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Turick

Occasional Visitor
I have fiber internet through my provider. I honestly have no idea how it works, but in my basement near my foundation I have a cluster F of spliced together, tied together ethernet cables. Long story short, one ethernet cable runs the length of my house through the basement and up through the floor to my office where my wireless router sits. Along the run, there is another splice where the cables are wired together. I've done quite a bit of cabling and punching down ethernet in the past, but I've never seen ethernet wires tied together like this before.

Anyway, what I'd like to do is have a gigiabit router/switch right where the ethernet starts in my basement, then use the existing run to continue to feed the office, and run additional cables from the switch up to my bedroom and my living room. Here's my floorplan:

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I'm sorry it's crappy and small. The red dot on the right labeled "1" is where the first mess of ethernet starts. Here's a picture of the various cables spliced together:

attachment.php


That runs the length of my basement to the red dot labeled "2", where I'm guessing the installer just ran out of cable and manually spliced more cables together? This is where I'm thinking about disconnecting it and bringing the cable back to red dot #1 to connect to a gigabit router. Here's a picture of the splice:

http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=952&stc=1&d=1359138233

Then from the router in the basement, I would run another ethernet cable to splice back into the run that goes up into the office (blue dot #3) that I just disconnected. I would run additional cables to blue dots 4 and 5 in my bedroom and living room.

The question is, I'm scared of those splices... I guess I would feel more comfortable terminating them with with male connectors and tying them together with a female-female connector. Is it safe to assume that it's just a standard ethernet cable and the installer just bypassed terminating the cable by "twisting" the wires together? Is it safe to undo?
 

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Cabling

If you have fiber coming to the home and you want a reliable download speed and/or LAN a speed of 50+ Mbps I would abandon the cable you have now. Splices are never good and the way they did them with the lack of twists near the junctions cross talk will or could be a problem. The staples they used and the tight bends are also potential problems.

Run a Cat6 Cable from the FiberDemarc/modem to a Gigabyte router which you could install in the basement near where the service comes into your home. Then run Cat6 cables to where you want Ethernet connections and in areas where you want WiFi install AP tied back by Cat6 cable to your router.

If you don't need or want speeds of over 100Mbps on your LAN then you could get by using 100Mbps routers and switches with Cat5 cable and if the installation is done well you should be able to get 85+Mbps on your LAN.

Cat6 cable just future proofs your network.
 
I discovered that there are 2 cat5 cables coming in from the demarcation point outside my house. One uses 2 pair for internet and the other uses 1 pair for phones. The giant mess of cat 5 cables that are all spliced together are mainly for phone, then they ran 1 cat5 to my office. Wires 1, 2, 3, and 6 are used for the internet connection and then they spliced the phone line into wires 4 and 5 so they only had to run 1 line to my office for phone and internet.

I'll be running a brand new cat6 drop to my office as well as other places in the house and disconnect the internet wires from the current run going to the office, then stick my cisco/linksys router in the basement along with a GigE switch for all the new cat6 runs.

Any good ideas/suggestions for running the cables in the basement? Cable trays or just drill new holes through each of the floor joists?
 
sultan

Apparently, my laptop was not even configured for a local area network. I ran Windows "Diagnose Problem" and it managed to fix itself and I now have Internet. However, I did not do this while going thru the switch; I just used the cat6 cable DIRECT to the laptop to ensure that it was not the cable's fault. Next I will attach it to the switch. I might as well do it now.........ok, it works too.
 
Any good ideas/suggestions for running the cables in the basement? Cable trays or just drill new holes through each of the floor joists?

Yes drill new holes and run all your new stuff independent of your old. You can always change the old jacks in the wall so they are more universal and interchangeable, as keystone jacks. That way you can have all your jacks in the same coverplate. Otherwise add some jacks on the other side of the room for versatility.

It's best to wire anything new with a Home Run. Essentially meaning run all new jacks to a centralized location in the home. Generally in a basement or near the breaker panel.

The idea is to future proof the home as much as reasonably possible. Imagine you have a fancy room you're using as your office with lots of racked goodies then you start adding wiring to your next room over which is your home theater living room area. Then the wife says hunny we need to talk and suddenly that office is being turned into a nursery and all that wiring terminates there...not a good situation.

So if you're adding new wiring a couple of things to keep in mind. If you're needing 1 port...pull 2...if you're needing 2 pull 4. And run everything back to a centralized location where most of your networking equipment can sit. The future users will thank you.

Another good idea wiring a home before sheetrock goes up is to use some sort of conduit runs through inaccessible areas. Examples are the plastic conduit or the Smurf Tube aka blue flexible stuff that snaps right into the low voltage boxes. If you ever have to rewire stuff...you will be very happy.

I even worked with a friend and convinced him to add 2 3" pvc pipe from basement to attic for future wiring needs...be sure to cap them when unused and sealed up when in use. If you ever wanted to add ceiling or wall speakers etc...you will be very thankful.

I would suggest nail plates at ANY stud penetration from wiring or plumbing.

Be sure to add plenty of extra data ports. You always need more.
 

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