Networking questions

obieone

I'm looking at wiring my house for ethernet, and trying to decide the best route for future expansion.
Looking at cat6 vs. cat5e, and the 6 says it's 2.5x faster than 5e?
Also, is there any difference in structure between plenum and indoor/ outdoor? It'll be going underneath the house in a crawl space, so it won't be in direct exposure to the weather
Any feedback is appreciated.

John30_30

Plenum cable is clad with non-toxic-burning material so if there's a fire in the plenum area, it won't release toxic gas- is my understanding of it. It's required for public buildings that have to run cable thru the dropped ceiling where there's no or few (physical) firewall breaks.
Cat 6 for residential? Only if you expect gigabit bandwidth at some point.

Which could happen.

petrym

Cat 5e will handle gigabit speeds, but it's useless unless you have gigabit cards in all your computers and a gigabit switch handling the routing duties for your network. If you're keeping it in the house, there are no problems; though I would avoid routing cables through heating/cooling ducts.

I use a wireless access point in our living room to handle all the wireless traffic in the house since my wife has a desktop on the 2nd floor and I did not want to route cables upstairs.

obieone

I was gonna go wireless, but 1 of 2 computers is running Vista 64, which means I'd have to spend $150 for a NEW wireless router and USB adaptor. So, I'm looking at just wiring the house, and not have to worry about upgrades every couple of years.

Also: Is it just me, or is the web getting slow? Seems like even on my "highend" pc, some pages take a while to load?

sucks2beme

obieone wrote: »

I was gonna go wireless, but 1 of 2 computers is running Vista 64, which means I'd have to spend $150 for a NEW wireless router and USB adaptor. So, I'm looking at just wiring the house, and not have to worry about upgrades every couple of years.

Also: Is it just me, or is the web getting slow? Seems like even on my "highend" pc, some pages take a while to load?

The price difference for going cat 6 adds up. Unless you need speed between your houshold computers, not needed. The bottleneck is at your
local access to the internet, not the household network. Wireless stinks.
It's always a problem point, and a hackers first attack point.

I get very good download speeds. The problem is all the hosted services are loaded up. It doesn't take many users to slow up some web sites.

obieone

That's the other reason for not liking wireless- security. But my Liksys wr54g shouldn't be already outdated, it only 2 years old?

ben62670

sucks2beme wrote: »

The price difference for going cat 6 adds up. Unless you need speed between your houshold computers, not needed. The bottleneck is at your
local access to the internet, not the household network. Wireless stinks.
It's always a problem point, and a hackers first attack point.

I get very good download speeds. The problem is all the hosted services are loaded up. It doesn't take many users to slow up some web sites.

Yep wireless kinda stinks. I definitely prefer wired if it can be done without major hassle. Cat 5e is fine by me. I really don't see anything faster than 100mbs for internet in the near future, and even that is theoretical considering most sites are stuffed up. Also wireless uses some bandwidth for security purposes.
Ben

brettw22

Wireless is a PITA compared to wired if you're looking to maintain speed. It's just too slow comparatively IMO.......

John30_30

obieone wrote: »

I was gonna go wireless, but 1 of 2 computers is running Vista 64, which means I'd have to spend $150 for a NEW wireless router and USB adaptor.

huh? why is that?

John30_30

sucks2beme wrote: »

The price difference for going cat 6 adds up. Unless you need speed between your houshold computers, not needed. The bottleneck is at your
local access to the internet, not the household network. Wireless stinks.
It's always a problem point, and a hackers first attack point.

Wireless is for laptops and I love it. As far as hackers, that's just silly unless you think a neighbor is out to get you or some random fool is going to park a car near your house with their wpa-cracker just so they can specifically target you.
Repeat: wireless is not a hacker's first atack point. Getting a trojan or keylogger on your underprotected system is the most prevalent attack mode.

If you have an older wireless router, like 5 years old that only does wep, yeah, upgrade it.

obieone

John30_30 wrote: »

huh? why is that?

Because, according to Linksys tech support, the WR54G doesn't recognize Vista 64 bit.

exalted512

Fiber optic FTW!

j/k. Unless you plan on keeping this house for more than 15 years, I would just use the cat5e.
-Cody

disneyjoe7

obieone wrote: »

Because, according to Linksys tech support, the WR54G doesn't recognize Vista 64 bit.

Huh? I setup my neighbors laptop running Vista 64 with a Linksys wireless hub which I believe is a WR54G No problems.

obieone

disneyjoe7 wrote: »

Huh? I setup my neighbors laptop running Vista 64 with a Linksys wireless hub which I believe is a WR54G No problems.

No, no, not my laptop, but my pc has 64, and the linksys tech said I would have to upgrade the USB adaptor, then the lady at CC said I would have to replace both, NOT that I'm really gonna listen to her, but...
I'll probably just wire the house with 5e, and be done with it.
Thanks again for all the feedback.:)