Browse Forums Home Theatre & Automation 1 Jul 31, 2008 4:08 pm One for the techies.....
I've just put our plans in to the E-Home guys, (they are who our builder say we have to use for theatre & network wiring). I want to hard-wire a network for internet access and for running media centre extenders to TV's around the house for streaming TV, music & video. We will use the downstairs cloaks as the 'hub', we have put power points in there and the telephone line will go in there too. My plan was to use the 4 port, wireless broadband router that we got with Telstra in the cloaks and add a gigabite 8 port switch to this. We are installing gigabite cabling throughout. I don't know too much about networking, am I right in assuming that the 8 port switch just plugs into one of the 4 ports in the router - then we simply have 11 ports? In order for the new switch and cabling to run at full gigabite speed, does the router also have to be gigabite? (It may well be, I haven't checked it yet). Fax machine, main phone base station, printers and network hard drives will all be located in the cloaks. The main Media Centre PC will be in the theatre, then there will be a combination of Media Centre Extenders and PC's dotted around the other rooms. At the moment, I'm thinking there will be 3x PC's, 2x Media Centre Extenders, 2x NAS drives and 2x printers all plumbed into the switch and router. Is it that simple? I currently have a similar set-up in our rental, but with 2 of the 3 PC's connected wirelessly and no Media Centre Extenders yet. Pics show location of network points. Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ We've had a quote back for the above, which we're happy with - but whilst it's fresh in our minds, is there anything else we should think about wiring in for networking and/or future upgrades? (Theatre wiring is a separate issue). Cheers. Re: One for the techies..... 2Jul 31, 2008 4:43 pm The devices you have should work fine with the networking gear you have suggested. I would make sure that the patch panels/sockets are clearly labled so that you can make sure items such as the NAS, and desktop pc's run on the GB ports.
Items such as printers would likely only be 100mbps so would be fine to hang off the ports on the router. Depending on the media extenders they would also function happily on 100mbps as most don't have GB network cards. Cat 5e cable should be all you need as it will run 1Gbps and your cable runs are relatively short (cat 5e can go 100m at 1gbps). Re: One for the techies..... 4Aug 01, 2008 8:15 am Thanks.
So, am I right in thinking that anything plugged into the gigabite switch can potentially run at full speed, even though that switch is plugged into the router? (I had assumed that the router switch would bring everything down to 100). TV points & phone points are one a seperate plan. TV in lounge, theatre & main bedroom and phone in cloaks and kitchen. Re: One for the techies..... 5Aug 01, 2008 8:20 am I presume all this kit is supposed to stream an incoming signal from a number of different sources - I presume like kiwi you will have at least one TV point somewhere which is hard wired to the outside world and easily accessible when HAL (your network) falls over?
Bit like having hands free telephones but still have a ye olde fashioned one when the power dies. Edit: Just noticed you answered that whilst I was banging on. mmm....donuts Homer Simpson 1956- Links: Site Costs Ready Reckoner | H1 Addiction Medical Advice | Château TDL: The Backyard Re: One for the techies..... 6Aug 01, 2008 8:22 am to_do_list I presume all this kit is supposed to stream an incoming signal from a number of different sources - I presume like kiwi you will have at least one TV point somewhere which is hard wired to the outside world and easily accessible when HAL (your network) falls over? Bit like having hands free telephones but still have a ye olde fashioned one when the power dies. Edit: Just noticed you answered that whilst I was banging on. Yep - TV point in the theatre will feed the HTPC. The HTPC will feed extenders in the other rooms. If the HTPC goes down, I'm stuffed as I don't have anything else with a tuner in it. Main bed will have a TV point as the TV for there does have a tuner. Re: One for the techies..... 7Aug 01, 2008 8:27 am Tony & Emma to_do_list I presume all this kit is supposed to stream an incoming signal from a number of different sources - I presume like kiwi you will have at least one TV point somewhere which is hard wired to the outside world and easily accessible when HAL (your network) falls over? Bit like having hands free telephones but still have a ye olde fashioned one when the power dies. Edit: Just noticed you answered that whilst I was banging on. Yep - TV point in the theatre will feed the HTPC. The HTPC will feed extenders in the other rooms. If the HTPC goes down, I'm stuffed as I don't have anything else with a tuner in it. Main bed will have a TV point as the TV for there does have a tuner. At least you know the consequences.....got a friend with a high tech system and had an issue couple of months ago which required a bit of fiddle faddling couldn't get around to it....so a convenient hard wire point would have been handy....guess the worst case scenario is you get stuck in bed.... mmm....donuts Homer Simpson 1956- Links: Site Costs Ready Reckoner | H1 Addiction Medical Advice | Château TDL: The Backyard Re: One for the techies..... 8Aug 01, 2008 8:37 am Tony & Emma So, am I right in thinking that anything plugged into the gigabite switch can potentially run at full speed, even though that switch is plugged into the router? Correct. All the devices connected at gigabit speeds will communicate with each other at that speed. Communications from all devices to the router will be limited to 100Mbit. However, considering the maximum bandwidth on a perfect-scenario ADSL2+ connection is 24Mbit, there's not a great deal to worry about. Very common on rendered homes Smaller suppliers get the lower quality raw materials 6 11850 4 14255 That is a really good attitude Akin to you catch more flies with honey than vinegar. I do enjoy watching that tik tok inspector from Victoria but he does go a little… 12 81847 |