Best way to hard wire in a house

[carlosbutler]

I will be moving into a house next year with 2 other university students. We are thinking of going for 50mb fiber optic broad band, so thats not going to much of a problem. What will is the number of devices. There are going (this is a minimum) 3x PS3's, 1x xbox 360, 3x laptops, 2x imacs, 1x windows box, 1x ethernet printer. obviously not all 11 are going to be on at once, but at least 6 will be.

ive not found wireless to be that good when transferring files, especially large amounts of files and also gaming, for some reason is not as quick through wireless. so we were planning to hard wire up everything since its only for a year and we dont really care about wires.

but i was not sure how to go about this, i have got a 4 port wireless router and then someone else has 5 port switch. but then we only want one network and even though you can make the router just act as a switch i though it would be easier if we simply just bought another two switch's.

so one connect directly to the modem (which is connected to the fiber optic output ie internet line) which is able to split it into three cables, then these three cables go to the three separate rooms and thats that. but im also not sure which company to go for, ive always found netgear wireless equipment very good, but they storage central quite crap to be honest.

any help thanks

 

[Trajectory]

You need a network hub, not just a router, for a network that big. That will give you lots of ports for all of your devices. I'd use the wireless router for devices where hi-speed connections aren't needed to reduce the number of wires you have to run everywhere.

 

[carlosbutler]

right. well i had in mind this. Its about £55 with P&P i believe. and it should allow me to connect my router to this, so daisy-chain it. although is it possible to chain more than one, ie have the modem, then another switch then this switch then the wireless plugged into this switch?

 

[ElectricSheep]

right. well i had in mind this. Its about £55 with P&P i believe. and it should allow me to connect my router to this, so daisy-chain it. although is it possible to chain more than one, ie have the modem, then another switch then this switch then the wireless plugged into this switch?

Yes, its quite common to chain switches together like this. Just make sure you don't create a loop out of them, and you'll be fine.

 

[paduck]

Looks like a good plan. Is eight ports going to be enough? If you have existing routers/hubs, you can chain them like you said, so probably plenty of room. Just put a new hub in each room for the devices there. Plus, you always have the wireless option.

50 megabits seems like a lot of bandwidth for Internet. Do you really need to go that high for just three people? I know everyone likes speed, but do you really need that much right now? I can't answer that question, it's really personal preference/economics. If it is a higher tier, then you might be able to save some money by dropping down as low as 10 megabits. You can still get a full HD movie pretty quickly at that speed and you can move up a tier later if it turns out to be insufficient.

Good luck!

 

[Consultant]

gigabit ethernet switch + cat 5e or better cable