complete with rather iffy marketing claims. And tucked away at the bottom a little bit of cabled kit, that marketing can't puff up.

And the fact that a majority of the great unwashed couldn't clip a cable to the skirting for love nor money let alone terminate the cable correctly in the sockets.

And the fact that even if they could clip a cable "the management" wouldn't let them and hiding a cable in a modern box is next to impossible, But at least modern boxes with an internal soil stacks have a nice duct running from the roof space through all floors. B-)

What is the likelihood of your house catching fire, the dect phone failing as a result of the fire and the local cell also failing all at exactly the same time as you need to ring the fire brigade?

Not particularly high, just pointing out that mobiles etc are not to be relied upon in an emergency. Many people think of a phone as a phone and do not realise that a mobile is no where near as reliable as a POTS phone when the infrastructure comes under stress.

A reasonably local lightning strike could cause all three.

Modern? the internal soil stack was only in use (apart from high rise where there would also be fire issues) in the 1970s and 1980s.

Most connection issues IME come down to lack of range through different building materials and incompatibility of different vendors kit. Alas neither of these can always be fixed by reading the fine manual on the occations one is provided.

Don't agree - I sometimes do want to shift large files about the network

- for example when video editing, performing backups, moving disk images and ISOs (which I use via virtual CD/DVD drives etc). I may at times want to rip a bunch of DVDs to one machine using available DVD drives dotted about the network - even fully working WiFi slows down any of these activities noticeably.

Nothing wrong with WiFi - it has many uses. However for many of us it does not come anywhere close to being a replacement for cat5 yet alas.