Home Ethernet

[charlie b]

Hopefully your Cat5/6 cables now terminate at one location. If so, it's a simple in installation of a Ethernet switch (around $50) which would be connected to your router.

The Cat 5 cables appear to all be "terminated" (see the photo in post 13, they're just cut and dangled) near my service panel. It is in the basement. The FO gateway (router??? modem??? some other name for this thingy???) is on the first floor, very nearly directly above the service panel. So when you say that the ethernet switch needs to be connected to the router, I infer that one or more wires would have to be run up through the basement ceiling (or down through the main bedroom floor). There is someone else living here that might not be happy with that. Am I misunderstanding the situation?

 

[augie47]

The Cat 5 cables appear to all be "terminated" (see the photo in post 13, they're just cut and dangled) near my service panel. It is in the basement. The FO gateway (router??? modem??? some other name for this thingy???) is on the first floor, very nearly directly above the service panel. So when you say that the ethernet switch needs to be connected to the router, I infer that one or more wires would have to be run up through the basement ceiling (or down through the main bedroom floor). There is someone else living here that might not be happy with that. Am I misunderstanding the situation?

Sounds correct. You would hope one of the cables goes to the spot where you have your router but if not...........

 

[charlie b]

You would hope one of the cables goes to the spot where you have your router but if not...........

In that corner of the bedroom, there are a duplex receptacle outlet, a box with both an ethernet and a coax outlet, and the box into which the fiber had been run, all installed during original construction. I see no Cat 5 wires or any other outlet box that could hide such wires.

Just to be clear, as this forum doesn't allow DIY questions, I will restate that I have no intention to do any installation work myself. But if and when I decide to go forward with this project, I will be better prepared to discuss it with the electrician I hire. For that, I am grateful for everyone's contributions to this thread.

 

[Elect117]

I would like to add, for the issues you are having with connectivity, they could be related to an IP address conflict.

Lets say you have a service from AT&T. They will provide you with a service drop and 1 usable ip address. They will typically have it set that ip address automatically. That is called DHCP (make sure yours is automatic).

That device will either be your modem or your router. Once you hit a router, it routes multiple IP addresses back on the 1 usable address AT&T provided.

You are correct that with your service on the first floor, you would need to come out of the router, to one of the ethernet outlets in the wall, then plug that into the switch in the basement so that all of the other cat5 cables plugged into the switch can be connected downstream of the router.

If this is device specific, as in your laptop particularly is not connecting to the internet, but your other devices are. Try opening command prompt and typing, "ping 8.8.8.8" and see if you get responses. That is google.com's dns address. If that works, then you are most likely incorrectly configured on the laptop.

 

[tortuga]

In that corner of the bedroom, there are a duplex receptacle outlet, a box with both an ethernet and a coax outlet, and the box into which the fiber had been run, all installed during original construction. I see no Cat 5 wires or any other outlet box that could hide such wires.

Charlie in the bedroom with the FO gateway (modem/router) you connect the ethernet port on the FO to to the ethernet jack on the wall.
From the wall jack the cat5 goes to the bundle by your electrical panel.
That cat5 will provide connectivity to the ethernet switch you mount next to your patch panel.

 

[tortuga]

If your planning on staying there for a while, and doing some work from home I'd highly recommend getting that patch panel installed.
It's not more than a 2 hour job, if you have the plywood up.
When you call around for a local electrician make sure to ask if they can punchdown 110 style patch panels.
Get a painted piece of 2' X 2' painted piece 3/4" plywood on the wall next to your electrical panel where all the wires will terminate.
Make sure the electrician checks how the keystone jacks are terminated and matches that when they do the patch panel, there are two common TIA (568) standards an A and B.

 

[hbiss]

The Cat 5 cables appear to all be "terminated" (see the photo in post 13, they're just cut and dangled)

Not understanding that. I see that the cables are just a jumbled mess stuck behind the conduits. I would have cut them all to the same length and coiled them up neatly.

But I'm not sure what you consider "terminated". Are the ends just cut or are there plugs on them??

-Hal

 

[GoldDigger]

One nice feature of new equipment deals with the fact that the twisted pair ethernet cable is directional. in that a particular set of pairs is receive at one end and transmit at the other end. And there are crossover wired cables available. Which makes for a lot of confusion.
But most modern equipment has circuitry connected to each jack that autodetects which pairs are which and adapts

 

[Birken Vogt]

Modern equipment uses all pairs bidirectional at all times. They are just pushing the format to its absolute maximum data possibility. It is still plenty fast enough for now, but almost time for a technology jump I suspect.

 

[tthh]

Gigabit Ethernet is bi-directional on the same pairs. The lower speeds, 10BASE-T and 100BASE-TX are not bi-directional on the same pair and use one pair for each direction.

 

[hbiss]

Modern equipment uses all pairs bidirectional at all times. They are just pushing the format to its absolute maximum data possibility. It is still plenty fast enough for now, but almost time for a technology jump I suspect.

