[johnvsimpson]

I am trying to learn how to set up an Ethernet network in my house. This will be based on my understanding from reading posts and what my small mind pieces together for itself.


This is the setup I was planning. Running 2 cat 6 cables to 6 different rooms. Since I need to have a central site for all these I was going to use the master bedroom closet.


They would all terminate into a patch panel. This is about where it ends because I don't see alot of information at this point. This would be strictly for Network/Internet.


From here I am assuming I would have a switcher correct? The router/cable box is plugged into 1 port on a switcher and then splits out to the patch panel?


From what I am assuming some switchers would allow all the different access points to compete for the bandwidth correct?


Is this sort of setup common or am I just making a ghetto setup here? If so could you explain the type of setup I should try and copy/duplicate? I will not currently be using all the connections but I figured I would run 2 to every room just in case of future upgrades.



Next a question on Dish Networks TV hookups. The house also only has 2 rooms with cable connections in wall. So I also plan to run 2 sets of RG-6 cable to ever room as well. One for a HDTV antenna. One for say cable TV. With cable tv I was not sure this will make 6 cables. From what I have read splitting cable alot is not good. Would one 6 way splitter at both the Antenna end and Satellite end be the best way? Please any explanation of how I would do this would be appreciated.


For both 5 sets of cable (2 of each) will be ran upstairs. Only 1 is downstairs. I doubt that more then 3 of the connections will compete for Internet bandwidth at any one time. Small 3 person family. I wasn't sure if you needed any of this information but thought I would add it.

 

[WonHung]

The device you are referring to which allows multiple devices to connect to each other is a switch. The other type of physical network distribution is called a hub. There are huge differences between a hub and a switch even though both will allow all attached equipment to talk to each other over the network.


To make the proper connections, you need to find out if the modem your cable company provided you is also a router. If not, you will need to purchase a router which usually come with at least 4 switch ports. If you need more switch ports to plug in your network enabled devices, you will then need to purchase a switch and then connect the switch to the router. If you have network devices which consume a lot of network bandwidth when it communicates with another local network deivce, you need to make sure both of these devices are connected to the same switch and not one on a switch port on the router and the other on the additional switch.


You also mentioned something about wireless access points. I don't understand your question about APs.

 

[eskay]

That's pretty much it for the network. You need to buy a switch (not switcher). If you're going to be transferring large files between computers, get a gigabit switch, otherwise a 10/100 switch will be okay for internet use. If the price diff. is not an issue, go with gigabit. The router connects to the switch and each line from your rooms plugs into the switch too. You don't necessarily need a patch panel; you can just have the terminated cables coming out of a hole in the wall and then connect directly to the switch. Otherwise, you will need patch cables from the patch panel to the switch.


I don't know much about satellite TV. Your question is a little confusing because you first mention Dish network, but then mention cable TV. With Dish, I don't think you can use a splitter like you would with an antenna. You need something called a multiswitch. And that's my limited knowledge of satellite tv.

 

[johnvsimpson]



Quote:
Originally Posted by eskay /forum/post/16997420


That's pretty much it for the network. You need to buy a switch (not switcher). If you're going to be transferring large files between computers, get a gigabit switch, otherwise a 10/100 switch will be okay for internet use. If the price diff. is not an issue, go with gigabit. The router connects to the switch and each line from your rooms plugs into the switch too. You don't necessarily need a patch panel; you can just have the terminated cables coming out of a hole in the wall and then connect directly to the switch. Otherwise, you will need patch cables from the patch panel to the switch.
Would the extra connection decrease my bandwidth? I want it to look semi nice so I figured a patch panel would be more pleasing looking for my wife the a hole.


I don't know much about satellite TV. Your question is a little confusing because you first mention Dish network, but then mention cable TV. With Dish, I don't think you can use a splitter like you would with an antenna. You need something called a multiswitch. And that's my limited knowledge of satellite tv.

