Warren Togami wrote:
I want to wire my house with cat5 cable going to RJ45 jacks in several rooms
of my house. Does anyone have any recommendations of where I should buy the
following:
Box of Cat5 cable
Box of Cat5 cord
high quality crimping tool
high quality tester with remote
RJ45 ends
RJ45 jacks
Thanks,
Warren
Just a few suggestions:
Make sure you get CAT5E (or even CAT6 now that it's standardized). This
is a requirement should you ever want to tinker with GigE unless you
want to rerun everythign with fiber.
Buy PLENUM jacketed cable. Plenum jacketing doesn't emit noxious fumes
and smolder as readily as PCV jacketing. In fact, many areas require
plenum jacketing for in-wall installations (or just about anything other
than a simple patch cable).
Buy about 1.5x the number of ends you need. You WILL mess a few of them
up and have to re-crimp, especially if you've never done it before.
Follow EIA/TIA whatever it is standard on color coding
(OW,O,GW,BL,BLW,G,BRW,BR). It will help you with your patch panels
(read on).
Use a patch panel at your "MDF" (where all the wires come together and
you have your hub/switch). This will save you headaches later when you
start breaking ends as you move stuff around, trust me.
Run more wires than you need. I certainly wish I had run about 4 wires
to my bedroom instead of the 1 that's there!
Don't overdo the distances. If the distance is longer than 100m (max
for ethernet), run fiber. The fiber itself isn't that much more
expensive (though they'll get you in the interducting). Unfortunately
the fiber transceivers (in the media converters, etc) are. However,
this is better than going over the spec. If you can't afford the fiber
stuff and are willing to settle for 10Mbit, you can run thin coax as it
has slightly longer distance specs than UTP for ethernet.
Stay away from flourescent lights with the UTP. If you must run near
things with horrible EMI patterns (flourescent lights, transformers, AC
motors, etc), use coax, STP (Shielded Twisted Pair), or fiber (best).
If you do use STP, MAKE SURE YOU TERMINATE IT RIGHT. If you don't, the
shield will act as an antenna rather than a shield, and you definately
don't want that.
Hope these suggestions help.
--MonMotha
