We are finally getting fibre broadband and my home plugs aren’t going to cut the mustard so I am thinking of building a home LAN. Essentially, the master socket is in the dining room and I want at least a couple of LAN sockets in the living room for TV and computer.

I think I could put a pair of LAN sockets near the BT homehub thing in the dining room and run cables through the attic to two sockets in the living room, but I’ve just read about network switches and thought perhaps a single cat 5e cable from homehub to switch in the loft with wires as needed from that may be better. Would that be sensible?

Alternatively a single run to the living room with a switch there (in reality I think all the net stuff I currently want would he in the living room). Should I put a switch in the loft to distribute from the homehub around the upstairs and then a second switch in the living room to distribute around TV/tv box thing /computer? Is that even possible or sensible?

I’ve not a clue and would appreciate some guidance if anyone here has the knowings please!!

Your home plugs are more than sufficient. Save yourself aggro and keep them, maybe hang a cheap unmanaged switch off each of them.

Thats all you need.

This is what I have now:

http://www.solwise.co.uk/net-powerline-500av-hl115ep.htm

I assumed they’d not be fast enough to run Iplayer in HD etc? I also thought a LAN would future proof? Am I buying into a concept that’s a bit pointless? Upstairs is a separate ring main so the power line adaptor runs slow (was using it to push wifi upstairs as homehub signal there is poor). Sorry – doc say I’m a bit billy basic about this!

You’re trying to fit a solution to the tech rather than fitting tech to a solution. Tell us what you want to achieve.

Can’t solve a problem till you’ve fully defined it.

Most newer Poweline adapters will run far faster than your fibre broadband speed so won’t be a network bottleneck unless you’ll be moving a lot of data around on your LAN.

I would go the route of least wires.
First thing I did was make sure my master socket was near my TV, so that it’s easy to get the best speed internet to my living room.
Gigabit 5 and 8 port switches are only £10-£15 on Amazon.
So currently I have one of my ports on my SKY router feeding a 5 port router near the TV (SKY box, PS3 and IP Camera currently). Port 2 is directly to an outbuilding to a second gigabit switch with POE, this supplies Wifi switch in the garden, LAN in the outbuilding and more IP cameras. Port 2 on the SKY router is to a homeplug that takes internet upstairs to a homeplug on the bedroom TV and urchins internet.
Homeplugs are good, but proper network cable and switches is faster and more stable.

Understood. Right:

Now:

1. BT homehub and mastersocket in dining room.
2. TV / Internet TV device / Computer / NAS in living room. Computer gets internet from WiFi card in it.
3. Wifi signal in half of the house where the homehub is is OK. In the bit by the livin groom it’s poor so I have an old airport express connected to a home plug here pushing a second wifi round the house. When we want TV or Internet TV to have internet access we unplug the airport express and connect the appropriate box.

Effects I want to achieve:

1. Wifi round the house.

2. Computer, NAS, TV, Internet TV all internet connected and running well so they don’t trip each other up (I’d like the NAS internet connected to do remote music / photos etc).

Thanks!!!

Run cat5 from your router into the front room
Buy a 5 or 8 port gigabit hub and plug everything into it , job done

Ok.

Could I do this:

1. Run cable from dining to living room (will have to go via attic).
2. Unmanaged gigabit switch in living room to TV / computer etc.
3. Wifi extender also into switch. Is there a gigabit switch / wifi extender all in one. Equally is there a wifi extender that would mimic my homehubs wifi address so phones/tablets etc automatically luck on to the strongest signal without being told to change to a different named network?

can’t you just use a wireless extender and forgo any wires? and get wirless recievers for the pc and tele? (I don’t know if you’ll have issues with a reciever for the tele?)

Do you need to be wired?

