10.24.2002 - Installing and Configuring a Home Network

Installing and Configuring a Home Network

As told by: Sean Keplinger

Let me just start off by giving a little background about why I chose to do this project myself. First off, I'm a computer programmer; I live, eat and breath computers on a daily basis. What time I don't spend with my family or sleeping is spent on or near a computer or some type of electronic device related to a computer. I have been through network engineer training and tinker with firewalls, servers, etc.

Enough of that, though. You don't really have to know a whole lot about computers or networking to wire your house so that each room has a connection to the internet or to other computers in your house. Hopefully this document will provide a little information about what to do and what not to do while installing your own home network.

Grab your pen and paper and take plenty of notes -- I tend to jump around alot so please bear with me!

Step One: Planning
Step Two: Installation (Part 1)
Step Three: Installation (Part 2)
Step Four: Configuration
Summary

Step One: Planning

Since this was the first home network that I had ever installed, I wanted to make sure that I wasn't getting in over my head. I read up on the topic from websites and newsgroups and asked others in the field what kind of tools I would need and how much I was looking to spend. The amount of information I retrieved was enormous! I also spent some time with my builder and electrition to make sure that I was able to do the wiring myself. (Having the electrition do it was way too expensive and would have put me over my budget.)

Here are some things to think about when planning your install:

How much do I want to spend?
How many rooms do I want to network?
Is wireless an option?
How many jacks per room do I want to install?
How do I run the cabling between floors?
How am I going to connect all of the jacks?
Is broadband internet access available in my area?

I mulled over the installation for about a month before deciding on my plan and here were my answers to the above questions:

How much do I want to spend?

I set my budget at $600 because we had plenty of other projects that needed to be accomplished (like building a deck, fence and office). In the end, I came in under budget, but could have spent a lot more. In hindsite, I probably would have allocated more so that I could run cable (television) to every room, but my configuration now will allow for that with less trouble than it could have been (more on that later.)

How many rooms do I want to network?

I opted for putting a network jack in every bedroom, as well as one in the family room. My office was built after we moved in and I installed an additional three jacks in that room. With each jack, I planned to run two sets of CAT5E cable -- one for network and one for phone if I needed it. Each jack would have a "keystone plate" that I could configure for my needs.

Is wireless an option?

In my case, wireless would have put me over budget. For wireless, you must buy a wireless access point (roughly $150 now) and a wireless network card for every computer in the house (ranging from $40 to $150 each). Plus, I was concerned about signal strength between the basement, first floor and second floor, not to mention interference from 2.4Ghz phones, security concerns, speed (wireless 802.11b can only do 11Mbps, compared to 100Mbps that you can get with hard-wired cable) etc.

Wireless would have been extremely fun, but I'll save that for a later date and incorporate it into my wired network.

How many jacks per room do I want to install?

I went with one jack per bedroom, one in the family room and three in my office. It all depends on the size of the room really and I didn't want my walls cluttered with electrical outlets and network/phone jacks. Looking back, I wish I had installed more than one jack in the family room, and perhaps even added jacks in the living room and dining room. Just remember, it's a lot easier to add jacks to the first floor (if you have a basement) than it is to fish wires out of the walls on the second floor by dropping them from the attic!

Also, by running two CAT5E cables to every room, it gives me the option to configure each room differently. Each CAT5E cable carries 8 wires -- only two wires are required for phone and 4 required for 10Mbps network (I believe in order to get true 100Mbps, you need all 8 wires.) I'll discuss this more in detail below.

How do I run the cabling between floors?

This was a major concern of mine when I first started planning for the project because I wasn't sure if my wiring would interfere with the plumber, electrition or HVAC guys. So I took the easy way out: I spoke to my electrition and had him run a PVC conduit from the attic to the basement. I was given the option of adding a break at every floor, but due to the location of the conduit it wouldn't have worked for the first floor anyways. What the conduit allows me to do is drop wires from the second floor directly into the basement where the telephone and cable demarcs are easily accessable.

How am I going to connect all of the jacks?

There are a couple of ways to approach this problem and it all depends on how sophisticated you want your configuration to be. You could simply put RJ45 (network) jacks on the ends of all the lines and plug then into a hub. Although this sounds like a good idea, it leaves you fairly limited, especially if you don't want to use all 8 wires in the CAT5E cable.

I went with a patch panel for the network and a 66 block for the phone. The patch panel allows me an easy way to punch in the network cables and then attach them to a hub or switch via patch cables as I see fit. The 66 block enables phones to be hooked up in a matter of seconds.