Sorry if I made that confusing. I have Dish Network. I still consider it cable tv since it requires the same cable. But I was also trying to take account that I may not always have Dish Network, so I figured if I terminated all the RG-6 cables at the same spot it would not cause as much of an issue. But either way thank you for the response. So would it still be smart of me to at least run the cable to every room even if I didn't have them hooked up to anything?

 

[AceCannon]

Gray box at top is the cable modem.


Blue box is the router, which happens to have a 4-port switch built-in (jack on back, not shown)


White box below those is a 24 port switch.


Black thing is the patch panel. On the back all the cat5e from the house is connected.


The cable modem is connected to the router (on back, not shown). The router manages internet traffic to/from everything. The routers built-in 4-port switch is essentially expanded by plugging one of its ports into the 24-port switch.


The purple cable connects the switch to the router. (other cables to switch: gray is the security panel, green is the Sprint Airave. So they do not go through the patch panel.)


Dunno if any of this helps or not. .


My computer in the den is connected to the switch via the coiled-up yellow patch cable between the patch panel and the 24-port switch.

 

[johnvsimpson]



Quote:
Originally Posted by WonHung /forum/post/16997404


The device you are referring to which allows multiple devices to connect to each other is a switch. The other type of physical network distribution is called a hub. There are huge differences between a hub and a switch even though both will allow all attached equipment to talk to each other over the network.For just a local home network which is better?


To make the proper connections, you need to find out if the modem your cable company provided you is also a router.
It is a router. It has 4 ethernet out ports. It is also wireless. Although I tend to prefer wired to wireless.


If not, you will need to purchase a router which usually come with at least 4 switch ports. If you need more switch ports to plug in your network enabled devices, you will then need to purchase a switch and then connect the switch to the router. If you have network devices which consume a lot of network bandwidth when it communicates with another local network deivce, you need to make sure both of these devices are connected to the same switch and not one on a switch port on the router and the other on the additional switch.
So would it just be easier to only hook the switch up to the router and leave the other 3 ports unused to remove any issues like this?


You also mentioned something about wireless access points. I don't understand your question about APs.

Didn't mean to mention anything about wireless. Please disregard anything to do with wireless.

 

[johnvsimpson]



Quote:
Originally Posted by AceCannon /forum/post/16997490


Gray box at top is the cable modem.


Blue box is the router, which happens to have a 4-port switch built-in (jack on back, not shown)


White box below those is a 24 port switch.


Black thing is the patch panel. On the back all the cat5e from the house is connected.


The cable modem is connected to the router (on back, not shown). The router manages internet traffic to/from everything. The routers built-in 4-port switch is essentially expanded by plugging one of its ports into the 24-port switch.


The purple cable connects the switch to the router. (other cables to switch: gray is the security panel, green is the Sprint Airave. So they do not go through the patch panel.)


Dunno if any of this helps or not. .


My computer in the den is connected to the switch via the coiled-up yellow patch cable between the patch panel and the 24-port switch.

Thanks think that is actually what I was planning. Only diffrence is my modem is a 2wire modem that is a router as well. At least atm it is the point all my wireless connect to each other.

 

[eskay]

Assuming everything is wired correctly and the connections are solid, the patch panel won't affect the bandwidth. Usually people go with a patch panel so they can easily make any outlet a data network outlet or a phone outlet with a simple cable change. If you're just going to set it up once and not ever touch it, a patch panel is overkill, but it will look neat.


If you do without the patch panel, you would use a bulk cable coverplate which makes the 'hole' look nice.

http://www.hometech.com/hts/products...ulk/index.html


I'm not sure you can even find a hub any more. Just go with a switch and you'll be doing good. Use the ports on the switch first and leave the ports on your router for overflow.

 

[WonHung]



Quote:
Originally Posted by johnvsimpson /forum/post/16997497


Didn't mean to mention anything about wireless. Please disregard anything to do with wireless.


For just a local home network which is better?


