[Hidden-tech] know anyone who can pull ethernet 1 floor to home ofc & test the thruput?

[Chris Hoogendyk]

Chris Hoogendyk wrote:
> Tom Adams- Reelife Productions wrote:
>   
>> can someone explain why extending the wireless network isn't a good 
>> option here?
>>
>>     
>>> On Thu, Nov 5, 2009 at 9:40 PM, David Morf <davidtoday at comcast.net 
>>> <mailto:davidtoday at comcast.net>> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>     Need a little advice…  On the 2nd floor of our home, I’ve got a
>>>     TM402P Touchtone telephony & data modem from Comcast, and a
>>>     Data-Link 524 router modem.  I need to shift my home office to a
>>>     better work space in the house.  To do this, I need to run an
>>>     Ethernet cable directly through a hole drilled between the floors
>>>     (not threaded through the ancient plaster wall) from the 2nd
>>>     floor to the 3rd floor, do the end clips, and then test the
>>>     results for good throughput.  I need hardwire linkage for best
>>>     throughput, and can’t move the modem and router to the 3rd floor
>>>     because that would kill wireless to the 1st floor (I’ve been
>>>     advised by my 29-year partner in life that it’s a family decision
>>>     that there shall be no holes drilled down into the 1st floor for
>>>     network cables).  Comcast said that a licensed electrician should
>>>     do all the Ethernet work.  Is that information correct, and does
>>>     anybody have suggestions for who might do that work in the
>>>     college-streets area of Holyoke?
>>>       
>
> I guess we're all taking the original poster at his word. He wants wired 
> for best throughput.
>
> So, does he really need it? Perhaps not, but we don't really know his 
> full setup or rationale. If he's doing backups between two computers, 
> and one is remaining on the second floor while the other is moving to 
> the third floor, then he might want 100Mb wired rather than wireless. If 
> one of them is a file server, and he's doing a lot of work on shared 
> files, then maybe he wants wired. It's all dependent on what he's doing 
> and what his response times are like. Personally, I have moved entirely 
> to wireless over the last several years, and I don't experience any 
> issues. That's 3 laptops and 2 iMacs all working off one AirPort Extreme 
> connected to a cable modem.
>
> Older wireless is 10Mb, more recent wireless is 54Mb. For years, wired 
> was routinely 10Mb. For the last few years, 100Mb has become pretty 
> standard. In corporate, academic, and research environments, GigE 
> backbones are becoming common, and 10GigE or Infiniband for compute 
> clusters are not uncommon. But he's not likely to be spending the money 
> to get to GigE in his home.
>
> So, it's likely his choices are between 54Mb wireless or 100Mb wired. 
> Not really that big a difference, unless he's right on the edge of that 
> in his requirements.


hmm. I guess things are moving pretty fast. Since I last looked at 
consumer level switches, things are going to GigE at an affordable 
price. See 
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/lanwan/lanwan-reviews/30195-8-port-gigabit-switch-roundup?start=1 
(which is actually 2007). However, you do have to be more careful with 
cables when running GigE. See 
http://www.zytrax.com/tech/layer_1/cables/tech_lan.htm for wire details 
and quality issues. I know that more recent Macs have 10/100/1000 
built-in ethernet. I presume newer PCs must have that sort of capability 
as well.

We spend significantly more for our switches at work; but, then, they 
are managed switches and usually 24 or 48 port, rack mounted, stackable, 
industrial quality, and so forth.


-- 
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Chris Hoogendyk

-
   O__  ---- Systems Administrator
  c/ /'_ --- Biology & Geology Departments
 (*) \(*) -- 140 Morrill Science Center
~~~~~~~~~~ - University of Massachusetts, Amherst 

<hoogendyk at bio.umass.edu>

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Erdös 4