At 18:11 -0500 03/28/2002, Nancy L Haitz wrote:
>Jeff's mention of a "wiring closed" got me thinking. Heh, heh. My "wiring closet" is actually the space above the shelf in the entry-way/living room coat closet. There's all that space above the coat hanging rod which is normally just used to store stuff that folks forget about. So I mounted my patch panels on the walls around the inside of the closet above that shelf. I also installed an electrical outlet in the closet, and the ethernet hub and Ethernet-LocalTalk Bridge sit on the shelf and are powered at that outlet. If I get high speed access my router will go in there too. I wired the house for coax at the same time and all the coax lines terminate in the same closet as well. So cable modem or DSL, I can put the router in that closet and distribute the service from there. > Does ethernet >wiring, such as Cat-5 degrade if run through a couple of junction boxes? In general you want as few breaks in your cabling as possible. Each break from continuous cable degrades your signal a little. However, it can apparently tolerate quite a few such breaks, as there are many just between a computer and a router. The ethernet card jack contains a plug. The plug is crimped on the cable. The cable is continuous to the other plug. That plug is in another jack. The jack is soldered to a circuit board in the hub or switch. Many many breaks. > Our old house has primarily brick walls, inside and out. Ron was able >to rewire the first floor electric from the basement. He planned to >redo the second floor electric by building a small chase from the >basement to the attic, and running wires in the chase. Then rewire >second floor rooms from the attic. Pulling a continuous cable that >distance would require more physical strength than humanly possible. I'm not sure of the antecedent for "that" in the last sentence. It might work best to have a first floor and a second floor "wiring closet". Put everything on the first floor on one hub or switch. Put everything on the second floor on a separate hub or switch. Then run as many lines between the first floor and second floor wiring closets as are practicle (in your chase?) and use that to connect what needs connecting. Even if you had only one data line from first to second floor, you could connect the "uplink port" of one hub to a data port on the other hub so that all machines on first and second floor can see each other. I guess you'd also want one line between floors per telephone line in the house, so that you can put extensions for any phone line on either floor by patching them in the wiring closets. >Does anybody know... If we did a couple of junction boxes are we >degrading the service? And, what kinds of interference do you get it >you run electrical, phone and Cat-5 in the same conduit? You definitely do not want to run electrical line in the same conduit with data lines. That's a formula for big interference, so says the popular wisdom and (I think) the physics. I haven't had a problem with it myself, but I also followed the rule. My data lines don't run parallel to any power lines (at least not within a couple of feet) and where they must cross, they cross at as close to a right angle as possible. Jeff Walther -- SuperMacs is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | Service & Replacement Parts [EMAIL PROTECTED] | & CDRWs on Sale! | PowerON Computer Services <http://www.poweron.com> REPLACEMENT PARTS in STOCK Drives, CD-ROMs, RAM, Processors, Power Supply <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> SuperMacs list info: <http://lowendmac.com/supermacs/list.shtml> Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/supermacs%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