So would it just be easier to only hook the switch up to the router and leave the other 3 ports unused to remove any issues like this?

1) Without getting into the details of differences between a hub and a switch, you would want a switch for pretty much all applications.


2) Because the switch is going to be co-located with the router, yes, it would be better to connect all your LAN devices to the switch leaving the three ports unused on the router. Also, size the switch appropriately in terms of the number of ports it has. You should always buy a switch with some margin in terms of available free ports. I would say in a home situation having at least 4 ports free would be a good thing. You don't want to get into a situation where you start cascading/uplinking switches if you can help it.


Here's a picture of my network setup. Disregard all the various network gear I have in my rack. Just focus on the stuff in the middle. I have a Netgear GS748TP 48 port GigE switch I use as my network backbone switch. Pretty much all the network drops in the house go to this switch directly. But if I want to change a network drop into a phone line, I would just move the cable from the switch down to the patch panel below it. The patch panel is dedicated for phone connections.

Close ups of the wiring from the Panduit cable organizer:

 

[WonHung]



Quote:
Originally Posted by eskay /forum/post/16998051


I'm not sure you can even find a hub any more. Just go with a switch and you'll be doing good. Use the ports on the switch first and leave the ports on your router for overflow.

Actually, you can still purchase a a hub:

http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/def...spx?EDC=427986

 

[AceCannon]



Quote:
Originally Posted by WonHung /forum/post/17001013


Actually, you can still purchase a a hub:

http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/def...spx?EDC=427986

Most here will agree: to make such a purchase would be a poorly-informed decision.

 

[WonHung]



Quote:
Originally Posted by AceCannon /forum/post/17001151


Most here will agree: to make such a purchase would be a poorly-informed decision.

Well poorly-informed decision is too broad. It depends on the intended use. Hubs still have their uses. I still have Netgear DS104 10/100 hub I keep around. I use it when I have to diagnose network issues and don't have a managed switch to span ports or don't want to deal with configuring the managed switch to do a spanned port. So hubs are not as useless as many people make them out to be.

 

[AceCannon]



Quote:
Originally Posted by WonHung /forum/post/17001253


Well poorly-informed decision is too broad. It depends on the intended use. Hubs still have their uses. I still have Netgear DS104 10/100 hub I keep around. I use it when I have to diagnose network issues and don't have a managed switch to span ports or don't want to deal with configuring the managed switch to do a spanned port. So hubs are not as useless as many people make them out to be.

DISCLAIMER: I am not a network engineer


Doesn't a hub echo all traffic to every port? I was under the impression that hubs are older, inefficient, essentially obsolete technology. Should we be encouraging anyone to buy one now if they have the option of a switch? Perhaps I need to be educated here (certainly possible!). Couldn't you trouble shoot your network just as easily with an unmanaged switch instead of the old hub? (The 24-port hub you linked to is $399.99 . ??!?)


Today I purchased an unmanaged 24-port switch for $20.00 with shipping. (Ebay item# 380145657612, best offer)


Not trying to flame, just attempting to give viable advice and get educated!

 

[WonHung]



Quote:
Originally Posted by AceCannon /forum/post/17001394


DISCLAIMER: I am not a network engineer


Doesn't a hub echo all traffic to every port? I was under the impression that hubs are older, inefficient, essentially obsolete technology. Should we be encouraging anyone to buy one now if they have the option of a switch? Perhaps I need to be educated here (certainly possible!). Couldn't you trouble shoot your network just as easily with an unmanaged switch instead of the old hub? (The 24-port hub you linked to is $399.99 . ??!?)


Today I purchased an unmanaged 24-port switch for $20.00 with shipping. (Ebay item# 380145657612, best offer)


Not trying to flame, just attempting to give viable advice and get educated!

Well, if you look at my previous responses, I did tell the OP to purchase a switch. I also told the OP that there are significant differences between a switch and a hub. My response with the link to CDW was to a post stating that he didn't think you can even purchase a hub any more. My response wasn't to recommend that 3Com hub.


