Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Home LAN options?

I’ve got 12 hard wired Cat 5 locations (wall plates) in the house. All are home run back to my office and I landed them onto a 12 port Cat 5 block. I really didn’t know what I was doing, so I sorta ‘winged’ it.

I am currently using a Linksys five port router and I use short Cat 5 cables from the router to the Cat 5 12 port block to heat up the needed room wall jacks.

Well I’d like to heat them all up and I figured I’d just pick up a router with at least 12 ports. I wandered into an office max yesterday thinking I’d get something off the shelf, but was quickly confused. There wasn’t but a couple routers that were not wireless and they only had four or six ports.

I just did a Google search on these things and of course I was overwhelmed with the options that popped up, including brand names.

Can one of you IT types recommend a router solution? A buddy of mine told me to stick with Linksys, although I don’t know why. They are definitely more money…..

I have a space limitation too. I need something pretty small to fit in between wall studs and all the other ‘stuff’ I foolishly crammed into this spot.

If you already have a Linksys router, then I would go with two 8 port gigabit switches for growing room. Just route your twelve connections from the punch down block (PDB) to the switches and then feed the two switches from the Linksys router. Since you are using one port on each switch for the router feed, you'll only have seven open on each for the PDB connections.

Everyone has their preferences, but I tend to stick with Netgear and Linksys. Here's a Netgear 8 port switch on Newegg that is fairly popular and at a decent price.

Netgear switch

Agreed. You need to plop a switch (or two, which may be cheaper) in between the punch down block and the router. Most switches need zero configuration and will just work. That's how it's done.

A router is designed to link up multiple "sites" across a WAN (Wide Area Network). That would be you as "Site A" and your Internet Service Provider (ISP) as "Site B". Now if you want to hook up more devices (or just make jacks live) at one of these sites, you would add a switch (old days it was a hub) to your router. This essentially adds more ports for you to plug in to (won't go into detail about what a switch does exactly, because as far as you need it, you know enough now).

Now, just follow the other guys' advice and you will be all set.

That is basically what I have. My internet comes in my house via cable. Goes to my cable modem, then to my Vonage router. Now, I do have another router in my mix, but it is for wireless, so we'll ignore that for now. Then I have multiple switches feeding the approximately 38 Cat5 network lines in my house (talk about a lot of wires). It was cheaper to pick up five 8-port switches and daisy chain them (they had dedicated "uplink" ports so that I could still use all 8 switch ports for my network runs) than to buy a single switch with enough ports to support 38 lines.

Now, if I could just get all of my cable TV runs into a powered distribution box of some sort, I'd be set (I have 1 cable run for each network run and for each phone line run). To do that would cost a small fortune. The phone lines aren't important because we use cordless phones.

Good luck!

umm, hey, Nick, whatcha using 38 Cat5 network lines for? Does homeland security know?

You would need a 10/100 switch not a hub, you can get a good deal from e bay for a Cisco catalyst or switch. A hub sends all traffic out all ports except the port it came in on. The switch only sends traffic from port a to port b which releives congestion. I also suggest a wired/wireless router just in case someone wants to use wireless the wired part would go into the switch. You shouldnt worry about gigabit ethernet for home use, 100 mbs fully duplex is good enough. Hope this helps

Drew

I’ve got wall plates all over the place. I don’t see a need for any wireless, but one never knows…. For now, I’d rather just keep it all hard wired.

Those 8 port switches look like the ticket (and simple). I’m afraid they are a bit too big though. Are there any compact options?

I’d post a picture, but I’m embarrassed to do so. It’s a rat nest. I’ve got all my coax, phone and LAN cobbled into this little piece of wall stud space reality.

I had hardwired my old house and then I tried wireless. Wireless is the way to go, no doubt about it!!!! Forget all that wiring!!!! In my new lakehouse, I will use nothing but wireless going from the room where I have the router.

But, don't forget to use the encryption. You don't want others using your stuff!!!!

It seems that your security is faulty. Someone is adding extra exclamation marks after your sentences.

A lot of people are saying that wireless is not secure. There is a 128 bit encryption key and you can set it so just your own mac address can access the network and each mac address is unique. Also check your firewall setting and only open ports you use and if you are capable set access lists.

Drew

I've written lists of tips for groups a few times so heres a cut and paste from my notes version since the presentations are full of formatting. Even made brief, it's a long list. It's also the unedited, non spell checked version so don't make fun.

In no particular order...

Try and use WPA over WEP encryption if you have a choice. Both use 128 bit encryption but WEP sends part of the key out in it's very first packet. If the person sniffing your network happens to catch that packet, it can greatly reduce thier hack time.

Wireless is more famous for being wide open because most people don't know or bother to protect it but people can sniff your wireline network too when you are attached to the internet unless you are going through a VPN to somewhere specific.

Use a wireless router that does IP translation so your PC is not using a live IP on the internet.

Use the best firewall you can but even XP's built in one is better than nothing. Make sure it's turned on if you have nothing else. Wireless routers have firewall capabilities as well.

Learn, even just a little, about how your firewall works. Learn what a 'port' is and how to safely block and open them. Short version - A port is a numbered doorway into your computer via a netowork or the internet. Web uses port #80 for instance. A main feature of firewalls is that they can close all the ports that don't need to be used. Some open ports are required, some are relatively harmless while others, if left open, can allow total access to your PC.

Use Anti-virus and anti-spyware. No good having a firewall if you pick up a trojan that is designed to open a hole from the inside. If you won't pay for a mainstream version, at least download the free stuff. It is actually recommended to run multiple forms of antispyware from time to time as there as simply sooo many varieties.

Locking your network down to specific MAC addresses is good to do, but they can be easily spoofed as well. Of course they would need to know what it is first. Of course, even a freeware sniffer will tell them if they are watching your network.

Don't forget to change the administrator password in your wireless router. Change the username "administrator" too if it will let you.

Change the SSID (name of the network) from the default name. It doesn't really make much difference security wise but not changing it flags you as someone who probably didn't know how to secure their network.

Turn Off the SSID (Network ID) broadcast feature. Unless you have a lot of guests, you will have already programmed your PCs with the correct SSID. No need to advertise that you are 'out there'.

Here is one you might not think of. Your network could be fairly secure but if you turn on the 'auto-connect' feature on your wireless laptop, you might accidentally connect to your neighbors network, still be able to surf the net but now be possibly much less protected.

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No encryption is unbeatable but the good ones take such effort to break, they have to have a good reason to choose "you" to bother with.

Wireless is more famous for being wide open because most people don't know or bother to protect it but people can sniff your wireline network also when you are attached to the internet unless you are going through a VPN. It depends on how the service provider is set up, how many can directly 'sniff' your network but there almost assuredly a few who can.


All add this for this group....

I'm personally very comfortable with my security behind my wireless router, firewall and in being set up with all of the above precautions. Comfortable enough to make Internet purchases of expensive speakers using my Visa online.

If you are really concerned about the wireless feature, run some cat5 and stick to physical connections but don't forget to still use precautions to keep the Internet baddies out in general.

or....
you can always wrap your house in tin foil!