Is broadband internet access available in my area?

This is probably the most important component to your home network plan. I realize that there are a ton of people still on dialup, but it gets pretty hairy trying to maintain a constant dialup connection for your home network, not to mention the purchase of a second phone line just about covers the cost of cable or DSL anyways. Trust me, you'll thank yourself in the long-run. (Later, I'll cover how I built a firewall/gateway for my home network out of an old PC and OpenBSD, a free operating system.)

Step Two: Installation (Part 1)

The first thing I did was take a trip down to my local Home Depot to check out prices for all of the components I would need; if I could find stuff cheaper locally, then I wouldn't have to pay shipping charges.

Here's what I came up with for my first list (all prices are in USD):

1000 ft CAT5E	$54
8 wire CAT5 modular jack (10 pack)	$40
6 wire phone modular jack (10 pack)	$23
3 port wall plate	$1.79 each
bracket box 1 gang 18cu	$0.71 each
RJ45 male plugs (25)	$6.97
RJ11 male plugs (25)	$2.97

One thing to note about the above -- you must estimate how much wire you'll need. In my case, the conduit was located in a central location to the house. I estimated about 12 ft to traverse each floor, the distance from the jack to the conduit and then gave a little extra to each jack just in case I made a mistake. Also, don't forget to get horseshoe brackets to hold your cabling in place as you run it up and across the wall studs.

After all of my supplies were purchased, I gathered up the tools that I needed for the installation:

Hammer (very important, in fact bring two or three)
Extra long extension cord
Flashlight / hanging light
Cordless drill (w/backup battery)
Electric drill (for the hard parts)
Hole saw (1/2 inch) / drill bits
Wirecutters
Razorknife
RJ45 Wire Crimpers (you'll need these later on)
Floorplan (mark where you want the jacks)
Horseshoe brackets
Gang (gray) boxes (get the kind with nails pre-installed)
Labels (to label your wires in the basement)
A couple of friends to help.

I coordinated with my builder to come in just before the drywall crew came in. In fact, I was forced to complete my wiring in one afternoon because the drywall crew were set to start at 6am the next morning. The good thing about coming in just before drywall is that all electric, HVAC and plumbing crews have done their jobs so there is no danger that you'll get in the way of their configurations.

Since none of the electric outlets were live yet, I plugged an extension cord into the outlet that was powering the sump pump. I had one person install the gang boxes (grey) and another to provision the correct amounts of cable while I drilled the holes in the wall studs and caps where necessary. I could not have completed this task without the help from my friends! It's very helpful to have a person in the basement when dropping the cables through the conduit.

To each gang box we ran two cables and wrapped them up inside so that they wouldn't get in the way of the drywall crew. My builder gave me some florescant paint to mark the spot of each gang box on the floor so that they could easily be cut out of the drywall. All of the cables on the second floor were fed up the wall studs, across the ceiling and then down the conduit into the basement. On the first floor, we simply drilled through the sub-floor and ran them along the basement ceiling.

All wires were gathered up underneath the conduit and hung on a nail under the stairs so that they wouldn't get wet in case the basement flooded.

Then, I waited.

Step Three: Installation (Part 2)

Once the drywall was completed and the electrition had come back to install all of the electric, cable and phone jacks and faceplates, I installed my keystone jack faceplates. I didn't actually add the RJ45 (network) and RJ11 (phone) jacks yet -- that I would save for after we moved in.

Moving was a nightmare (as always) and it seemed like we would never get everything moved to our new house. Once that was finally over, I sat down to install the jacks.

Keystone plates can be found with 2 or more ports for keystone jacks; I bought keystone plates with three ports. Keystone jacks are extremely easy to install into the plates: they just snap in place which allows for easy configuration. Each jack has color-coded connectors on the back that match the color-coding on the CAT5E cabling. The only thing to have to remember is to properly match both ends of the cable; If you use a blue/white-blue for the phone, then you need to be sure to do the same on the other end. Using the included punch down tool, you simply push the wires into place and then screw the faceplate back into the wall. Overall, it took about 4 hours to install all of the keystone jacks.

I ordered a 24-port 110-style rack-mounted patch panel online to install in the basement. Fortunately, I already had a rack-mount cabinet (I got it for free from a company that was throwing it out) so installation was relatively easy. The back of the patch panel matched the color-coding and punch-down design of the keystone jacks, so it was easy to match up the colors.

