Network Cable Installation

[Kevin Rayner]

This summer, when the wife is on holiday, I intend to take down the manky lath & plaster walls and ceiling in the main bedroom and put up plasterboard. This will enable me to run some extra cables for sockets and a telephone extension in the kids room so they can connect their computer in the void. It would be handy to run a network cable from the box room (my office) to the kids room to exchange data in the void, rather than trail a data cable along the landing. Can I get a diy installation of sockets and cabling anywhere?

Thanks

Kevin

[Hywel]

You can get this sort of stuff from B&Q, and you'll probably find it quite cheap. What's the distance? 54G wireless doesn't give any noticeble slow-down for Internet stuff.

[Angus C]

[Kevin Rayner]

I have a local Maplin so I will give them a look as well as B&Q.

Thanks

[Mary Fisher]

Others will give you the a-z of that but can I put in a plea for installing sockets at, say, waist height? We did that in several rooms and it's so much easier than having to bend down and push and pull plugs in at floor level.

There is of course some risk of damage from furniture, this can be taken into account when deciding the positions. But there's a risk of damage even at floor level so there's no difference there.

Mary

[Dave Plowman]

Why would you want to unplug network thingies?

[Ian Stirling]

For mains plugs, yes... But for network plugs, where you are typically going to plug things in for months or years at a time?

[Reckless]

I put in Cat5e cabling in all my bedrooms when I built an extension (and knocked out all bar 2 of the internal walls upstairs).

I bought modular sockets (which can be RJ45/BT) from Farnells and used a chrone tool to connect the Cat5 cable into the back. I put in two cable runs per room - for some resiliance in case one of them getts squashed, chewed, damanged, nailed, etc! All get routed to my main PC room which has two double gang faceplates (with a maximum of 8 net sockets). Patch leads then connect each room to the switch which is the router for the Internet. Cat5e cable was from Screwfix. I think in total it was around £100 for 5 rooms worth of stuff.

Wireless is good (well above Internet connection speed) but whether it's fast enough depends how much copying across the LAN you do (I do backups) and whether you are patient or not (heck, I'm not that patient!!).