I have a £25 TP-Link wifi node. I have it set with the same WIFI network name as my sky router and the same password (but manually select a different channel). This plugged into a £12 gigabit switch at whichever dead spot you need to cover will do the job and tablets and laptops will switch to the strongest signal without hassle. I did originally have them set up with different WIFI network names, but the problem was that if a device had been used in the the garden on the garden network, then it would hang onto that network if I came indoors, despite the fact that the indoor WIFI network was much stronger signal. Setting them both to the same network ID and password seems to have given me the result I wanted.

http://www.cclonline.com/product/44718/TL-WA801ND/Wireless-Access-Points/TP-Link-TL-WA801ND-300Mbps-Wireless-N-Range-Extender/NET1541/

This sort of thing : http://www.amazon.co.uk/TP-LINK-TL-WA901ND-Advanced-300Mbps-Wireless/dp/B002YETVXC ?

Is it simply a case of literally going into settings and replicating the homehub name and password to allow the device to auto hop to the stronger signal as I currently have the problem you describe (ie device holds onto weaker network)

That’ll be a yes for the device then!

So I need to change the second network name (currently named after the dog!) to match the homehub…?

aye pretty much.

You guys are legends. Thank you all for your patience!!!

just check the wifi capability of your devices, as i say, you may need to by recievers for them and check they can take receivers if they aren’t wifi capable.

reviews on that particular device look a bit iffy though, i’d maybe do more investigation into it.

I can’t really offer any recommendations unfortunatley.

Thanks. Is it hard to fit the end connectors onto cat 5e/6 cable?

you shouldn’t need to plug a wifi extender into anything(apart from power), just put the original modem/router next to your existing cables and the plug in the wifi extender somewhere where it can pick up a strong wifi signal and be able to send it to the black spots in your house. the extender doesn’t need an ethernet connection. (though I guess you could use it in conjuction with a couple og home plug if you feel that is necessary, I don’t really see why it would be unless you are trying to cover a massive area.

Not with the correct tools, which are cheap these days edit, that was in response to your question about terminating cables!

Terminating cables is easy (if you have ever wired up a 3 pin plug neatly then you have the skills!). I bought a 100m reel from Amazon for £50. If buying cable make sure it is copper core. There is some evil stuff out called “copper clad aluminium” (CCA) which is much cheaper but is not up to the job.
I agree that some of the TP-Link stuff has iffy reviews. I have one of the older square box ones and it’s been fine for the last 2 years.

The wireless access points have a few different modes.
The mode seosamh77 refers to is repeater. This is where you set it up at the edge of the range of the existing wifi network and it will basically act like a relay station playing wifi chinese whispers. This is fine for many people, but it does double the data flow on the wifi channel as every packet of data has to be received and then sent on again from the repeater.
Hardwiring the access point with CAT5/6 means that the packets of data are only sent on wifi once, the rest being done on much faster gigabit cable. For most application this won’t matter (ie spotify of basic video), but as I wanted to have some quite data intensive stuff on the extended network (backup and HD CCTV) I opted to take the strain of the wifi and run a simple cable.

It’s also important to have identical security protocols on the wifi.

Got it. Thank you.

Plan as things stand is to run cat 6 (only a couple of pounds more than 5e) from the dining room via loft to living room (house shape dictates this) and put an unmanaged gigabit switch here. From this I plan to run TV eye with one port going to a wireless access point as you describe. For now I’ll try to use the airport express but if I can’t I’ll look for one.

I think that’ll cover what I need done. Again, thank you all!!

As Cougar said in another thread, unless you can lay the Cat6 exactly to spec, including bend radius and other seemingly insignificant details then you’re doing nothing more than wasting your money. Cat5e is perfectly sufficient for your needs.

Fwiw I also believe WIFI is the work of satan and unless you require portability in a device hard wiring is massively superior in every way.

a quick question – do the rules about cable bending apply to cat 5e cable as per cat 6 and would there be any compromise using something like this?

http://www.kenable.co.uk/product_info.php?cPath=22_122_199&products_id=1602

As ever, thanks!!