I'm back! Network guru advice needed!

[Zario]

Hey all.  I'm moved into the new house and life is settling down.  The first project I'm looking to do in the new house is install a wired LAN and run cables to most (if not all rooms) the rooms. 

The place:

• Unfinished basement offers me full access to first floor
• I have a chase to the unfinished attic so I can drop cable down walls in 2nd floor
• Looking to run CAT6 cable and I want to buy a spool of the stuff, but through walls so I don't need Plenum

Questions I pose to you:

• Is it better to go solid or stranded cable?  Any other specs I should pay attention to?
• Anyone know a good gigabit 10/100/1000 switch/router the would be worth purchasing?

[Fleecy]

Welcome back Zar!  Glad to hear you're all moved in, it is always nice once the move is over and things settle down 

I cannot answer your questions, sorry about that, however I moved your thread to the new forum that was recently created for situations like this one:

"Tech Support"   

[Kothnok]

Stranded is used for patch cables due to it's flexibility. Solid wire is used for the actual cable runs. Most IDC connectors (jacks, patch panels, etc.) only handle solid conductors.  I would recommend checking out the hardware being used at either end of the cable run and make your decision based on that.

my 2c.

[Shadowwolf]

Unless youre doing heavy file transfers or network traffic within your house, Cat6 seems overkill. You can get speeds of 350mbps+ out of 5e and its a bit cheaper. Whatever you do, you'll bottleneck at your outbound line, which if its FIOS or Cable or DSL youre only going to get about 50mbps off FIOS and anywhere from 3-16 from Cable, 1-3 off DSL, so yea its nice to plan for expansion I guess and future, but to me, unless you honestly plan to buy an OC3 or higher line and run it to your house, I dont see much value in having an internal network of 1Gbps unless you do some heavy internal file transfers between PCs or plan to host an office or convention at your house. 1Gbps is well over the top of what a normal home PC let alone corporate SCSI server can pump out at a time through the network so...I just think its a little overkill. May as well run fiber lines at that point instead or Cat7. Even Bluray reading at 12x speed is only 432 Mbit/s.

Unless im wiring up a post house, I usually run 5e for all my clients because honestly they arent going to see the difference between 350Mbps and 1Gbps on a network for a reg corporate office. Post Houses I run fiber because of the Avid bays and such which transfer HUGE files constantly to and from the servers. My vendor cost I get 1000ft of 5e for like $40-$50 bucks and Cat6 for about $110. I think 5e at everyday joe price is $200 for 1000ft and Cat 6 is roughly double that.

Ive never used stranded for anything personally. Ive always gone solid cable. Its a little harder to make short cables with, but the longevity ive found and level of failure has been lower for me. Stranded cable for me is just a pain in the ass. If youre going to run wall jacks, use solid, its easier to terminate to wall jacks.

As far as a switch, Netgear has moderate priced Gbit switches. Unless you have a computer superstore nearby, you'll prob have to look online. Best Buy and the like have garbage for selection. Even if you go Cat-5e for cable, youll need a GBit switch to push the line to 350+ as well as GBit cards in every machine to maximize it.

[Tony]

Shadow... I love you....

I could listen to you talk tech all day

[Air]

Shadow wasn't wearing any pants when she wrote that to, if it helps.   

[TheGeneral451]

tony if you leave terri for shadow let me know, you can drop terri off on your way to New Jersey!

[Drygioni]

Twilight Swingers Club is born....

[Zario]

Thanks for the help everyone.  I'm all for overkill.  I don't mind spending a little extra for something that may keep me from crawling up into my attic again to rerun cables, but I'm certainly not daddy warbucks. 

In my old place, I was recording uncompressed/minimally compressed HDTV and sending it through cat5e to my Xbox 360.  Who knows, I may find a crazy reason to need the bandwidth.  I wouldn't mind setting up a dedicated server in the house for fun, considering I have about 3TB of stored media thus far on a few computers.

I haven't found too much on DIY fiber networks and I'm not too sure how much more difficult/expensive it would be.  I was under the impression that fiber NICs were redonkulous in price. 

From what I've read, streaming video means I should use shielded cable.  Anyone have recommendations for which website to buy from?

[Shadowwolf]

If you know how to terminate fiber and have all the tools, its not that bad. If not, you will need to pay someone to do it because if they do it wrong, you're screwed. I learned out to terminate and run Fiber lines during my enlistment period, we used tactical fiber (fiber wrapped in kevlar) in the field and each deployment required new lines run. If I paid for that schooling on my own privately id prob have paid a lot so thats one bonus uncle sam gave me =)

Youd have to price out materials and see, im not really sure what the cost difference would be because I get materials at a different price structure than you would plus I have my own skilled labor (me or my employees) so...and yes, ive made them do work at my house before, haha.

[Zario]

Shadow, take what you just said, top that with you knowing how to use fully automatic firearms, and you're the coolest person ever.