arstechnica.com/guide/networking/installation-1.html
Whatever the reason, you've decided you need a home network. Now, if you're a dorm-bound college student or a renter, you'll probably have to entertain yourself by running cables along your baseboards, or even ( 29 OSHA's gonna hate this) right across your floor. If, however, you're a home owner or you just have a generous parent/landlord, you can do things the right way, and run the cables inside your walls, and do altogether professional-like things. Of course, the best way to physically network a home is to do it while the home is still under construction. The good news is that, if you can knock holes in your walls and have access to an attic or basement, it's completely possible to run cable by means of "fishing". Then we move on to the nitty-gritty of getting those cables to look like actual network jacks. Planning it out Materials The first thing you need to figure out is what sort of cabling you need and where you need outlets. The type of cabling will first be dictated by the type of network you want. Not only is Ethernet the most popular form of networking in the PC world, it also has the advantage of allowing nodes to be added and removed with little impact on the rest of the network. The most common types of Ethernet cabling you run into are CAT5 and CAT3. CAT5 is the more expensive of the two, but has a very important advantage: it supports 100Mbit connections. It is also fully backwards compatible with 10Mbit equipment, so unless you're extremely price conscious, you should go with the CAT5. After all, knocking holes in your wall isn't something you will want to have to re-do. The next step is to see whether you have any other cabling needs. In my case, I also needed phone and cable connectivity in various rooms. So, if a room that requires both Ethernet and phone has two RJ-45 jacks, we're all set. In my case, there was an additional cabling need, that of cable TV. And, where there's cable TV, there's the potential for a cable modem, so it was more than just a passing fancy; To facilitate that setup, I needed standard coaxial cable. What I didn't know initially is that, like Ethernet cable, it can be commonly found in two different ratings, in this case RG59 and RG6. The RG6 is the better cable and not much more expensive than the RG59.
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