I finally decided that it was time to get a real network setup in my house. I had some one-off network segments around the house for particular purposes, but not a real whole-house network w/a set of primary interconnect points, in addition to CAT5e drops around the house.

This project really started this summer when we had the house painted. I ripped off (imagine a violent action) all the coax and phone cords off the side of the house prior to the painting, both to ensure that the paint got under the wires, and to remove them permanently. I bought an HDHR at the same time to enable a new cable connection to my TV, over one of the network segments that I mentioned earlier. That worked out nicely. Still, I wanted to be able to use my HDHR on any PC in the house, and that's kinda difficult to reliably over 'g' wireless. Others may argue the fact, but try viewing HD content, and you'll see that 'g' falls on its face for that application, particularly if you have multiple streams going at once. I could have gone 'n' and will, but I really wanted to get a gigE network up and running, since it is fast and reliable.

I also should note that my existing phone network had already proven to be pretty bad. So, I already had an existing need to fix that.

Off to Home Depot, which is pretty much the answer to all issues relating to the home. Come back with 1000ft of riser CAT5e, 50 RJ45 connectors, a Ideal crimper and and Ideal LinkMaster CAT5 line tester. I also bought 8 large pieces of drywall, wood, some insulation and a whole ton of other odds and sods, but that is indeed another project.

I'm finding that cutting (to length) and crimping CAT5 is something of a challenge. It is conceptually simple, but I appear to be still mastering this task. I've made a bunch of mistakes, such as not following a wiring standard at first (even though I've used them before for my earlier network segments), mistaking the pin order of the connectors, and then incorrectly ordering the pins once I'd chosen T568A as the standard to use. The test tool is kinda neat since it tells you exactly where and how you've messed up. This is pretty useful if you've got a 50ft segment from your basement to your attic that isn't able to create a connection.

When I'm done, I'll have both a new phone network (over CAT5) and data network. The phone network actually only uses 1/4 of a CAT5 line, but that's OK. The 'backbone' is two CAT5 (one data, one phone) lines and one additional CAT5 line that I may need later for some unknown reason. Every drop (phone or data) connects to this backbone at one of three interconnect points (garage, attic and wiring closet in the basement). This allows me to easily add machines, NAS, APs and pretty much any other kinda IP appliance (like the HDHR) at any point in the network.

My neighbor, who is in his 70s, keeps making references to me being able to "run Microsoft on this network". It is pretty funny to hear that viewpoint. I'm sure that there is more XBox Live traffic during the day on the internal MSFT network than my wee network would ever be able to handle, except maybe on Christmas day ;)