Networking question

[oilyfan]

Originally Posted by TheGrimm

I am not crazy about terminating low-voltage next to electrical outlets (code not-withstanding), I am not an electrician, but NM wiring can wreak havoc interference-wise.

It is pretty standard pratice to install a low voltage box (with terminated Cat5/6 and RG6) on the other side of the stud from a power outlet. It is done all the time when setting up TV outlets.

[Wormius]

Bump...

Wondering if anybody here has experience with coax->ethernet adapters.

My house is wired in every room with coax and RJ11 outlets, which all lead back to my home office where the internet feed from Shaw is. I know the RJ11 (it's cat3) is pretty limited in terms of bandwith, so I have figured that can't be repurposed for that, but I was hoping that the coax runs would be a more viable solution. So, I guess my question is, has anybody routed ethernet throughout their homes over coax? I am not expecting amazing speeds, but it would be nice to have the PS3 and such running off a more consistent hardwired connection.

[TheGrimm]

Never tried it, but if Shaw can give you 250Mbps+ speeds on coax coming in from the street, I'd say it's plausible. Let me know if you go down that path, I am curious myself. There is also ethernet over power which sounded somewhat promising a few years ago, I haven't seen any real-world implementations at this point either, but it may be a solution if speed isn't your number one priority.

[Wormius]

Originally Posted by TheGrimm

Never tried it, but if Shaw can give you 250Mbps+ speeds on coax coming in from the street, I'd say it's plausible. Let me know if you go down that path, I am curious myself. There is also ethernet over power which sounded somewhat promising a few years ago, I haven't seen any real-world implementations at this point either, but it may be a solution if speed isn't your number one priority.

I had thought about the powerline option, but a lot of what I had read in reviews seemed like it was still buggy and finicky to get up and running. I am hoping that coax would be a fairly straight-forward solution. I do recall the days when network cards were equipped with BNC connectors.

In any event, I looked a bit more, seems like Actiontec makes a model (ECB2200) that might do the trick for what I need - which is basically stream movies from my hard-drive in my office to my living room, and add a wi-fi bridge to be able to hit some of the other corners of the house.

It's mildly annoying that I'd probably have to buy a set from Amazon.

[Rathji]

Why dont you try to use your Cat3 to do a pull of cat5e/6?

[Wormius]

Originally Posted by Rathji

Why dont you try to use your Cat3 to do a pull of cat5e/6?

Is there a recommend way of doing this? It's probably not impossible, but I am not sure how I would go about that. This is all in my basement where the walls and ceiling are all finished. I basically only have access to the electrical panel in my office where the circuit breaker resides, and all of the cable and phone lines originate from. After that, it's only the wall-plates that I can get to easily.

Here is a rough layout of the basement - A is where the electrical/internet/phone enter the house in my office. B (upper left corner) is where I would like to be able to stream hd video to, or watch videos from the internet with fewer buffering headaches.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by Wormius

Is there a recommend way of doing this? It's probably not impossible, but I am not sure how I would go about that. This is all in my basement where the walls and ceiling are all finished. I basically only have access to the electrical panel in my office where the circuit breaker resides, and all of the cable and phone lines originate from. After that, it's only the wall-plates that I can get to easily.

Here is a rough layout of the basement - A is where the electrical/internet/phone enter the house in my office. B (upper left corner) is where I would like to be able to stream hd video to, or watch videos from the internet with fewer buffering headaches.

There's absolutely no reason 802.11n isn't going to meet your needs, particularly on a single floor. You're making this harder than it needs to be, in my opinion. If you are buffering on internet videos, it is almost assuredly not because of wifi limitations, unless your wifi is horribly broken in some way.

[BloodFetish]

Originally Posted by TheGrimm

Never tried it, but if Shaw can give you 250Mbps+ speeds on coax coming in from the street, I'd say it's plausible. Let me know if you go down that path, I am curious myself. There is also ethernet over power which sounded somewhat promising a few years ago, I haven't seen any real-world implementations at this point either, but it may be a solution if speed isn't your number one priority.

I've dabbled in a bit of ethernet over powerline at work using units from a few different manufacturers. The first thing to know is the advertised speeds are rarely close to being achievable in the real-world. 200Mbps? Hah, try 56!

They will consume a wall-socket as directions always state to never use a power bar due to the circuitry contained within will mess with the signal. I've had some units (NetGears) run extremely hot to the point of being worrisome, others (D-Link DHP300s) that cause a packet storm that basically brought the network to it's knees.

Of my four-or-so attempts at using Powerline technology I'd say I was successful in creating a long-term stable network connection once.

I should add my experience is all at business locations, with a larger footprint and longer power runs that you typical home, so your mileage may vary.

/rant

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by BloodFetish

I've dabbled in a bit of ethernet over powerline at work using units from a few different manufacturers. The first thing to know is the advertised speeds are rarely close to being achievable in the real-world. 200Mbps? Hah, try 56!

They will consume a wall-socket as directions always state to never use a power bar due to the circuitry contained within will mess with the signal. I've had some units (NetGears) run extremely hot to the point of being worrisome, others (D-Link DHP300s) that cause a packet storm that basically brought the network to it's knees.