For the phones, I bought a 66-block from Home Depot. The design is similar to the keystone jacks -- wires can be easily pushed into place. I ran my own phone line from the telephone demarcation box outside, down to my 66 block. As I need phones, I can simply connect them into the patch panel.

I did make one big mistake while installing the CAT5E cabling: I didn't label them. The day of the install, I had forgotten to bring labels and a pen so we went ahead with the installation anyways. I had to rig a couple of "testers" so that I could figure out which wires went to which jack (be it network or phone.) To do this, I took a male RJ45 and RJ11 plug and crossed two of the wires. I then plugged one in at a time and tested the same wire pairs in the basement with a voltmeter set to "ohms". When I found the crossed jack, the needle would indicate a good connection and I could then label the wire. This tedious process took about 8 hours to complete. Lesson learned: Always remember to label your wires!

Step Four: Configuration

With the infrastructure (wires and jacks) in place, it's time to configure and test everything. There are several different approaches and I can, by no means cover them all, but I will touch on a few.

First, and probably the easiest approach would be to buy a hub and connect all of your cables to it. On the end of each of your cables dropped from the rooms, you would attach an RJ45 jack and then plug it directly into the hub. Be sure to leave the "uplink" port open to connect to your DSL or cable modem. I don't necesarily recommend this approach because if you ever wanted to change the function of the cables, you would have to cut off the RJ45 jacks and start over.

The second approach would be to use a patch panel (described above). In this example, all cables would come into the back of the patch panel and then as you needed ports, you could connect them individually to the hub via patch cables. I went with this technique because 1) a patch panel looks very nice in my cabinet and 2) it allows me a lot more flexibility if I even decided to reconfigure my network.

The third approach requires a lot more knowledge of computers and their networks. You still use a patch panel and hub/switch but add a server and firewall into the mix. I think an explanation of my firewall, gateway, DHCP, web and file server is out of the scope of this document, but if I ever get around to, I'll write a little something up. It's really less complicated than it sounds...I think...err...maybe not.

Summary

Overall, the project turned out pretty well. I like the ability to connect to the internet from just about any room in my house -- it makes it much easier to move computers around. I've learned a lot from this project and I hope this document helps you in some way or another (if for nothing more than comic relief.)

Here's a few key points to remember:

Planning

Stick to your budget when planning your network. Don't go overboard on expensive components that you don't need (like routers). If you can find stuff cheap or better yet, free -- then don't hesitate to grab it up. Shop around, you'll be surprised how different prices can be depending on where you go.
Plan plan plan. Plan till you're sick of planning. Decide early on how many rooms you want to network and how many jacks in each room you think you'll need. Consider different options (like wireless) if laying wire will be too much trouble and remember to work with your electrition and builder where you can.
Be sure that you really need a home network. Check to make sure broadband (cable/DSL) is available in your area and consider running cabling for different media (like speakers, intercoms, cable, fiber).

Installation

Gather up the right tools for the job. Here's a few things I recommend bringing with you for the job:
- Hammer (very important, in fact bring two or three)
- Extra long extension cord
- Flashlight / hanging light
- Cordless drill (w/backup battery)
- Electric drill (for the hard parts)
- Hole saw (1/2 inch) / drill bits
- Wirecutters
- Razorknife
- RJ45 Wire Crimpers (you'll need these later on)
- Floorplan (mark where you want the jacks)
- Labels (to label your wires in the basement)
- Horseshoe brackets
- Gang (gray) boxes (get the kind with nails pre-installed)
- A couple of friends to help.
If you are installing in a new construction, talk to your electrition to see if you can have an attic to basement conduit installed. The conduit was probably the best thing that I had installed in my house!
Coordinate your effort so that you install your cabling just before the drywall crew is set to come in. This way, you won't interfere with the electrition, plumbers or HVAC crews. Also you can get an idea of where to place your boxes so that they are near phone and electric jacks.
Label everything! I cannot stress this enough! Label each jack and each corresponding cable. It will save you hours of tedious work!
Don't rush to punch down all of the wiring. Take you time and move in first -- you have enough to worry about. Once you have all of your furniture and computers and phones set up, then sit down and finish the jacks.

Configuration

Decide how complex you want to make your network. Remember, whatever you set up, you'll have to maintain. Although having a full-fledged network sounds like fun (to insane crazy people like myself) it may not seem so fun when you're running your own call-center support department in your house fixing printers, servers, etc. Don't get in over your head, plan for a setup that matches the level of involvement you want to have.

Oh, and by all means, have fun while doing this! Wiring you own home network will save you a bundle. Hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing (and reliving) it!