Now with regards to expanding this discussion about how hubs and switches work and why one would use a hub, here goes. You are correct that hubs do not direct traffic. The simple way of looking at a hub is that it's basically a splitter. Every device attaching to a hub will see all traffic over the wire as everyone is attached to the same connection. Because of this characteristic, bandwidth is shared among all attached devices. As devices consume bandwidth, the available bandwidth for other devices on the hub gets reduced. This is only academic as the other problem which arises from using a hub is the issue of how ethernet works...namely the issue with frame collisions. Ethernet works by having only one device transmit at a given time. To do so, the device has to listen on the wire to see if anyone is currently talking. If someone is talking, the device waits a random amount of time before checking to see if they can transmit. If the wire is free, the device will begin talking. If the device happens to send traffic when another device has already started to talk on the wire, you get what is called a frame collision. When a collision is detected, all devices stop talking and they have to retransmit again. This obviously slows down the network considerably. The protocol used by all ethernet devices to check and manage frame collisions is called CSMA/CS. This is also the reason why devices connected to a hub can only run in half duplex.


Now shift this over to a switch. A switch isolates collision domains. Collision domains are where groups of devices are affected by frame collisions. Devices connected to a hub are considered to be on the same collision domain. A switch moves the collision domain to be between the switch port and the specific network device connected to it. Because there is only one device connected to this switch port, there's no worries about frame collisions and hence why all devices connected to a switch can now talk full duplex which means the device can receive and transmit simultaneously. When a device goes full duplex, they also don't use CSMA/CS anymore. Switches also help in network performance as it keeps a table of learned MAC addresses. The MAC address table of a switch tells it which port a particular MAC address resides. When a frame enters the switch, the switch will do a lookup in its MAC table and then forward the frame to that specific port. When the switch doesn't know where a particular MAC address resides, it will then broadcast out all ports waiting for an answer which it will then note in its MAC table. Not only does this setup allow all devices to use the full bandwidth of the particular ethernet spec protocol (10 Mb, 100 MB, GigE, 10Gig, etc.), it also aids in host machine performance as each connected host doesn't waste CPU cycles processing unnecessary network traffic which it doesn't care about.


Now why would one even use a hub anymore? Well, I gave one scenario in my previous post as to why. When I'm doing network troubleshooting and analysis, I sometimes need to know what is going over a specific connection. In a switch, this is impossible to achieve as the switch by its very nature is meant to forward ethernet frames to its intended destination which is only one port. If I run a packet sniffer on a laptop plugged into the same switch, the only traffic I will see is traffic coming to and from my laptop and any broadcast traffic. That's it. There is no way around this limitation with a regular switch. With a managed switch, I can set up what is called spanned or mirrored ports. This means that the switch will duplicate traffic destined for a specific port to another port where I would have my laptop running a packet sniffer plugged in. Well to do this, I have to configure the switch and find an available port to set up as a spanned port. In some situations, the place where the network host is is not where the switch is or doesn't have an additional LAN port near by. It is always nice to be able to sniff the traffic and be physically with the particular network host to better troubleshoot problems. In many situations, the network doesn't have managed switches and I'm stuck by default to having to use a hub to do traffic analysis. Per the aforementioned discussion of how a hub works, because all frames are broadcasted to all ports on the hub, all I have to do is plug my laptop into the hub. The hub would plug into the LAN drop in the wall to the switch, and the target network host would plug into the hub. This allows me to see all traffic going to and from the network host I'm troubleshooting issues for.


Hope this clears things up. And if you're wondering, yes, I'm a network engineer by trade.

 

[AceCannon]



Quote:
Originally Posted by WonHung /forum/post/17001593


Hope this clears things up. And if you're wondering, yes, I'm a network engineer by trade.

Very cool technology. Thanks tons for describing it! Excellent synopsis.