Wireless SRX technology

[Mark J. Dulcey]

Jeff Kinz wrote:

> In most situations, pulling cable in a private residence is problematic
> unless the builder or a recent homeowner installed empty conduits with
> pre-strung pulling cords in it. 
> 
> (I did this when I rebuilt the floor in my family room years ago).
> 
> Overall, I'd rate pulling cable and making the finished wall jacks look
> good to take so much time that going wireless is by far the best way to
> go.

It depends on how much you care about hiding the wiring.

Running Cat5 telephone-style (stapled along the baseboards) is pretty 
easy. The only hard part is when you have to get through a wall, and a 
special cable installer's drill bit (available at Home Depot) solves 
that problem. (The special bit lets you attach a wire that you use to 
pull the cable through the hole.) Besides the bit, you will also need a 
cable stapler, and an impact tool for the punchdown panel and network 
jacks -- about $100 worth of tools, unless you also splurge on a cable 
tester. Yes, I have all of the above, and I'm willing to lend them out 
to BLU members.

Actually putting the wires INSIDE the walls is more difficult. In a 
modern house with hollow wallboard walls, it's still within the 
abilities of most of us. In old houses with plaster walls, it's probably 
time to call in the professionals.

We've done some of each here at The Buttery. The first floor (the public 
space) has in-wall wiring, which we had an electrician do when we were 
doing a major upgrade to our electrical system. (He just pulled the 
cables; I put on the network jacks and wall plates, and the punchdown 
panel in the basement.) We did the upper floors ourselves, with wiring 
along the baseboards.

Doing a wired network properly may actually be more expensive than 
wireless, depending on how extensive your network is. You're likely to 
need an Ethernet switch (unless the 4 ports that your router probably 
has are enough), a punchdown panel (trying to crimp the connectors onto 
the cables yourself is definitely not recommended -- take it from 
somebody who has been there), jacks for each wired location, and a bunch 
of network cables (one for each port of the switch to go to the panel, 
and one to go to each computer). Makes the price of those wireless 
routers look a lot better, especially when they're down to $10 after 
rebates!

And yes, we also have wireless. Belt AND suspenders, you know. But I 
like the reliability of wired networking; the wireless misbehaves every 
once in a while, perhaps due to interference from other things on the 
airwaves, but the wired network just works.

Except after a recent lightning storm, but that's another story. We had 
a strike quite near the house that took out the neighborhood's power for 
eight hours. When the power came back on, I discovered that we had lost 
our incoming gateway router, as well as the port of the Ethernet switch 
it was plugged into. (The other 7 ports of the switch are still fine, 
though!) Fortunately, I keep a spare on hand, so we were only down for 
about one extra hour.