Of my four-or-so attempts at using Powerline technology I'd say I was successful in creating a long-term stable network connection once.

I should add my experience is all at business locations, with a larger footprint and longer power runs that you typical home, so your mileage may vary.

/rant

My understanding with powerline is that a lot of the performance variability is dependant on the wiring topology - if you are running from outlets on a common wiring leg, performance can be quite good. If you are using any kind of topology that forces you to cross the junction box, performance can be greatly impacted. Supposedly some of this is fixed in current iterations of powerline, but I think its still a challenge for them, since the signal gets mangled regardless - you've got all kinds of echo, reflection, timing issues, etc, with a data stream coursing down multiple legs in a broadcast (multiple leg) topology regardless.

[photon]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

There's absolutely no reason 802.11n isn't going to meet your needs, particularly on a single floor. You're making this harder than it needs to be, in my opinion. If you are buffering on internet videos, it is almost assuredly not because of wifi limitations, unless your wifi is horribly broken in some way.

Unless there's a furnace between A and B

In my house the "wiring closet" where all the house wires come together is in the same room as my furnace, and I had my router in there. It was never great, especially on the 2nd floor, and with each new router it seemed to get worse, finally I moved my router to another room and it's perfect now.

I had one house too where there was a microwave exactly line of sight between the kitchen desk where we kept the a laptop and the router, moving a few inches either way worked great, on the desk was spotty, and when someone made popcorn there was no internet lol.

[Wormius]

Originally Posted by photon

Unless there's a furnace between A and B

In my house the "wiring closet" where all the house wires come together is in the same room as my furnace, and I had my router in there. It was never great, especially on the 2nd floor, and with each new router it seemed to get worse, finally I moved my router to another room and it's perfect now.

I had one house too where there was a microwave exactly line of sight between the kitchen desk where we kept the a laptop and the router, moving a few inches either way worked great, on the desk was spotty, and when someone made popcorn there was no internet lol.

Actually, the room that is directly above "A" is where our furnace and hot water tank are located. My drawing isn't exactly to scale either, but that is the basic gist of where walls are.

After we changed from Telus to Shaw, my wireless router (DIR-655) was moved. Last night I did some adjustments with the antennas and managed to get better signal strengths to the wireless devices around the house. The antenna adjustment is VERY finicky and I am tempted to crazy glue the whole setup exactly where it is for fear of the cat coming along and bumping the thing.

I am at least now getting 100% signal strength to the PS3, Wii, and Boxee at point B, and 80% to the upstairs where my phone would be jumping between wifi and 3G. I did some streaming over Crackle from the PS3 and it was pretty smooth, even on the PS3's 802.11g. I have inherited an HP m8020n media center pc, and I am curious about whether I could set up xbmc and netflix to run smoothly.

[Wormius]

Originally Posted by BloodFetish

I've dabbled in a bit of ethernet over powerline at work using units from a few different manufacturers. The first thing to know is the advertised speeds are rarely close to being achievable in the real-world. 200Mbps? Hah, try 56!

They will consume a wall-socket as directions always state to never use a power bar due to the circuitry contained within will mess with the signal. I've had some units (NetGears) run extremely hot to the point of being worrisome, others (D-Link DHP300s) that cause a packet storm that basically brought the network to it's knees.

Of my four-or-so attempts at using Powerline technology I'd say I was successful in creating a long-term stable network connection once.

I should add my experience is all at business locations, with a larger footprint and longer power runs that you typical home, so your mileage may vary.

/rant

I once worked for a company that employed powerline communications (not X10) for fire alarm systems, and we were operating at just 9600 baud, and the reliabillity was pretty sketchy. There are enough fail safes in the fire alarm system that there is never any danger to a resident, but if somebody ever used halogen lights in their condo or there was an elevator with an electric drive was in use, it would pretty much sever the communications between the panel and the in-suite devices on whichever phase the noise was on. That is mainly why I don't have much faith in sharing powerlines for anything other than power, there are just too many variables that can't be controlled. In my own home, maybe not as uncontrolled an environment as a condo building but I haven't heard enough positive reviews to overcome my trepidition.

[Rathji]

Originally Posted by Wormius

Is there a recommend way of doing this? It's probably not impossible, but I am not sure how I would go about that.

I think the advice about improving your wireless connection is likely the best course of action for you in this case, but I figured I would post an answer to your question.

Essentially you would need to duct tape a good portion of a cat5 cable to your cat3, ensuring it is as smooth as possible, and pull. It really depends on how the wiring is done - how many cables were pulled to the same location ( I assume the coax was in the same pull), plus any more than one or two corners and I wouldn't think it to be an ideal plan since you would more than likely end up with a busted up cat5 cable.

Just looking at the diagram you posted again,


you could just move your router to Point C or D by wiring along the floor (tucking under baseboards) and running up the corner or against the door frame. Alternately, if the area on the other side of the wall from C is unfinished, you could drill through the bottom plate, or put in a pair of wall plate pass throughs, and just put it on the opposite wall of point C for direct line of sight to the area you are wanting signal to.