Plenty fast considering that your internet speed is the limiting factor. Most people are lucky to have 1Gig. So, unless you are transferring files between your computers and they support more than 1000mb ethernet, even CAT5e is sufficient.

-Hal

 

[Birken Vogt]

A lot of ISPs are starting to surpass 1 gig nowadays. I've had my 1 gig connection at work for years now but the Cat5e in the wall only gets 600 meg to the desk. Still fast enough for me but high performance users have to be moving on by now.

 

[curt swartz]

A lot of ISPs are starting to surpass 1 gig nowadays. I've had my 1 gig connection at work for years now but the Cat5e in the wall only gets 600 meg to the desk. Still fast enough for me but high performance users have to be moving on by now.

Cat5e supports 1G. If the network cable drop is causing poor performance the cable/jacks are garbage or the installation was done improperly.

 

[Elect117]

There are some areas near me that can get 5Gbps services from AT&T fiber. Unfortunately it isn't in my area.

 

[hbiss]

There are some areas near me that can get 5Gbps services from AT&T fiber.

Don't know what you are going to do with 5Gigs. The selection of routers and switches is expensive and limited. Does your existing computer Ethernet card support 5G?

-Hal

 

[Elect117]

Don't know what you are going to do with 5Gigs. The selection of routers and switches is expensive and limited. Does your existing computer Ethernet card support 5G?

-Hal

My existing stuff couldn’t. But I would invest. Nothing would bring me greater joy than having the upper hand in pwning noobs.

 

[Geber]

The Cat 5 cables appear to all be "terminated" (see the photo in post 13, they're just cut and dangled) near my service panel. It is in the basement. The FO gateway (router??? modem??? some other name for this thingy???) is on the first floor, very nearly directly above the service panel. So when you say that the ethernet switch needs to be connected to the router, I infer that one or more wires would have to be run up through the basement ceiling (or down through the main bedroom floor). There is someone else living here that might not be happy with that. Am I misunderstanding the situation?

In the data communications business, "terminated" is a term of art. It means the end of the cable is permanently attached to some sort of plug or socket. From the picture you provided, it appears the Ethernet cables are unterminated.

It's customary to install a patch panel at a central location (in your case, next to the service panel). The conductors are separated in the prescribed way and punched down on to a bunch of contacts; these are wired internally to sockets in the patch panel to Ethernet sockets. An Ethernet switch is installed on the wall nearby; it needs 120 V power. Patch cables (jacks on both ends) run between the patch panel sockets and switch sockets. Since you don't seem to have too many cables, the easiest thing to do would be to order a patch panel and switch with more positions than you have cables, and have all the cables active all the time.

One potentially tricky area is that you have described different kinds of connections on the FO gateway. Sometimes all the Ethernet connections serve the same purpose and are interchangeable. Sometimes this isn't the case. It would be good to obtain literature about your gateway to provide to whoever is doing the job, or at least the brand and model number.

 

[gadfly56]

Charlie all those jacks are probably wired back to a structured wiring panel or some common point that looks like this:
We electricians terminate the Cat5/6 cable on a mini patch panel (circled in yellow) and you the homeowner provide a network switch (blue arrow). I would purchase a switch with one port for each room + a few extra.
Then you when you connect a patch cable from your modem/router to the wall jack that will provide a connection to the switch and the switch will 'light up' all the other wall jacks in your home.
I use wired internet (lan) jacks for things that dont move often like my large format printer, the TV/ Roku / home theater etc.

That looks like a Leviton product. I was looking into that about 10 years ago.

 

[tthh]

The easiest way to think about Ethernet wiring is to think of it as a fancier version of home-run telephone wiring. You need parts that are Cat5/5E/6/7 complaint and then treat it just like home-run telephone wiring, except you can't just wire them all together on the Ethernet version of the "66 block", you need to use an Ethernet switch instead.

 

[hbiss]

In the data communications business, "terminated" is a term of art. It means the end of the cable is permanently attached to some sort of plug or socket. From the picture you provided, it appears the Ethernet cables are unterminated.

Which brings up the question of whether the jacks on your walls are terminated (wired) correctly. Without the cables being terminated at the other end in your basement, there would be no way for the installer to check his work. As someone who has wired probably thousands of those jacks, even I get something wrong, especially if I haven't done any in awhile. There are 8 color coded conductors that have to be placed in the proper slots. In dim light sometimes it's hard to tell what color is which. When he thinks he is done terminating both ends (wall jacks and drops on a patch panel in the basement) the installer should have a tester, one piece plugs into the jack and the other plugs into the corresponding jack on the patch panel. It will automatically go through all 8 connections and say that everything is wired correctly. You repeat that for each cable. That way, when he leaves the job he is assured that if you say your computer doesn't work it isn't his fault.

So, my point is don't be surprised if there are problems with the jacks and their wiring. If a patch panel gets installed and you have problems, start taking the plates off. You are going to have to look at least one to see which standard the installer used (568A or B) before wiring the patch panel anyway. 568B is most common.

-Hal